Data Politics and Infrastructural Design

Between Cybernetic Mediation and Terminal Subjectivity

Authors

  • Ned Rossiter University of Western Sydney
  • Soenke Zehle Academy of Fine Arts Saar

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v4i1.116101

Abstract

The current celebration of invisible design strategies claims to be the inevitable next iteration of a process that deliberately deemphasizes autonomous user agency to ‘empower’ ever-more efficient forms of interaction through natural interfaces. It makes sense to move outward from the user, now situated and redefined as a node of multiple infrastructures. Yet rather than focusing on this networked self, we instead see a critical purchase through analyses of how overlapping infrastructures constitute the user as a new kind of economic and epistemological subject. Such an undertaking is no longer a matter of making visible the invisible. Part of what needs to happen is an exploration of how the digital economy changes the way we understand and constitute infrastructure. 

Author Biographies

Ned Rossiter, University of Western Sydney

Ned Rossiter is Professor of Communication, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Soenke Zehle, Academy of Fine Arts Saar

Soenke Zehle is Lecturer and Managing Director, xm:lab – Experimental Media Lab, the Academy of Fine Arts Saar, Saarbrücken, Germany.

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Published

2015-06-01