Predatory Data - Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future

The first book to draw a direct line between the datafication and prediction techniques of past eugenicists and today's often violent and extractive "big data" regimes.Predatory Data illuminates the throughline between the nineteenth century's anti-immigration and eugenics movements and our sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination. With this book, Anita Say Chan offers a historical, globally multisited analysis of the relations of dispossession, misrecognition, and segregation expanded by dominant knowledge institutions in the Age of Big Data.While technological advancement has a tendency to feel inevitable, it always has a history, including efforts to chart a path for alternative futures and the important parallel story of defiant refusal and liberatory activism. Chan explores how more than a century ago, feminist, immigrant, and other minoritized actors refused dominant institutional research norms and worked to develop alternative data practices whose methods and traditions continue to reverberate through global justice-based data initiatives today. Looking to the past to shape our future, this book charts a path for an alternative historical consciousness grounded in the pursuit of global justice.A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Product details

• Authors: Anita Say Chan, Chan Anita Say
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 07.01.2025
• EAN: 9780520402843
• ISBN: 978-0-520-40284-3
• No. of pages: 262
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Media Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, COMPUTERS / Information Technology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Media & Internet, Sociology & anthropology, Impact of science and technology on society, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Race & Ethnic Relations, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Technology Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Activism & Social Justice, Political activism / Political engagement, Social discrimination and social justice