Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Data: A Case Study of Knowledge Production in an Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

• In Event: More Instrument than Data: Attuning to the Apparatus - I

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of sociotechnical imaginaries of big data on the production of knowledge and technology at the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL), at the University of Illinois at Chicago. My analysis focuses on collaboration between computer scientists, computational biologists, and behavioral ecologists who utilize an immersive, virtual reality (VR) environment to understand how differences in cognition and social structure influence foraging behavior of animals. For the members of the collaboration, VR offers data immersion, which in turn remakes perception by offering to — as one interlocutor put it— ‘see the monkey, be the monkey.’ I argue that such assertions, and the general question of why VR functions as an appealing instrument of knowledge production for behavioral ecology, cannot be fully unpacked without taking into consideration broader sociotechnical imaginaries. I explore how shared ontological commitments engender and stabilize “visions of the future” of science by tracing the theoretical developments in the three aforementioned disciplines. I argue that beyond the sociotechnical imaginaries, the shared ontology of information, influenced by the theory of cybernetics, played a crucial role in shaping the objectives and methods of the collaboration. In my analysis, I draw on interviews with the members of the EVL and their collaborators, as well on the literature on sociotechnical imaginaries and the history of cybernetics. I conclude that this project in particular, as well as the EVL’s investment in virtual reality in general, relates to the emergence of data-centric science, which is itself embedded in the imaginary of big data.

Author

• Przemyslaw Matt Lukacz, University of Illinois at Chicago