Introduction: optimization and its discontents

ABSTRACT Optimization is seemingly everywhere and yet elusive. Our bodies, tools, and institutions are now understood as endlessly optimizable. But what does optimization mean? Or more crucially, what does it do? Who or what is optimized or dis-optimized? This themed issue introduces optimization as a critical concept to analyze the governance and governmentality of large technological infrastructures, platforms, and self-management apps. We define optimization as a form of calculative decision-making embedded in legitimating institutions and media that seek to actualize optimal social and technical practices in real time. Our Introduction outlines the techniques, legitimations, and social practices of optimization that have spread in many forms across the globe. By questioning optimization, our Introduction considers the social practices, geopolitical networks, and forms of organization (and violence) shored up by the desire for optimum performance.