Discriminating Data

By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Alex Barnett (illustrator),

Book cover of Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition

Book description

How big data and machine learning encode discrimination and create agitated clusters of comforting rage.

In Discriminating Data, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Discriminating Data as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Digital technology, like technology generally, is commonly assumed to be value neutral. Wendy Chun reveals that structurally embedded in digital operating systems and data collection are values that reproduce and extend existing modes of discriminating while also originating new ones. In prompting and promoting the grouping together of people who are alike—in habits, culture, looks, and preferences—the logic of the algorithm reproduces and amplifies discriminatory trends. Chun reveals how the logics of the digital reinforce the restructuring of racism by the neoliberal turn that my own book lays out.

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