Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2021.1878649
Maria Eriksson, Guillaume Heuguet
In today’s digital landscape, cultural content such as texts, films, images, and recorded sounds are increasingly subjected to automatic (or semi-automatic) processes of identification and classification. On a daily basis, spam filters scan swaths of emails in order to separate legit and illegitimate textual messages (Brunton, 2013), algorithms analyze years of user-uploaded film on YouTube in search for copyright violations (Heuguet, 2019), and software systems are deployed to scrutinize millions of images on social media sites in order to detect sexually offensive content (Liao, 2018). These examples reveal how machines and algorithmic systems are increasingly utilized to make complex judgments regarding cultural content. Indeed, it could be argued that the wideranging adoption of content identification systems is constructing new ontologies of culture and regimes of truth in the online domain. When put to action, content identification systems are trusted with the ability to separate good/bad and legal/illegal forms of communication and used to secure the singularity, value, authenticity, origin, and ownership of content. Such efforts are deeply embedded in constructions of knowledge, new forms of political governance, and not least global market transactions. Content identification tools now make up an essential part of the online data economy by protecting the interests of rights holders and forwarding the mathematization, objectification, and commodification of cultural productions. Parallel to their increased pervasiveness and influence, however, content identification systems have also been increasingly contested. Debates regarding automatic content identification tools recently gained momentum due to the European Union’s decision to update its copyright laws. A newly adopted EU directive encourages all platform owners to implement automatic content filters to safeguard copyrights (Spangler, 2019) and critics have argued that such measures run the risk of seriously hampering the freedom of speech and stifling cultural expressions online (e.g., Kaye, 2018). A wide range of high profile tech figures (such as Tim Berners Lee, commonly known as one of the founders of the World Wide Web) have even warned that the widespread adoption of pre-emptive content identification systems could effectively destroy the internet as we know it (Cerf et al., 2018). Content identification systems, then, are not neutral devices but key sites where the moral, juridical, economical, and
{"title":"Genealogies of online content identification - an introduction","authors":"Maria Eriksson, Guillaume Heuguet","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2021.1878649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2021.1878649","url":null,"abstract":"In today’s digital landscape, cultural content such as texts, films, images, and recorded sounds are increasingly subjected to automatic (or semi-automatic) processes of identification and classification. On a daily basis, spam filters scan swaths of emails in order to separate legit and illegitimate textual messages (Brunton, 2013), algorithms analyze years of user-uploaded film on YouTube in search for copyright violations (Heuguet, 2019), and software systems are deployed to scrutinize millions of images on social media sites in order to detect sexually offensive content (Liao, 2018). These examples reveal how machines and algorithmic systems are increasingly utilized to make complex judgments regarding cultural content. Indeed, it could be argued that the wideranging adoption of content identification systems is constructing new ontologies of culture and regimes of truth in the online domain. When put to action, content identification systems are trusted with the ability to separate good/bad and legal/illegal forms of communication and used to secure the singularity, value, authenticity, origin, and ownership of content. Such efforts are deeply embedded in constructions of knowledge, new forms of political governance, and not least global market transactions. Content identification tools now make up an essential part of the online data economy by protecting the interests of rights holders and forwarding the mathematization, objectification, and commodification of cultural productions. Parallel to their increased pervasiveness and influence, however, content identification systems have also been increasingly contested. Debates regarding automatic content identification tools recently gained momentum due to the European Union’s decision to update its copyright laws. A newly adopted EU directive encourages all platform owners to implement automatic content filters to safeguard copyrights (Spangler, 2019) and critics have argued that such measures run the risk of seriously hampering the freedom of speech and stifling cultural expressions online (e.g., Kaye, 2018). A wide range of high profile tech figures (such as Tim Berners Lee, commonly known as one of the founders of the World Wide Web) have even warned that the widespread adoption of pre-emptive content identification systems could effectively destroy the internet as we know it (Cerf et al., 2018). Content identification systems, then, are not neutral devices but key sites where the moral, juridical, economical, and","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2021.1878649","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49367129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-06DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1864959
Paško Bilić, Toni Prug
Abstract Internet history shows that states, military, universities and other public institutions were essential drivers of innovation in the early stages of network development. However, once risky stages pass, commercialisation starts and investors often reap disproportionate rewards from technological innovation. In this paper, we use the risk-reward nexus (RRN) approach (Lazonick & Mazzucato, 2013; Mazzucato, 2013, 2018; Mazzucato & Shipman, 2014) to understand the imbalance between risky public investment and private allocation of rewards regulated by financial markets. We analyse risk reporting in Form 10-K market reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.) for the period between 2005 and 2019. We detected 58 organisational, marketing and advertising, technological, legal, competitive, and macroeconomic risks. Based on changes in risk reporting three stages of Google’s development can be discerned: post-IPO growth and expansion (2005-2008), growth management and investment diversification (2009-2013), legal struggles and regulatory scrutiny (2014-2019). Reported risks are primarily directed at shareholders, omitting risks relating to internet users, courts, regulators, and nation states. Such an approach is historically rooted in the construction of financial regulation in the name of public interests and markets, with public interests largely interpreted as a proxy for investors’ interests.
{"title":"Google’s Post-IPO Development: risks, rewards, and shareholder value","authors":"Paško Bilić, Toni Prug","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1864959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1864959","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Internet history shows that states, military, universities and other public institutions were essential drivers of innovation in the early stages of network development. However, once risky stages pass, commercialisation starts and investors often reap disproportionate rewards from technological innovation. In this paper, we use the risk-reward nexus (RRN) approach (Lazonick & Mazzucato, 2013; Mazzucato, 2013, 2018; Mazzucato & Shipman, 2014) to understand the imbalance between risky public investment and private allocation of rewards regulated by financial markets. We analyse risk reporting in Form 10-K market reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.) for the period between 2005 and 2019. We detected 58 organisational, marketing and advertising, technological, legal, competitive, and macroeconomic risks. Based on changes in risk reporting three stages of Google’s development can be discerned: post-IPO growth and expansion (2005-2008), growth management and investment diversification (2009-2013), legal struggles and regulatory scrutiny (2014-2019). Reported risks are primarily directed at shareholders, omitting risks relating to internet users, courts, regulators, and nation states. Such an approach is historically rooted in the construction of financial regulation in the name of public interests and markets, with public interests largely interpreted as a proxy for investors’ interests.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1864959","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48728738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-14DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1862528
W. Ernst
Abstract While automatized content identification of audio data, in critical discourse analysis, is bound to the symbolic order of monitoring, control, surveillance, censorship and copyright protection, the very tools and algorithms which have been developed for such purposes can be turned into instruments of knowledge production in the scientific sense. Audio content identification is not simply an extension of cultural taxonomies to machine listening, but an operation with its own eigen knowledge. Audio content identification is not simply a continuation of analog techniques for monitoring sonic objects. From a media-epistemological perspective, new forms of audio content identification open different orders of the sonic archive. What is practiced in the online domain has been preceded by experimental investigations of archival storage. The real l'archive, though, are the technological (hardware) and mathematical (software) criteria defining content identification. A media archaeology of audio content identification reveals the technological l'archive governing such forms of enunciation.
{"title":"The media epistemic value of sonic analytics tools. A commentary","authors":"W. Ernst","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1862528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1862528","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While automatized content identification of audio data, in critical discourse analysis, is bound to the symbolic order of monitoring, control, surveillance, censorship and copyright protection, the very tools and algorithms which have been developed for such purposes can be turned into instruments of knowledge production in the scientific sense. Audio content identification is not simply an extension of cultural taxonomies to machine listening, but an operation with its own eigen knowledge. Audio content identification is not simply a continuation of analog techniques for monitoring sonic objects. From a media-epistemological perspective, new forms of audio content identification open different orders of the sonic archive. What is practiced in the online domain has been preceded by experimental investigations of archival storage. The real l'archive, though, are the technological (hardware) and mathematical (software) criteria defining content identification. A media archaeology of audio content identification reveals the technological l'archive governing such forms of enunciation.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1862528","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41595063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-02DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1831197
B. Justie
Abstract This article traces the early history of CAPTCHA, the now ubiquitous cybersecurity tool that prompts users to “confirm their humanity” by solving word- and image-based puzzles before accessing free online services. CAPTCHA, and its many derivatives, are presented as content identification mechanisms: the user is asked to identify content in order for the computer to determine the identity of the user. This twofold process of content identification, however, has evolved significantly since CAPTCHA’s inception in the late 1990s. Pivoting away from a realist framework, largely dependent on the standard tenets [of] cryptography, toward a relational framework premised on aesthetic contingency and social consensus, CAPTCHA’s arc uniquely illustrates how contested notions of both “content” and “identity” become materialized in contemporary internet infrastructure. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s exegetical study of early photography, this critical historicization aims to foreground CAPTCHA as a particularly fraught juncture of humans and computers, which, as with Benjamin’s intervention, productively troubles received ideas of humanism and automation, mediation and materiality.
{"title":"Little history of CAPTCHA","authors":"B. Justie","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1831197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1831197","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces the early history of CAPTCHA, the now ubiquitous cybersecurity tool that prompts users to “confirm their humanity” by solving word- and image-based puzzles before accessing free online services. CAPTCHA, and its many derivatives, are presented as content identification mechanisms: the user is asked to identify content in order for the computer to determine the identity of the user. This twofold process of content identification, however, has evolved significantly since CAPTCHA’s inception in the late 1990s. Pivoting away from a realist framework, largely dependent on the standard tenets [of] cryptography, toward a relational framework premised on aesthetic contingency and social consensus, CAPTCHA’s arc uniquely illustrates how contested notions of both “content” and “identity” become materialized in contemporary internet infrastructure. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s exegetical study of early photography, this critical historicization aims to foreground CAPTCHA as a particularly fraught juncture of humans and computers, which, as with Benjamin’s intervention, productively troubles received ideas of humanism and automation, mediation and materiality.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1831197","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60126662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-27DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1837580
Helen Hockx-Yu
{"title":"Invisible women, data bias in a world designed for men","authors":"Helen Hockx-Yu","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1837580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1837580","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1837580","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46193019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-12DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1831198
Gavin Feller, Andrew Ventimiglia
Abstract This article traces a cultural history of the visual media filtering industry in the United States—from VHS tapes to internet filters to digital streaming platforms. Through an analysis of the company VidAngel, a video filtering start-up, and its recent copyright lawsuit brought by a group of major Hollywood film studios, we highlight the influential role that religion and copyright law, as interanimating forces, have played in the development of content identification and moderation technologies and practices. Emerging from this cultural history is a discourse that insists consumer rights to protect their families from morally objectionable content outweigh the copyrights of content creators. Used as a legal justification for content filtering, this family media rights discourse conflates personal moral decisions based on conservative religious values with neoliberal consumer empowerment in an effort to subvert hegemonic media systems by returning the power of media influence to private families in private settings. This article argues that religiously-motivated systems to identify and remove morally objectionable content have not only resulted in innovative business models targeting niche conservative religious audiences but that such businesses inevitably challenge and shape U.S. copyright law, significantly impacting several areas of contemporary media regulation well beyond the Mormon communities at the center of this narrative.
{"title":"VidAngel: Content filtering technologies, religion, and American copyright law","authors":"Gavin Feller, Andrew Ventimiglia","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1831198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1831198","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces a cultural history of the visual media filtering industry in the United States—from VHS tapes to internet filters to digital streaming platforms. Through an analysis of the company VidAngel, a video filtering start-up, and its recent copyright lawsuit brought by a group of major Hollywood film studios, we highlight the influential role that religion and copyright law, as interanimating forces, have played in the development of content identification and moderation technologies and practices. Emerging from this cultural history is a discourse that insists consumer rights to protect their families from morally objectionable content outweigh the copyrights of content creators. Used as a legal justification for content filtering, this family media rights discourse conflates personal moral decisions based on conservative religious values with neoliberal consumer empowerment in an effort to subvert hegemonic media systems by returning the power of media influence to private families in private settings. This article argues that religiously-motivated systems to identify and remove morally objectionable content have not only resulted in innovative business models targeting niche conservative religious audiences but that such businesses inevitably challenge and shape U.S. copyright law, significantly impacting several areas of contemporary media regulation well beyond the Mormon communities at the center of this narrative.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1831198","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42128758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2019.1704495
Steve Jones, David W. Park
Abstract Our goal in this article is to understand the historical sequences as well as consequences of the internet on the development of the academic field of communication. As a field that has one foot in the study of a most basic and necessary human activity, and another foot in the study of innovative technology, has scholarship in the field of communication followed internet developments? Is there a lag between technological developments and communication research focused on those developments? We attempt to answer our questions by searching for keywords (such as computer, internet, CMC, etc.) in content from communication journals from 1970 to 2000. We find that a large number of keywords were entirely absent, and many of the occurrences involved the same small number of terms, indicative of a relatively narrow and/or shallow amount of interest in these phenomena. The dominance of terms like ‘computer’ and ‘internet’ (and, eventually, ‘Web’) indicate a generalist tone at work in these articles. There is relatively little breadth in the vocabulary related to computers and the internet, suggesting that the field of communication that was seemingly trying to digest the entire (constructed) category of behavior associated with computers and the internet in one gigantic linguistic bite rather than focusing on activities taking place via this new medium. There was not yet a sense of meaningful differentiation in what internet-based communication could involve; ‘internet’ communication was simply communication occurring by means of an internet-based delivery system; a new medium, figuratively and literally.
{"title":"The field of communication’s uptake of computers, networks, and the internet: 1970–2000","authors":"Steve Jones, David W. Park","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2019.1704495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2019.1704495","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Our goal in this article is to understand the historical sequences as well as consequences of the internet on the development of the academic field of communication. As a field that has one foot in the study of a most basic and necessary human activity, and another foot in the study of innovative technology, has scholarship in the field of communication followed internet developments? Is there a lag between technological developments and communication research focused on those developments? We attempt to answer our questions by searching for keywords (such as computer, internet, CMC, etc.) in content from communication journals from 1970 to 2000. We find that a large number of keywords were entirely absent, and many of the occurrences involved the same small number of terms, indicative of a relatively narrow and/or shallow amount of interest in these phenomena. The dominance of terms like ‘computer’ and ‘internet’ (and, eventually, ‘Web’) indicate a generalist tone at work in these articles. There is relatively little breadth in the vocabulary related to computers and the internet, suggesting that the field of communication that was seemingly trying to digest the entire (constructed) category of behavior associated with computers and the internet in one gigantic linguistic bite rather than focusing on activities taking place via this new medium. There was not yet a sense of meaningful differentiation in what internet-based communication could involve; ‘internet’ communication was simply communication occurring by means of an internet-based delivery system; a new medium, figuratively and literally.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2019.1704495","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43661662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1806481
F. Musiani
Notions such as imaginary, myth, ideology, utopia… have been mobilized with notable success in the social sciences throughout the past years and decades, as they are useful to incorporate in an ant...
{"title":"Paolo Bory. 2020, The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies","authors":"F. Musiani","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1806481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1806481","url":null,"abstract":"Notions such as imaginary, myth, ideology, utopia… have been mobilized with notable success in the social sciences throughout the past years and decades, as they are useful to incorporate in an ant...","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1806481","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60126647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-28DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1827615
Henrik Bødker
Many people do not know or remember what the early web looked like or, for that matter, the variety of internet services that existed before the web became the main window to the internet. Wanting ...
{"title":"An internet for the people: the politics and promise of craigslist","authors":"Henrik Bødker","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1827615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1827615","url":null,"abstract":"Many people do not know or remember what the early web looked like or, for that matter, the variety of internet services that existed before the web became the main window to the internet. Wanting ...","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1827615","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46388446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-25DOI: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1810395
Scott Kushner
Abstract Humans who encounter social media platforms have a role to play. They are expected to generate content, a demand starkly illustrated by a mid-2010s Facebook prompt: “Write something.” This essay recuperates the history of this role, the “instrumentalised user,” and traces its development from the mid-1960s to the present. Drawing on evidence from scholarly texts in ergonomics, media studies, computer science, psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and political economy, the essay traces the instrumentalised user’s emergence from decades of efforts to characterise and problematise those actors who encounter computing. Using Actor-Network Theory to show how humans and computing machinery were imagined to work together, the essay reveals that social media’s efforts to extract labour from its users are the heirs to a recurring theme in computer and internet history.
{"title":"The instrumentalised user: human, computer, system","authors":"Scott Kushner","doi":"10.1080/24701475.2020.1810395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2020.1810395","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Humans who encounter social media platforms have a role to play. They are expected to generate content, a demand starkly illustrated by a mid-2010s Facebook prompt: “Write something.” This essay recuperates the history of this role, the “instrumentalised user,” and traces its development from the mid-1960s to the present. Drawing on evidence from scholarly texts in ergonomics, media studies, computer science, psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and political economy, the essay traces the instrumentalised user’s emergence from decades of efforts to characterise and problematise those actors who encounter computing. Using Actor-Network Theory to show how humans and computing machinery were imagined to work together, the essay reveals that social media’s efforts to extract labour from its users are the heirs to a recurring theme in computer and internet history.","PeriodicalId":52252,"journal":{"name":"Internet Histories","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/24701475.2020.1810395","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42336279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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