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Of Dog Kennels, Hard Drives, and Global Contaminations: Toward a Constitutional Logic of Big Data

Sat, May 26, 12:30 to 13:45, Hilton Prague, Floor: M, Yoga Room (Cybex Health Club)

Abstract

We need a stronger analytic that allows for more meaningful differentiation between what big data does (its operational logic) and what it is (its constitutional logic). Positing the 3.5" Winchester hard disk drive as the fundamental building block of big data infrastructure, this study investigates how regimes of rare earth mining and permanent magnet manufacturing have not only helped structure and standardize the oddly persistent form of the 3.5" hard disk drive, but also how the building of big data imbricates a diversity of relationships obscured by a focus on operational logics. Employing Anna Tsing's concept of contamination as "collaboration across difference" (2015), I attempt to illustrate the ways in which big data stuff comes to be, through explorations of industrial and social arenas often relegated to the periphery.

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