Anna-Verena NosthoffThe London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Media and Communications
Anna-Verena Nosthoff
Visiting Fellow
About
50
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Introduction
I am currently co-director of the Critical Data Lab at HU Berlin, a visiting fellow at the LSE (Media Department) and a permanent affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. Recently, I held visiting, research and teaching positions at Princeton University, the University of Vienna, FU Berlin, the University of Basel and at Weizenbaum Institut/ WZB.
Publications
Publications (50)
Der Beitrag untersucht Facebook als Beispiel einer besonders eindringlichen Form „kybernetischer Gouvernementalität“. Das „soziale“ Netzwerk wird dabei als psychopolitisch wirksames System von Affekten und Aktivierungen in den Blick genommen. Vor allem soll die diesem zugrundeliegende »Sozialphysik des Anstoßes« und ihre implizite kybernetische Log...
Following media-theoretical studies that have characterized digitization as a process of all-encompassing cybernetization, this paper will examine the timely and critical potential of Günther Anders's oeuvre visa `-vis the ever-increasing power of cybernetic devices and networks. Anders has witnessed and negotiated the process of cybernetization fr...
Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag untersucht in medientechnischer Perspektive Praktiken und Strukturmerkmale gegenwärtigen digitalen politischen Campaignings und beleuchtet anhand des „(Regel-)Falls Cambridge Analytica“, wie die Plattform Facebook als „Infrastruktur der Affizierung“ politische Meinungsbildungsprozesse orchestriert. In diesem Rahmen anal...
Zusammenfassung
Der Artikel analysiert den Einzug Big Techs (der Fokus liegt auf Apple und Alphabet) in den Gesundheitsmarkt und beschreibt in Anlehnung an Michel Foucault und Shoshana Zuboff das Konzept einer „überwachungskapitalistischen Biopolitik“. Ziel ist, die Ausweitung des „Datenextraktivismus“ im Gesundheitswesen und der Gesundheitsforschu...
In this article, we investigate how Big Tech companies have used the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic to increase their social, politi-cal, infrastructural, and epistemic power. We focus on four companies that were outspoken in their efforts to combat the virus: Alphabet (also known as Google), Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA). Durin...
From a socio-theoretical and media-theoretical perspective, this article analyses exemplary practices and structural characteristics of contemporary digital political campaigning to illustrate a transformation of the public sphere through the platform economy. The article first examines Cambridge Analytica and reconstructs its operational procedure...
Der Beitrag untersucht den plattformökonomischen Infrastrukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und damit die affektökonomischen Strukturmerkmale sozialer Medien. In diesem Rahmen analysieren die Autor:innen in medientechnischer Perspektive die Programmatik von News-feed-Algorithmen wie auch des User-Engagements von Facebook und Co. und damit einher-gehend...
RESUMEN Diversos estudios teóricos sobre los medios de comunicación han caracterizado recientemente la cuarta revolución industrial como un proceso de tecnificación y cibernetización omniabarcante. En este contexto, este artículo pretende mos-trar el potencial pertinente y crítico de la obra magna de Günther Anders La obsolescencia del hombre frent...
With the focus topic “The Human Factor”, the Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie 2023 aims to investigate on the one hand the manifold arrangements of the deficiency in the technical field (and especially “new” technologies): How do machine worlds, user interfaces, implementation strategies, or even entire large-scale technological ecosystems model, compen...
The paper outlines critical aspects concerning the increasing use of big data in agriculture and farming. In particular, the aim is to shed light on the emerging dominance of the platform economy in the field of agriculture and food production. To analyze those power structures shaping this dynamic, we start with brief observations on the general r...
Die digitale Gegenwart zeichnet sich in vielerlei Hinsicht durch ein konflikthaftes Oszillieren zwischen Alteritäts-und Universalitätsansprüchen aus. Exemplarisch beanspruchen algorithmische Rationalitäten in datafizierten Gesellschaften universelle Geltung, die durch den ubiquitären Einsatz digitaler Technologien und den damit verbundenen Bedeutun...
Ziel des Beitrages ist die differenzierende Beschreibung des Projekts Cybersyn sowie die anschließende kritische Perspektivierung ausgewählter neokybernetischer Governance-Konzepte, die in den letzten Jahren verstärkt im Policy-Kontext diskutiert wurden. Die „Entscheidungsmaschine“ Stafford Beers, die der Management-Kybernetiker unter Salvador Alle...
Louise Amoore: Cloud Ethics. Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others Durham: Duke University Press 2020
Abstracts (ca. 1-2 pages) for contributions (approximately 20,000–25,000 characters) from different disciplines can be sent to behemoth@mail.uni-freiburg.de by July 15, 2020.
Timeline:
Selection of abstracts: July 31, 2020.
Submission of manuscripts: October 15th, 2020
Peer review: November 31st, 2020
Submission of revised manuscripts: January 31s...
Is technological control taking the place of what appeared uncannily uncontrollable? Or is it itself becoming uncanny? Two seemingly contradictory narratives have shaped the history and theory of technology. The narrative of disenchantment describes how nature, experienced as something foreign and dangerous, was tamed by becoming scientific and mec...
Shitstorms, Hate Speech oder virale Videos, die zum Klicken, Liken, Teilen bewegen: Die vernetzte Gesellschaft ist von Affekten getrieben und bringt selbst ganz neue Affekte hervor. Die Beiträge des Bandes nehmen die medientechnologischen Entwicklungen unserer Zeit in den Blick und untersuchen sie aus der Perspektive einer kritischen Affekt- und So...
This book traces how the current wave of industrial digitalization relates to processes of domination and emancipation. It aims to counter techno-deterministic narratives that would connect a perceived new ‘industrial revolution’ with clear-cut societal consequences. In order to do this, the volume intervenes into three ongoing discussions which pe...
The article investigates the influence of cybernetic concepts—specifically, feedback, steering, self-regulation, adaptive/autocorrective behavior—on contemporary organizational thinking. By tracing these concepts back to cybernetics, particularly the thought of Stafford Beer and Kurt Lewin, the aim is to understand the cybernetic roots of current f...
Die digitale Technik steckt voller Widersprüche: Neue smarte Geräte wie die Apple Watch, Fitness- oder Health-Apps werden als emanzipativ gefeiert und mit den Versprechen der Unabhängigkeit, Selbstbestimmung und Freiheit aufgeladen. Doch allzu häufig formen diese Wearables eine Realität, die sich durch Überwachen, Vermessen und Tracken bestimmt. An...
Der Aufsatz diskutiert das Steuerungs- und Regelungsdenken zeitgenössischer neokybernetischer Governance-Ansätze (Pentland/ Khanna/ Noveck/ Thaler & Sunstein) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung früher Modelle politischer Kybernetik. Erstere werden dabei als Weiterentwicklung kybernetischer Staatstheorien charakterisiert, wobei insbesondere deren imp...
The article critically investigates various approaches to “smart” governance, from algorithmic regulation (O’Reilly), fluid technocracy (P. Khanna), “smart states” (Noveck), nudge theory (Thaler/ Sunstein) and social physics (Alex Pentland). It specifically evaluates the cybernetic origins of these approaches and interprets them as pragmatic actual...
This article discusses the theological implications of Adorno’s writings on Beckett by specifically examining their constellative motifs of death, reconciliation, and redemption. It addresses not only their content but also their form, suggesting a mutually stimulating relationship between the two as based both on a negative-dialectical approach an...
Various media-theoretical studies have recently characterised the fourth industrial revolution as a process of all-encompassing technicisation and cybernetisation. Against this background, this paper seeks to show the timely and critical potential of Günther Anders's magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen vis-à-vis the ever-increasing power of...
Various media-theoretical studies have recently characterized the fourth in- dustrial revolution as a process of all-encompassing technicization and cy- bernetization. Against this background, this paper seeks to show the timely and critical potential of Günther Anders’s magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen vis-à-vis the ever-increasing powe...
This study seeks to critically explore the link between sovereignty, violence and war in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. From a brief rereading of Leviathan’s main arguments that explicitly revolves around the Aristotelian distinction between actuality/ potentiality, it will conclude that Hobbesian pre-contractual...
This essay re-explores the tie between ethics and politics in the thought of French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas and is specifically concerned with the political consequences that might be drawn from his unique account of ethics. In response to Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani's recent reading of Levinasian politics as ethicoliberatory praxis, this e...
Agnes Heller’s hopes concentrate on finding a potential balance between nihilism and fundamentalism. For her, fragility is an inevitable, basic constant of the human condition—to which she does not respond by proclaiming a radically arbitrary canon of values, but with an old Socratic sentence from Plato’s Gorgias: That it is better to suffer wrong...
Die Struktur des zeitgenössischen Selbstverständnis ist vor allem von einem Begriff beherrscht – dem der „Krise”. Autoritär durchzieht er die Diskurse der Gegenwart, taucht einmal als Finanz-, Schulden-, Ukraine-, oder zuletzt als Flüchtlings-„krise” auf. Dabei ähneln politische und gesellschaftliche Reaktionen auf eine nun siebenjähri- ge Finanzmi...
Walter Benjamin produced around eighty radio talks, dialogues, and children’s stories for Berlin and Frankfurt radio stations in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Fortunately, Radio Benjamin finally compiles Benjamin’s most important pieces in this medium. (...) Benjamin’s aim in presenting these radio works was to sharpen the listener's sociopolitic...
This essay explores the works of German artist Gustav Metzger as a potential response to Theodor W. Adorno’s dictum “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch” (“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”). It argues that culture, as understood in the Adornian sense, is inextricably barbaric as a result of simply being after Auschwi...
It could be asserted that the spectre of Equaliberty (Égaliberté) has haunted Étienne Balibar’s work for decades. Early connotations avant- la- lettre can be found in his concept of citizenship as ‘temporary equilibrium’ (Balibar 1988: 724) — a key structural condition that also underpins ‘equaliberty’. The notion itself reappears throughout the en...
Doppel-Besprechung von Jeremy Bentham, Das Panoptikum, und Zygmunt Baumann/David Lyon, Daten, Drohnen, Disziplin
