Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I draw (...) particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives. (shrink)

Algorithms are increasingly affecting us in our daily lives. They seem to be everywhere, yet they are seldom seen by the humans dealing with the consequences that result from them. Yet, in recent theorisations, there is a risk that the algorithm is being given too much prominence. This article addresses the interaction between algorithmic outputs and the humans engaging with them by drawing on studies of two distinct empirical fields – self-quantification and audit controls of taxpayers. We explore recalibration as (...) a way to understand the practices and processes involved when, on the one hand, decisions are made based on results from algorithmic calculations in counting and accounting software, and on the other hand, when decisions are made based on human experience/knowledge. In particular, we are concerned with moments when an algorithmic output differs from expectations of ‘normalcy’ and ‘normativity’ in any given situation. This could be a ‘normal’ relation between sales and VAT deductions for a business, or a ‘normal’ number of steps one takes in a day, or ‘normative’ as it is according to the book, following guidelines and recommendations from other sources. In these moments, we argue that a process of recalibration occurs – an effortful moment where, rather than treat the algorithmic output as given, individuals’ tacit knowledge, experiences and intuition are brought into play to address the deviation from the normal and normative. (shrink)

Theories of face-to-face interaction employ a concept of spatial presence and view communication via digital technologies as an inferior version of interaction, often with pathological implications. Current studies of mediatized communication challenge this notion with empirical evidence of “telepresence”, suggesting that users of such technologies experience their interactions as immediate. We argue that the phenomenological concepts of the lived body and mediated immediacy (Helmuth Plessner) combined with the concept of embodied space (Hermann Schmitz) can help overcome the pathologizing of digital (...) communication in social theory and enable descriptions which are truer to the experience of using said technology. From this perspective it appears as an ethnocentric premise to restrict interaction to human actors being present in local space. This restricted understanding of interaction does not allow for an appropriate empirical analysis of the emerging structures of digital communication. (shrink)