*CFP* “ALGORITHMIC CULTURE”, EDITED VOLUME

Culture is undergoing massive shifts as algorithms play increasingly foundational roles in the organization and experience of everyday life. The areas where this matters are diverse and include student and employee selection processes, policing and incarceration, vehicular locomotion, the behavior of the stock market, consumption practices, the delivery of health care, the filtering of news, finding love, and maintaining friendship. Algorithms quietly but powerfully contribute to shaping what is possible and what is not, what matters and what does not, who we are becoming, and what we leave behind. So much of this work has been happening below the level of awareness and accountability that change is happening with insufficient attention to political, ethical, and cultural ramifications.

We propose this volume to bring into the light the multiple ways in which algorithms matter in these and other aspects of everyday life.  We think it is important to reach a crossover audience: academic but accessible to a non-academic audience. Think of it as a popular academic book. The kinds of chapters we envision will speak any arena of everyday life – linking to one or more of these ways algorithms matter:

1. Issues in the process of designing algorithms, such as specific ways that bias enters into and results from the process of design. 
2. The mechanics of algorithmic control: the ways in which processes of machine learning escape human design. 
3. The control over algorithms: the human work of implementation and the human work that remains once an algorithm is launched. 
4. The emergent cultural and subjective landscape in an environment where algorithmic thinking and logic is normalized as the appropriate technology to drive cultural change.

We invite chapters of up to 6,000 words addressing specific theoretical issues (eg: subjectivity, surveillance, risk, truth), specific cases (eg: health care, preemptive policing, autonomous vehicles, fake news), and perspectives from different disciplines (eg: data science, law, consumer research, cultural studies, media studies, communication)

Interested authors are invited to submit an abstract of approximately 250-500 words outlining their proposed contribution. Please include a 1-2 page CV. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2019 after which we will select those we consider appropriate for the volume. Completed manuscripts will be due Jan 10, 2020 to undergo peer review.

Feel free to contact us at shristov@mtu.edu, jdslack@mtu.edu, and shong2@mtu.edu if you have any questions or ideas beyond the scope as we have described it.

Contacts:

Stefka Hristova, Michigan Technological University shristov@mtu.edu

Jennifer Daryl Slack, Michigan Technological University jdslack@mtu.edu

Soonkwan Hong, Michigan Technological University shong2@mtu.edu