Technologies of speculation : the limits of knowledge in a data-driven society

Hong's writing does not necessarily follow a clear, linear route; instead, it routinely dances back and forth between the different conceptual frameworks that together comprise data's knowing. Data's sublimation follows a similar pattern, and such a style helps in his attempt to articulate the deep interrelations involved in this epistemological shift. By illustrating how datafied knowledge and its speculative gaze moves with stealthy efficiency across bodies politic, temporal, and fleshlike, Technologies of Speculation sets up the stakes required to critically question what data-and we-can know. * International Journal of Communication * Drawing luminous connections between mass surveillance and self-tracking, Technologies of Speculation incisively explores the interplay between the new capacities of data science and the often fanciful but significant castings of the power and objectivity that these sciences promise. Hong's readings of the Snowden documents are among the smartest, freshest, and most incisive to date. He challenges our understanding of the digital terrain we traverse and that follows us forward. -- Matthew L Jones, author of <i>Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage</i> Juxtaposing methods of state- and self-surveillance-from government terrorism forensics to personal biohacking projects-Sun-ha Hong illuminates the common epistemological dynamics of contemporary approaches to uncertainty and truth. Eschewing modern technological fantasies, Technologies of Speculation offers readers a prescient framework to make sense of the data-driven logics that seek to know, and shape, our lifeworlds. -- Natasha Dow Schull, author of <i>Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas</i> Hong takes the reader on a topological odyssey across the rills and gullies that data-driven technologies have incised into the contemporary landscape of knowledge production ... Technologies of Speculation provides a stark warning that the technological rationality represented by data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence represents an existential threat. * Journal of Cultural Economy * Given this breadth, Technologies of Speculation could find a home in communications and media studies, cultural studies, political philosophy, and science and technology studies. Indeed, its combination of these fields into a politically engaged critical method for questioning technology makes an important contribution. These fields would all benefit from furthering this kind of interdisciplinary ideology critique, which attempts to make sense of and intervene in the present moment. Hong's accessible and often humorous style also gives the book relevance outside academia, for anyone interested in understanding and engaging politically with an increasingly disorienting culture, which simultaneously pretends at unprecedented coherence. * Critical Studies in Media Communication * Analyzes the fantasies, values, and sentimentalities surrounding big data and artificial intelligence in his book. By mapping out the smart technologies that have developed in recent years and the fierce debates revolving around them, he seeks to raise awareness of the ethical stakes of technological promises. * International Journal of Communication * Read more...