Artificial Intelligence in the form of different machine learning models is applied to Big Data as a way to turn data into valuable knowledge. The rhetoric is that ensuing predictions work well—with a high degree of autonomy and automation. We argue that we need to analyze the process of applying machine learning in depth and highlight at what point human knowledge production takes place in seemingly autonomous work. This article reintroduces classification theory as an important framework for understanding such seemingly (...) invisible knowledge production in the machine learning development and design processes. We suggest a framework for studying such classification closely tied to different steps in the work process and exemplify the framework on two experiments with machine learning applied to Facebook data from one of our labs. By doing so we demonstrate ways in which classification and potential discrimination take place in even seemingly unsupervised and autonomous models. Moving away from concepts of non-supervision and autonomy enable us to understand the underlying classificatory dispositifs in the work process and that this form of analysis constitutes a first step towards governance of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into (...) an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

The multifaceted work of the late Susan Leigh Star is explored through a selection of her writings and essays by friends and colleagues. Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was one of the most influential science studies scholars of the last several decades. In her work, Star highlighted the messy practices of discovering science, asking hard questions about the marginalizing as well as the liberating powers of science and technology. In the landmark work Sorting Things Out, Star and Geoffrey Bowker (...) revealed the social and ethical histories that are deeply embedded in classification systems. Star's most celebrated concept was the notion of boundary objects: representational forms—things or theories—that can be shared between different communities, with each holding its own understanding of the representation. Unfortunately, Leigh was unable to complete a work on the poetics of infrastructure that further developed the full range of her work. This volume collects articles by Star that set out some of her thinking on boundary objects, marginality, and infrastructure, together with essays by friends and colleagues from a range of disciplines—from philosophy of science to organization science—that testify to the wide-ranging influence of Star's work. Contributors Ellen Balka, Eevi E. Beck, Dick Boland, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Janet Ceja Alcalá, Adele E. Clarke, Les Gasser, James R. Griesemer, Gail Hornstein, John Leslie King, Cheris Kramarae, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Karen Ruhleder, Kjeld Schmidt, Brian Cantwell Smith, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm L. Strauss, Jane Summerton, Stefan Timmermans, Helen Verran, Nina Wakeford, Jutta Weber. (shrink)

The narrative of the digital phenotype as a transformative vector in healthcare is nearly identical to the concept of “data drivenness” in other fields such as law enforcement. We examine the role of a prescription drug monitoring program in California—a computerized law enforcement surveillance program enabled by a landmark Supreme Court case that upheld “broad police powers”—in the interprofessional conflict between physicians and law enforcement over the jurisdiction of drug use. We bring together interview passages, clinical artifacts, and academic and (...) gray literature to investigate the power relations between police, physicians, and patients to show that prescribing data appear to the physician as evidence of problematic patient behavior by the patients, and to law enforcement as evidence of physician misconduct. In turn, physicians have adopted a disciplinary approach to patients, using quasi-legalistic documents to litigate patient behavior. We conclude that police powers have been used to pave data infrastructure through a contested jurisdiction, and law enforcement have used that infrastructure to enroll physicians into the work of disciplining patients. (shrink)

As the ability to meaningfully process increasingly large quantities of data has improved, the need for systems to support the aggregation and subsequent use of disparate smaller datasets is correspondingly greater. The GBIF is just one such project among a larger group seeking to aggregate the smaller, focused, and disparate sources of information generated for the work of science. GBIF is simultaneously an effort to coordinate and aggregate digital species occurrence data and digitize natural history collections into a single global-scale (...) resource for biodiversity work. The basis for this paper is a critical study of the GBIF database and data portal as a socio-technical system. (shrink)

Residual categories are those which cannot be formally represented within a given classification system. We examine the forms that residuality takes within our information systems today, and explore some silences which form around those inhabiting particular residual categories. We argue that there is significant ethical and political work to be done in exploring residuality.

Data science is characterized by engaging heterogeneous data to tackle real world questions and problems. But data science has no data of its own and must seek it within real world domains. We call this search for data “prospecting” and argue that the dynamics of prospecting are pervasive in, even characteristic of, data science. Prospecting aims to render the data, knowledge, expertise, and practices of worldly domains available and tractable to data science method and epistemology. Prospecting precedes data synthesis, analysis, (...) or visualization, and is constituted by the upstream work of discovering disordered or inaccessible data resources, thereafter to be ordered and rendered available for computation. Through this work, data science positions itself in the middle of all things—capable of engaging this, that, or any domain—and thus prospecting is a key driver of data science’s ongoing formation as a universal science. (shrink)

The central fact about the problem of personal identity is that it is a problem posed by an apparent dichotomy: the dichotomy between the objective, third-person viewpoint on the one hand and the subjective perspective provided by the first-person viewpoint on the other. Everyone understands that the mind/body problem is precisely the problem of what to do about another apparent dichotomy, the duality comprising states of consciousness on the one hand and physical states of the body on the other. By (...) contrast, contemporary discussions of the problem of personal identity generally display little or no recognition of the divide which to my mind is at the heart of the problem. As a consequence, there has been a relentlessly third-personal approach to the issue, and the consequent proposal of solutions which stand no chance at all of working. I think the idea that the problem is to be clarified by an appeal to the idea of a human being is the latest manifestation of this mistaken approach. I am thinking in particular of the claim that what ought to govern our thinking on this issue is the fact that human beings constitute a natural kind, and that standard members of this kind can be said to have some sort of essence. Related to this is the idea that ‘person’, while not itself a natural kind term, is not a notion which can be framed in entire independence of this natural kind. (shrink)

One of the consequences of the public outcry over the 1929 St Valentine’s Day massacre was the establishment of a Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University. The photogenic ‘Lie Detector Man’, Leonarde Keeler, was the laboratory’s poster boy, and his instrument the jewel in the crown of forensic science. The press often depicted Keeler gazing at a female suspect attached to his ‘sweat box’, a galvanometer electrode in her hand, a sphygmomanometer cuff on her arm and a rubber pneumograph (...) tube strapped across her breasts. Keeler’s fascination with the deceptive charms of the female body was one he shared with his fellow lie detector pioneers, all of whom met their wives – and in William Marston’s case, his mistress too – through their engagement with the instrument. Marston employed his own ‘Love Meter’, as the press dubbed it, to prove that ‘brunettes react far more violently to amatory stimuli than blondes’. In this article, I draw on the psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and pleasure to argue that the female body played a pivotal role in establishing the lie detector’s reputation as an infallible and benign mechanical technology of truth. (shrink)

Current models in finance make strong, self-limiting assumptions about the nature of human utility, human relationships, human flourishing, and human growth. These assumptions facilitate tractable solutions to financial problems but ignore subjective determinants of human well-being and value creation within the firm. The philosophical and theological traditions of Catholic teaching, as well as evidence on human flourishing from model social science, call us beyond these models. This paper focuses on three specific areas where a “disconnect” exists between Catholic teaching and (...) current finance models, highlights the relevance of Catholic teaching, and sketches a framework for more fully integrating human flourishing into finance models. (shrink)

Examining legal ethics within the framework of modern practice, this book identifies two important ethical issues that all lawyers confront: the difference between the role of lawyers and the role of judges in pursuing justice, and the conflicting responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to the legal system more broadly. In addressing these issues, Legal Ethics provides an explanation of the duties and dilemmas common to practicing lawyers in modern legal systems throughout the world. The authors focus their analysis (...) on lawyers in independent practice in modern capitalist constitutional regimes, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, as well as the emerging legal systems in China and the former Soviet bloc, to develop connections between the legal profession and political systems based on the rule of law. They find that although ethical tension is inherent in the legal practice of all these societies, the legal profession is essential to stable political institutions. (shrink)

This excellent book is about Western morality as it interacts with law. It is not contrasting the moral foundations of American law with other value systems. Rather the authors examine the history and great diversity of Western thought, the substance of moral ideas. They range from the ancients to the new old order of the New World. Hazard and Pinto see the various voices articulating moral, political and legal thought as "pregnant with future relevance" for practical decision-making. Thus their approach (...) is not relativistic, but mindful of alternatives and historical context. Hazard and Pinto have written a most thoughtful and stimulating study. -- Gerhard Casper, Professor of Law, Emeritus and President Emeritus, Stanford U. *** Beginning with the reality and challenge of modern Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Hazard and Pinto demonstrate the relationships and differences among law, morals, and politics. Hazard, a legal ethicist and scholar, and Pinto, a biblical historian, are a unique team. Their succinct and vital work draws from the wisdom of the ancients and the evolution of modern thought. Anyone concerned with the living law must understand its moral roots to sense when the old growth should be pruned and the new nurtured in light of evolving principles of liberty, equality, and morality. -- Michael Traynor, President Emeritus, American Law Institute *** In this concise meditation on the relationship between law and morality, one of our leading thinkers on law and the legal profession, himself the embodiment of Aristotelian "practical wisdom", takes us on a most engaging tour of our intellectual and moral heritage, helping us to understand the moral foundations of our modern legal system and the language of the law. I commend this book to any interested reader and particularly to non-lawyers who may not have considered how deeply and mysteriously intertwined our legal rules are with religious belief and historical origins. -- David F. Levi, Dean and Professor of Law, Duke U. School of Law *** This is an unstuffy and lively account of fundamental values in American, and indeed Western, public and civic life. The whole historical background is presented both clearly and comprehensively. This attractively succinct book deserves to be read by all who are interested in our public life. The writing is so incisive and compelling that I read this book in a single sitting. -- Neil H. Andrews, Professor of Civil Justice and Private Law, U. of Cambridge. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to describe how Sally Gadow's perspectives on existential advocacy as the moral framework for the nurse–patient relationship were synthesized with a general theory of motivation, self‐determination theory (SDT), to inform the design of a study in which the influence of interpersonal care on the process of tobacco dependence treatment was explored. Consistent with the tenets of existential advocacy, participants who perceived their care providers as interpersonally sensitive and bringing more of their whole selves to (...) the care encounter reported more autonomous motivation and felt competence for stopping smoking. The integration of existential advocacy with SDT, which led to the empirical work in which Gadow's ideas were actualized and her model supported, is described. Study findings are discussed in light of Gadow's philosophical views, and implications for nursing highlighted. (shrink)

Cells and tissue within injured organs undergo a complicated healing process that still remains poorly understood. Interestingly, smaller organisms respond to injury with tissue regeneration and restoration of function, while humans and other large organisms respond to injury by forming dysfunctional, fibrotic scar tissue. Over the past few decades, allometric scaling principles have been well established to show that larger organisms experience exponentially higher tissue forces during movement and locomotion and throughout the organism's lifespan. How these evolutionary adaptations may affect (...) tissue injury has not been thoroughly investigated in humans. We discuss how these adapations may affect healing and demonstrate that blocking the most evolutionary conserved biologic force sensor enables large organisms to heal after injury with true tissue regeneration. Future strategies to disrupt tissue force sensors may unlock the key to regenerating after injury in a wide range of organ systems. (shrink)