As the growing power of digital com- puters opened new paths for the automation of logical and not just physical processes, technology came to be understood as a potential solution to the shortcomings and inefficiencies of state bureaucracy. [...] In conjunction with techniques of the data- fied state, like predictive analytics and biometric technologies, automation has produced a new and far-reaching re-organization of state power and elicited new forms of contestation and resistance. [...] It tends toward ever more state intervention in the lives of citizens, the over-policing of mar- ginalized groups, and the perpetuation of social inequality. [...] The route to control is not via subjective agency but through external interventions in real time and modulations in the environ- ment or milieu, at the level of the “rules of the game.”22 Biometric Data and Automated Governance The datafied state is increasingly operationalizing the logic of automated governance through biometric technologies — systems that analyze patterns in physical, biologica. [...] On the other hand, we must critically examine how this ideal confronts and is challenged by the messy reality of underfunded services, on-the-ground exigencies, and the irreducible and confounding role of the political.
- Pages
- 11
- Published in
- United States of America
