Digital Habitus

<p>This book proposes a new theoretical framework for approaching the causes and effects that digital technologies and the imaginaries related to them have on the processes of self-interpretation and subjectivation. </p><p>It formulates three main theses. First it argues that today’s digital technologies which are primarily based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and big data are formidable <em>habitus</em> machines: they offer increasingly personalized services but these machines are actually indifferent to individuals and their personalities. Second this book contends that the effectiveness of these machines does not depend solely on their concrete capacity to classify the social world. It also depends on the expectations hopes fears and imaginaries that we have concerning these technologies and their capacities. This cultural habitus—a worldview or world picture—leads us to believe in the concrete effectiveness of AI and its potential for our societies. Third the author takes this Bourdieusian notion of habitus and connects it to current “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology. He contends that by looking too closely at the things themselves many philosophers of technology have deprived themselves of the possibility to study the symbolic conditions of possibility in which single technological artifacts are always embedded. </p><p><em>Digital Habitus</em> will appeal to scholars and students working in philosophy of technology the ethics of artificial intelligence media studies and science and technology studies. </p>