
The Smartness Mandate
MIT Press
Published on 10. January 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-262-54451-1 (ISBN)
Description
Over the last half century, "smartness"—the drive for ubiquitous computing—has become a mandate: a new mode of managing and governing politics, economics, and the environment.
Smart phones. Smart cars. Smart homes. Smart cities. The imperative to make our world ever smarter in the face of increasingly complex challenges raises several questions: What is this "smartness mandate"? How has it emerged, and what does it say about our evolving way of understanding—and managing—reality? How have we come to see the planet and its denizens first and foremost as data-collecting instruments?
In The Smartness Mandate, Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell radically suggest that "smartness" is not primarily a technology, but rather an epistemology. Through this lens, they offer a critical exploration of the practices, technologies, and subjects that such an understanding relies upon—above all, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The authors approach these not simply as techniques for solving problems of calculations, but rather as modes of managing life (human and other) in terms of neo-Darwinian evolution, distributed intelligences, and "resilience," all of which have serious implications for society, politics, and the environment.
The smartness mandate constitutes a new form of planetary governance, and Halpern and Mitchell aim to map the logic of this seemingly inexorable and now naturalized demand to compute, to illuminate the genealogy of how we arrived here and to point to alternative imaginaries of the possibilities and potentials of smart technologies and infrastructures.
Smart phones. Smart cars. Smart homes. Smart cities. The imperative to make our world ever smarter in the face of increasingly complex challenges raises several questions: What is this "smartness mandate"? How has it emerged, and what does it say about our evolving way of understanding—and managing—reality? How have we come to see the planet and its denizens first and foremost as data-collecting instruments?
In The Smartness Mandate, Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell radically suggest that "smartness" is not primarily a technology, but rather an epistemology. Through this lens, they offer a critical exploration of the practices, technologies, and subjects that such an understanding relies upon—above all, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The authors approach these not simply as techniques for solving problems of calculations, but rather as modes of managing life (human and other) in terms of neo-Darwinian evolution, distributed intelligences, and "resilience," all of which have serious implications for society, politics, and the environment.
The smartness mandate constitutes a new form of planetary governance, and Halpern and Mitchell aim to map the logic of this seemingly inexorable and now naturalized demand to compute, to illuminate the genealogy of how we arrived here and to point to alternative imaginaries of the possibilities and potentials of smart technologies and infrastructures.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Illustrations
50 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 42 mm
Weight
409 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-54451-1 (9780262544511)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Orit Halpern | Robert Mitchell
The Smartness Mandate
E-Book
01/2023
MIT Press
€33.99
Available for download
Persons
Orit Halpern, Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden, is the author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945.
Robert Mitchell is Chair and Professor of English, as well as Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, at Duke University. His books include, most recently, Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism.
Robert Mitchell is Chair and Professor of English, as well as Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, at Duke University. His books include, most recently, Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism.
Content
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue: Welcome to the Smart Planet ix
Introduction 1
1 Smartness and Populations 33
2 Demo or Die: The Zones of Smartness 73
3 Derivation, Optimization, and Smartness 121
4 Resilience 167
Coda: From the Smartness Mandate to the Biopolitical Learning Consensus 219
Notes 231
Bibliography 271
Index 297
Prologue: Welcome to the Smart Planet ix
Introduction 1
1 Smartness and Populations 33
2 Demo or Die: The Zones of Smartness 73
3 Derivation, Optimization, and Smartness 121
4 Resilience 167
Coda: From the Smartness Mandate to the Biopolitical Learning Consensus 219
Notes 231
Bibliography 271
Index 297