The Lived Logics of Database Machinery
A one-day workshop organised by Computational Culture
Location: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE
Date and time: Thursday June 28th 2012 10am – 6pm
Open to all but places limited
Data and its management poses fundamental questions for our times. As data begets data and the costs of its production, transmission and storage become vanishingly small, the technologies that are used to generate, organise and understand it come to occupy a critical social, technical and political position in shaping a data-driven future. Beyond important citizen questions about the accuracy and security of data and about the role of databases in the extension of surveillance practices, database technologies raise other questions. The changing forms of power, shifting modes of thought and forms of knowledge production linked to the database as a social machine require careful analysis of its historical entanglement with social and cultural practices and consideration of the logic of data production itself and its operation as a regulatory device. The workshop addresses a range of issues raised by the increasingly active role that database machinery plays in the construction of the world – from the relations between producers and users of data, through the more general configuration of the knowledge economy in relational terms, to the illusions of transparency and the claims made on behalf of data-driven science. A roundtable discussion will focus on the politics of databases and data management in the NHS.
Confirmed Speakers
Marcus Burkhardt (Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen)
Michael Castelle (University of Chicago)
Dragan Espenschied (Bern University of the Arts)
Bruno J. Strasser (University of Geneva, Yale University)
Bernard Rieder (University of Amsterdam)
A full listing of speakers, abstracts and the programme for the day will be published online at www.computationalculture.net in due course.
Further enquiries to editorial@computationalculture.net