The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture
The Burden of Choice examines how recommendations for products, media, news, romantic partners, and even cosmetic surgery operations are produced and experienced online. Fundamentally concerned with how the recommendation has come to serve as a form of control that frames a contemporary American as heteronormative, white, and well off, this book asserts that the industries that use these automated recommendations tend to ignore and obscure all other identities in the service of making the type of affluence they are selling appear commonplace. Focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to approximately 2010 (while this technology was still novel), Jonathan Cohn argues that automated recommendations and algorithms are far from natural, neutral, or benevolent. Instead, they shape and are shaped by changing conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. With its cultural studies and humanities-driven methodologies focused on close readings, historical research, and qualitative analysis, The Burden of Choice models a promising avenue for the study of algorithms and culture.
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The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture
The Burden of Choice examines how recommendations for products, media, news, romantic partners, and even cosmetic surgery operations are produced and experienced online. Fundamentally concerned with how the recommendation has come to serve as a form of control that frames a contemporary American as heteronormative, white, and well off, this book asserts that the industries that use these automated recommendations tend to ignore and obscure all other identities in the service of making the type of affluence they are selling appear commonplace. Focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to approximately 2010 (while this technology was still novel), Jonathan Cohn argues that automated recommendations and algorithms are far from natural, neutral, or benevolent. Instead, they shape and are shaped by changing conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. With its cultural studies and humanities-driven methodologies focused on close readings, historical research, and qualitative analysis, The Burden of Choice models a promising avenue for the study of algorithms and culture.
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The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture

The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture

by Jonathan Cohn
The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture
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The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture

The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture

by Jonathan Cohn

Overview

The Burden of Choice examines how recommendations for products, media, news, romantic partners, and even cosmetic surgery operations are produced and experienced online. Fundamentally concerned with how the recommendation has come to serve as a form of control that frames a contemporary American as heteronormative, white, and well off, this book asserts that the industries that use these automated recommendations tend to ignore and obscure all other identities in the service of making the type of affluence they are selling appear commonplace. Focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to approximately 2010 (while this technology was still novel), Jonathan Cohn argues that automated recommendations and algorithms are far from natural, neutral, or benevolent. Instead, they shape and are shaped by changing conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. With its cultural studies and humanities-driven methodologies focused on close readings, historical research, and qualitative analysis, The Burden of Choice models a promising avenue for the study of algorithms and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813597812
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 03/01/2019
Edition description: None
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

JONATHAN COHN is an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Data Fields of Dreams 1

1 A Brief History of Good Choices 27

2 Female Labor and Digital Media: Pattie Maes and the Birth of Recommendation Systems and Social Networking Technologies 54

3 Mapping the Stars: TiVo's, Netflix's, and Digg's Digital Media Distribution and Talking Back to Algorithms 82

4 Love's Labor's Logged: The Weird Science of Matchmaking Systems and Its Parodies 125

5 The Mirror Phased: Embodying the Recommendation via Virtual Cosmetic Surgeries and Beautification Engines 158

Conclusion: On Handling Toddlers and Structuring the Limits of Knowledge 186

Acknowledgments 191

Notes 193

Index 221

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