Big Data and Identity ConstructionA. Aneesh

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

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Identities Social Identity Bureaucratic Identity System Identity

Social Identity

• Imagined Kinship • Solidarity of Strangers • Interaction between

persons and larger social structures

Grounded in • Kinship • Place • Both

• Imagined Kinship • Solidarity of Strangers • Interaction between

persons and larger social structures

Social Identity

Grounded in • Kinship • Place • Both

Social Identity Reciprocity

Sense of self: from exchange and interaction

Placeplaces of identity & memorycaste divisions (saryupaari

brahmins)notions of pollutionghetto, segregation

Interactionface-to-facespectrum of dialects & accentslinguistic divisions of states

Experiencevistas, smells and sounds Feld’s acoustemology

Harchand Singh Longowal

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

Bureaucratic IdentitySeeing like a state: Techniques of sedentarization

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System IdentitiesFrom being to becoming

No permanent credit score for a person's financial identity, No permanent health record for their medical identity, No permanent political identity as a voter.

With every credit card purchase, every wish list, every loan and repayment, one's financial identity is being constantly reconstructed without the person's conscious participation.

System

Conve

rsat

ions Call Centers

Speech IdentityKnowledge

Customers

Demographic data: gender, age, region, educationBehavioral data: purchases, credit history, debt, mobilityMedical data: medical history, pharmacies, hospitals

Algocratic Dialer

“The dialer tells you to take the break…you get a break around 7 and you a break around 9 for half an hour…And you are supposed to be logged in for at least 7 hours 45 minutes. Because if you suddenly want to go to the loo, it just cuts down on your time.”

Neutral Accent: How Language, Life and Labor Become Global

Systems of Organization

Key Features Bureaucratic Market Algocratic

Governance Written rules (legal positivism)

Price Program

Code Permissible/not permissible

Payment/non-payment

True/False (1/0)

Medium Routines Money Programming language

Labor Integration Hierarchicy N/A (only indirect)

Network

Trackers Goal

Advertising 661 sole purpose of delivering advertisements

Analytics 251 purpose of providing research and analytics to website publishers

Beacons 281 serving no purpose other than tracking (beacons, conversion pixels, audience segmentation pixels, etc.)

Privacy 18 for privacy notices and other related elements

Widgets 149 providing page functionality (social network buttons, comment form, etc.)

system identities: contingent

Indirect

Impermanent

Precarious

Abstract

Algocratic

Non-negotiable

Big Data: structured and unstructured digital data (Collective Unconscious)from online social networks, mobile devices, the Internet of Things (IOT)

System Identity: Algorithmically generated identity from big data for a particular purpose

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system identities: contingent

Political

Financial

Shopping

Medical

Criminal

FICO

Northpointe Risk Scores

SportsWAR: Wins Above Replacement

Big Data: structured and unstructured digital data (Collective Unconscious)from online social networks, mobile devices, the Internet of Things (IOT)

System Identity: Algorithmically generated identity from big data for a particular purpose

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From negotiable to non-negotiable space of powerMachine bias: real possibility of existing and new biases to become non-negotiable

Individually served Inequalities

Improbability of deliberative democracy

Social

Social Identity

CriminalFinancial ShoppingMedicalTraveling IdentityOrganizational

IdentityRacial Identity

Residential Identity

Place-bound, Kinship-structured, Sensual

Social

Medical Identity

CriminalFinancialShoppingMedical

Financial Identity

Political Identity

Place-bound, Kinship-structured, Sensual

Place-bound, Kinship-structured, SensualSocial

Medical Identity

Worker identitySports Identity

Shopping Identity

Criminal identity

Financial Identity

Political Identity

Thank You