The politics of algorithmic governance in the black box city
Date
2020
Authors
Smith, Gavin
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Publisher
Sage Journals
Abstract
Everyday surveillance work is increasingly performed by non-human algorithms. These entities can be conceptualised as
machinic fla^neurs that engage in distanciated fla^nerie: subjecting urban flows to a dispassionate, calculative and expansive
gaze. This paper provides some theoretical reflections on the nascent forms of algorithmic practice materialising in two
Australian cities, and some of their implications for urban relations and social justice. It looks at the idealisation – and
operational black boxing – of automated watching programs, before considering their impacts on notions such as ‘the
right to the city’ and ‘the right to the face’. It will argue that the turn to facial recognition software for the purposes of
automating urban governance reconstitutes the meanings and phenomenology of the face. In particular, the fleshly and
communicative physicality of the face is reduced to a measurable object that can be identified by a virtualised referent
and then consequently tracked. Moreover, the asymmetrical and faceless nature of these machinic programs of recognition
unsettles conventional notions of civil inattention and bodily sovereignty, and the prioritisation given to pattern
recognition renders them amenable to ideas/ideals from phrenology and physiognomy. In this way, algorithmic governance
may generate not only forms of facial vulnerability and estrangement, but also facial artifice, where individuals
come to develop tacit and artful ways of de-facing and re-facing in order to subvert the processes of recognition which
leverage these modes of biopower. Thus, the datafication of urban governance gives rise to a dynamic biopolitics of the
face.
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Keywords
The black box city, surveillance, algorithmic governance, biometrics, facial recognition, biopolitics
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Source
Big Data & Society
Type
Journal article
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Open Access
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Creative Commons NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
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