Algorithms and the Assault on Critical Thought: Digitalized Dilemmas of Automated Governance and Communitarian Practice

The book explores the digitalization of longstanding problems of technological advance that produce inequalities and automated governance,relieving subjects of agency and critical thought. It argues that technical advance perennially embeds corrosive effects on social relations and relations of production,recognizing variation across contexts and relative to entrenched societal hierarchies. Societal tolerance requires attention,and institutional inertia suggests benefits of communitarianism. Scaling postcapitalist communitarian values through community-based peer production presents opportunities,but enduring problems require critical reflection,continual revision of strategies,and active participation among diverse community citizens.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 174 pages
Publication date: 30 December 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The digitalization of longstanding problems of technological advance, which produce inequalities and automated governance, has profound implications for society. It relieves individuals of agency and critical thought, leading to a need to weaponize mindfulness against technocratic designs. This book examines these issues in the context of previous sociotechnical milieux and argues that technical advance perennially embeds corrosive effects on social relations and relations of production, recognizing variation across contexts and relative to entrenched societal hierarchies of race and other axes of difference and their intersections.

Despite abundant evidence of harmful effects of digital technologies, societal tolerance for them requires attention. The book explains blindness to social injustice through technocratic thinking delivered through education, as well as truths embraced in the data sciences coupled with governance in universities and the private sector that protect these truths from critique. Institutional inertia suggests benefits of communitarianism, which strives for change emanating from civil society.

Scaling postcapitalist communitarian values through community-based peer production presents opportunities for change. However, enduring problems require critical reflection, continual revision of strategies, and active participation among diverse community citizens.

This book is written with critical geographic sensibilities for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences, humanities, and data sciences. It offers insights into the complex dynamics of digitalization and its implications for society, and encourages readers to engage in critical thinking and action to shape a more equitable and sustainable future.

Weight: 292g
Dimension: 235 x 155 x 14 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367625801