Abstract
This chapter details the various techno-cultural assemblages giving rise to data collected to model and measure anthropogenic worlds, arguing that data-based technologies both represent and co-produce the Anthropocene. It begins with a review of scholarship emerging at the intersection of science and technology studies and information studies that advances understanding of data infrastructure and knowledge practices, and their role within the anthropogenic assemblages that shape history. Drawing on a case study describing how vehicle emissions are measured and regulated in the US, I examine the materialities and mutability of technologies designed to produce data about air quality, along with the cultures and politics that shape them. I detail how US environmental health researchers and regulators grapple with the meaning of evidence and the basis for regulatory decisions as they confront the limits of automated data-collecting and modelling technologies. Finally, I meditate on the role of data-based technologies in mediating the environments we inhabit and the knowledge through which we perceive them.
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Notes
- 1.
This was a pithy reference to a 2005 videotape in which Donald Trump, while making a number of vulgar comments about women, told US television personality Billy Bush to ‘Grab ’em by the pussy’.
- 2.
I have lost count of the number of times when, in conversation with data analysts in municipal, state, and federal governments about the dangers of an overreliance on data systems and models, I have been surprised to find them nodding in agreement and referencing Cathy O’Neil’s (2016) Weapons of Math Destruction. Part of this abmivalence has emerged from experience; many experts and policy makers can cite several examples where over-dependence on data-based systems of governance has prevented sound decision making.
- 3.
Federal regulation of air pollution responded to two interrelated concerns: first, that as states compete for new jobs and industry, they have incentives to side-line environmental regulations; and second, that regardless of an individual state’s degree of regulation, air does not know state boundaries.
- 4.
Once approved by the EPA, the control strategies outlined in the plan became enforceable at both state and federal levels, and failure to comply with the plans would permit the federal government to take over enforcement.
- 5.
For example, see https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/vm1.cfm.
- 6.
California, with the worst traffic conditions in the country, has much more stringent air quality regulations and is thus exempt from several federal policies.
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Acknowledgements
Early versions of this chapter were developed and honed in the context of The Asthma Files (https://theasthmafiles.org/) research project, led by Kim Fortun and Mike Fortun.
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Poirier, L. (2022). Data, Knowledge Practices, and Naturecultural Worlds: Vehicle Emissions in the Anthropocene. 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_14
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