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Technology, Environment, and the Ends of Knowledge

Art

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The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology

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Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between technology, the environment, and knowledge. It does so by focusing specifically on the challenges that digital infrastructures, as a form of contemporary technology, pose for modern ways of knowing—including the ways of knowing that anthropology as a modern discipline itself deploys. Centrally, this chapter argues that interdisciplinary work on digital infrastructures—taking place across anthropology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), media studies, and art—has repeatedly brought to the surface their very unknowability. It also argues that this interdisciplinary nexus offers us new ways of engaging with these processes as critical aspects of contemporary social life and, in doing so, presenting new directions for an anthropology of technology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/01/google-sorry-racist-auto-tag-photo-app. Accessed 8 July 2021.

  2. 2.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/10/amazon-hiring-ai-gender-bias-recruiting-engine. Accessed 8 July 2021.

  3. 3.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/10/blockchain-music-imogen-heap-provenance-finance-voting-amir-taaki. Accessed 8 July 2021.

  4. 4.

    https://stacktivism.com Accessed 31 May 2020.

  5. 5.

    http://www.blackshoals.net/#home-section Accessed 31 May 2020.

  6. 6.

    http://www.blackshoals.net/the-project-1 Accessed 31 May 2020.

  7. 7.

    In a parallel way, Christian Borch (2017) analyses the use of algorithms in Financial Trading using an animalistic framing that he derives from Roger Callois’ theory of mimesis. Borsch argues that under conditions of automation and digitisation, algorithms come to operate less as Foucauldian systems of governmentality power and more as relational plays of imitation, camouflage, and defence such as that found in interactions between living creatures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College London, London, UK

    Hannah Knox

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  1. Hannah Knox
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Correspondence to Hannah Knox .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Maja Hojer Bruun

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Ayo Wahlberg

  3. Department of Business IT, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Rachel Douglas-Jones

  4. Department of Educational Anthropology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Cathrine Hasse

  5. Center for Medical Science & Technology Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Klaus Hoeyer

  6. Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

  7. Department of Business IT, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Brit Ross Winthereik

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Knox, H. (2022). Technology, Environment, and the Ends of Knowledge. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-16-7083-1

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