D Beer
Biographic Data
| ID | 17917 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Beer |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Beer |
| SIGNATURE | BEER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6926-4595 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 68 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 612 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Artificial intelligence, conceptions of distillation and the reframing of reasoning
This article, which takes a specific example in order to look at how concepts shape developments in AI models, claims that the deployment of the concept of distillation is facilitating a particular reframing of reasoning within artificial intelligence. The concept of distillation is circulating through AI development cultures and has taken a certain shape in recent developments. The launch of DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model represents a pivotal and p…
What ought AI do
This article draws upon Georg Simmel’s engagement with the concept of ought as a resource for exploring the question of what it is that AI ought to do. In so doing, it draws upon classical sociology to critically explore and reframe a defining question in AI development with regard to the identification and setting of ideal or expected behaviours of AI models. In particular, Simmel’s relational and contingent conceptualisation of ought in his fin…
Algorithmic tenancies and the ordinal tenant: Digital risk-profiling in England’s private rented sector
N. Katherine Hayles, The Cosmic Web and the Problem of Articulation
Operating at the intersections of literature, science and technology, N. Katherine Hayles is a preeminent thinker whose interdisciplinary work has come to be highly influential across a range of fields. This article focuses upon Hayles’ first book, The Cosmic Web, published in 1984. Exploring the conditions of its production and reception, it shows how this relatively neglected book, in terms of citations and attention, established a series of in…
Music streaming, cultural consumption and the everyday routines of algorithm management: Exploring how trust and objective setting shape everyday encounters with algorithmic systems
Algorithms are often understood to be a powerful presence in shaping everyday life. In particular, the established part that algorithmic recommendations play in cultural consumption is important in shaping what people consume and how tastes are formed. Understanding how users of platforms respond and react to algorithmic processes is crucial for understanding cultural consumption today. This article draws upon semi-structured and detailed intervi…
In Pursuit of the Sociological Imagination: Zygmunt Bauman as Reader
Automation hesitancy: Confidence deficits, established limits and notional horizons in the application of algorithms within the private rental sector in the UK
Drawing upon a qualitative research project examining the use of algorithms in decisions relating to access to housing, this article develops the concept of automation hesitancy. It reflects on the emergence of automation and considers the need for detailed accounts of the implementation of algorithms within specific sectors. In particular, it looks at the confidence deficits that exist. From this starting point it then considers how established …
Algorithmic dwelling? Digital technologies as intermediaries in housing access and the enactment of home
This brief paper provides an introduction to our special issue of the journal on ‘algorithmic dwelling’. It provides a summary of the seven papers in the special issue and draws out a number of common themes
Open Banking and data reassurance: The case of tenant referencing in the UK
The promise of Open Banking (OB), as implemented in the UK, has been that consumers are no longer passive data producers but can also use and derive value from their personal data. OB has been applied predominantly to financial decision-making, payments and borrowing, and most of the existent literature has focused on its adoption in financial services. In this article, we examine its off-label adoption in tenant referencing, a sector rather negl…
Valuing the manual: The Demarcation of Embodied Practices Within Algorithmic Decision-Making Processes
The Tensions of Algorithmic Thinking: Automation, Intelligence and the Politics of Knowing
The Tensions of Algorithmic Thinking: Automation, Intelligence and the Politics of Knowing
The problem of researching a recursive society: Algorithms, data coils and the looping of the social
This commentary article outlines and explores the key problem that faces anyone interested in researching and understanding what might be thought of as a recursive society. It reflects on the problem that is posed by the layering of multiple feedback loops as a result of algorithmic sorting and data processes. This article is concerned with the difficulties of understanding the social where recursive algorithmic processes have repeatedly shaped o…
Quantified Nostalgia: Social Media, Metrics, and Memory
As social media platforms have developed over the past decade, they are no longer simply sites for interactions and networked sociality; they also now facilitate backwards glances to previous times, moments, and events. Users' past content is turned into definable objects that can be scored, rated, and resurfaced as 'memories.' There is, then, a need to understand how metrics have come to shape digital and social media memory practices, and how t…
Explorations in the Indeterminacy of Computation: An Interview with M. Beatrice Fazi
This interview with M. Beatrice Fazi explores in detail her work on computation. Focusing in particular upon her recent publications, it covers the themes of contingency and indeterminacy. The questions explore Fazi's perspectives on computational aesthetics, abstraction and experience. Through an interrogation of the conceptual insights that Fazi's recent work offers, the interview outlines an agenda for future work in the philosophy of computat…
Data Quirks and Impressions: An Interview with David Beer
David Beer is a Professor of Sociology at the University of York. He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles that encompass the culture and politics of new media, data, and technology. His most recent works have focused specifically on the implications of data analytics industries and the social power of metrics to govern everyday life. David sits on the editorial boards of several key journals in these fields, including Theory, Cultu…
A history of the data present
The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception
The Quirks of Digital Culture
This book explores the quirks of digital culture. Through a series of short punchy chapters, it uses these quirks as momentary glimpses into the hidden dynamics of our swirling, highly mediated and often unfathomable cultural experiences
Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts: Worlds, Lives, Fragments
The quantified self in precarity: Work, technology and what counts
Sitting at her desk in an imagined tech company, Mae, played by Emma Watson, is a new operative trying to force her way beyond ‘guppy’ status in the seemingly informal company hierarchy. The Circle
Georg Simmel's Traces: An Interview with Olli Pyyhtinen
This interview with Olli Pyyhtinen explores his recent work on the writings of Georg Simmel. It focuses in particular upon his new book, The Simmelian Legacy. Taking that book as its focal point, the interview examines the influence of Simmel's work, the key concepts and ideas it provides and how we might use it today
To Be Human: An Interview with Daniel Chernilo
This interview explores the key themes and ideas in Daniel Chernilo's recent book Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical Sociology (2017). It is a hugely ambitious book that tackles a range of questions around the notion of humanity and the category of the human. Drawing on a wide range of thinkers, the book pushes at a number of far-reaching issues, problems and questions concerning humanity. It's a rich text that develops themes that are li…
The social power of algorithms
This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section out…
The quantified self: A sociology of self tracking
"The quantified self: a sociology of self tracking." Information, Communication & Society, 20(12), pp. 1805–1806
Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious
The movement toward what is often described as Web 2.0 is usually understood as a large-scale shift toward a participatory and collaborative version of the web, where users are able to get involved and create content. As things stand we have so far had little opportunity to explore how new forms of power play out in this context of apparent 'empowerment' and 'democratization'. This article suggests that this is a pressing issue that requires urge…
Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data
Digital data inundation has far-reaching implications for: disciplinary jurisdiction; the relationship between the academy, commerce and the state; and the very nature of the sociological imagination. Hitherto much of the discussion about these matters has tended to focus on 'transactional' data held within large and complex commercial and government databases. This emphasis has been quite understandable - such transactional data does indeed form…
Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations
This paper introduces the idea of Web 2.0 to a sociological audience as a key example of a process of cultural digitization that is moving faster than our ability to analyse it. It offers a definition, a schematic overview and a typology of the notion as part of a commitment to a renewal of description in sociology. It provides examples of wikis, folksonomies, mashups and social networking sites and, where possible and by way of illustration, exa…
Postmodernism and Social Research
The Wire as Social Science-fiction
This article examines the HBO television series The Wire as an example of a popular cultural form that stimulates the sociological imagination. It provides some examples of how it functions to do this. A brief case study of one character - 'Snoop' - is examined to illustrate a set of more general observations. It is suggested that The Wire, although still containing strong narrative elements, provides an intriguing popular cultural example of wha…
Consumption, Prosumption and Participatory Web Cultures: An introduction
Fiction and Social Theory: E-Special Introduction
This E-Special issue brings together a range of articles from the Theory, Culture, & Society archive that directly explore the relations between fiction and social theory. Each article develops a different perspective on these relations, yet they all share a common interest in probing at the different ways in which fiction might enrich and provoke our conceptual imaginations. These articles ask how theory might be used to understand or illuminate…
Tune Out: Music, Soundscapes and the Urban Mise-en-Scène
This paper focuses upon the intersection between the MP3 player and the city. In particular it takes issue with arguments concerning the ways in which mobile music devices enable a ‘recomposition’ of the urban soundscape. Drawing upon Michael Bull's work on the management of the experience of the time and space of the city, as facilitated through various mobile music reproduction devices, this piece questions Bull's central claim that these devic…
Genre, Boundary Drawing and the Classificatory Imagination
This article suggests that the vitality of genre, and particularly music genre, is often missing from social and cultural research. This is despite its central presence as a structural force within increasingly popular forms of field analysis. To deal with this absence, the article draws upon conceptual material on everyday forms of classification and new forms of digital data. It is argued that the concept of a classificatory imagination might b…
Productive measures: Culture and measurement in the context of everyday neoliberalism
This article reflects on how data circulations and data analysis have become a central and routine part of contemporary life; it does this through the lens of a particular cultural form: the game of football. More specifically, the article focuses upon the role of data in the production and playing of football, with the suggestion that forms of measurement and pattern recognition are now central to the performance of footballers and the recruitme…
Making Friends with Jarvis Cocker: Music Culture in the Context of Web 2.0
The movement toward what has been described as Web 2.0 has brought with it some significant transformations in the practices, organization and relations of music culture. The user-generated and web-top applications of Web 2.0 are already popular and widely used, the social networking site MySpace already having more than 130 million members worldwide. By focusing specifically upon the presence of the popular music performer Jarvis Cocker across v…
The data analytics industry and the promises of real-time knowing: Perpetuating and Deploying a Rationality of Speed
This article draws upon a sample of 34 data analytics providers in order to explore the rhetorical framing of the speediness of the data analytic solutions that they offer. General perceptions of cultural speed-up frame understandings of organisational life, against this backdrop of data analytics are presented as a potential solution to the need to speed-up and keep-up with the competition. As a result, it is argued that notions of speedy analyt…
Hip-Hop as Urban and Regional Research: Encountering an Insider's Ethnography of City Life
This essay suggests that hip-hop music may reasonably be thought of as a form of urban and regional research. The essay draws upon a recently published book by hip-hop artist Jay-Z, which provides biographical information alongside translations of the lyrical content of his works, to show that hip-hop is full of insider ethnographic insights into urban life. This, it is argued, can be thought of as an answer to Daryl Martin's call for a more 'poe…
Quantified Nostalgia: Social Media, Metrics, and Memory
As social media platforms have developed over the past decade, they are no longer simply sites for interactions and networked sociality; they also now facilitate backwards glances to previous times, moments, and events. Users' past content is turned into definable objects that can be scored, rated, and resurfaced as 'memories.' There is, then, a need to understand how metrics have come to shape digital and social media memory practices, and how t…
How should we do the history of Big Data
Taking its lead from Ian Hacking's article 'How should we do the history of statistics?', this article reflects on how we might develop a sociologically informed history of Big Data. It argues that within the history of social statistics we have a relatively well developed history of the material phenomenon of Big Data. Yet this article argues that we now need to take the concept of 'Big Data' seriously, there is a pressing need to explore the ty…
Using Social Media Data Aggregators to Do Social Research
This article asks if it is possible to use commercial data analysis software and digital by-product data to do critical social science. In response this article introduces social media data aggregator software to a social science audience. The article explores how this particular software can be used to do social research. It uses some specific examples in order to elaborate upon the potential of the software and the type of insights it can be us…
The ivorine tower in the city: Engaging urban studies after The Wire
The Wire has been viewed as a panoptic and institutional dissection of the dysfunctions of late capitalist urbanism. The accomplishment and totality of this vision has perhaps provoked introspection by academics pondering their internal efficacy (engaging students through teaching) and external relevance (through the communication of research around urban problems). On both of these fronts, academic work arguably faces a crisis as new media forms…
Researching glossy topics: The Case of the Academic Study of Celebrity
The launch of Celebrity Studies journal represents an ideal opportunity to reflect upon the general trajectory of celebrity as an academic topic. This is a particularly pressing task given the increasingly uncertain socio-economic conditions within which we find ourselves. To this end, we draw upon the recorded outputs of the academy to provide a quantitative visualisation of the study of celebrity. To complement this statistical overview we weav…
Can You Dig It: Some Reflections on the Sociological Problems Associated with Being Uncool
Coolness is an elusive concept. This research note seeks to understand its place in the life of the sociologist. Reflecting on the recent experiences of the author, this piece focuses on the problems of studying music cultures where the interested researcher has become uncool. It begins by tracking this problem, with particular regard to the problems of identifying and studying the very aspects of culture that the researcher wishes to investigate…
Celebrity Gossip and the New Melodramatic Imagination
This article uses a range of media sources to 'follow' or 'trace' the well-known celebrity Miley Cyrus. Through the development of the concept of a new melodramatic imagination the case study develops the methodological potentials of the types of online archives that now exist. In this instance the authors exercise their own melodramatic imaginations to draw out substantive issues relevant to the case of Miley Cyrus. The article therefore has two…
The Biopolitics of Biometrics: An interview with Btihaj Ajana
As a result of a growing interest in neoliberal political economy, surveillance and new forms of data, questions around metrics and the governance of life are moving to the forefront of contemporary conceptual analysis. This particular interview draws upon the key themes from Btihaj Ajana's recently published book Governing through Biometrics: The Biopolitics of Identity (2013). Although the interview focuses centrally upon the book, it also cove…
The Hidden Dimensions of the Musical Field and the Potential of the New Social Data
This article seeks to highlight what might be thought of as the hidden dimensions of the musical field and explores the potential of digital by-product data for illuminating the aspects of musical taste and preference that are difficult to see with traditional social science methods. It suggests that the limitations of existing field analysis create what might be thought of as darkened areas of music consumption that may remain outside of the gaz…
Mobile Ideas: Tracking a Concept through Time and Space
John Urry’s defining work on mobilities calls for research into the movement of people, ideas and information. This article identifies that as things stand the work of the ‘mobilities turn’ has tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the movement of people and information and has given far less attention to the mobility of ideas. In order to address this absence this article focuses upon one idea in particular, the Spime neologism, and attemp…
The problem of researching a recursive society: Algorithms, data coils and the looping of the social
This commentary article outlines and explores the key problem that faces anyone interested in researching and understanding what might be thought of as a recursive society. It reflects on the problem that is posed by the layering of multiple feedback loops as a result of algorithmic sorting and data processes. This article is concerned with the difficulties of understanding the social where recursive algorithmic processes have repeatedly shaped o…
Mobile Music, Coded Objects and Everyday Spaces
Building upon the existing work of Michael Bull and others on the everyday practices of mobile music, this article draws upon contemporary work on active and information dense urban spaces to begin to shape opportunities for a research agenda for mobile music that incorporates the technological and informational infrastructures within which it occurs. In particular the piece applies Dodge and Kitchin’s concept of logjects, devices that recall and…
The notion of unitary psychosis: A conceptual history
'Unitary psychosis' is the collective name for a set of disparate doctrines whose common denominator is the view that there is only one form of psychosis and that its diverse clinical presentations can be explained in terms of endogenous and exogenous factors. This paper examines the history of these doctrines since the eighteenth century in the work of their main sponsors and extricates their conceptual assumptions. It is shown that the nature o…
Postmodernism and Social Research
Back to the Future of Social Theory: An Interview with Nicholas Gane
At any given time, the living see themselves in the midday of history. (Benjamin, 2002: 481) Exciting things can happen during the course of an interview, not least because underpinning critical dialogue is a practice of challenge and counter-challenge, out of which new ideas, perspectives or, at the very least, openings can emerge... (Gane, 2004: 15)
Introduction: Collecting the fragments of transformation
The relationship between music and the Internet is a site of perceived possibility and volatility. Stories of music theft, illegal downloads, unresolved court cases, and anti-piracy technologies, are now prominent. Conversely, stories about the creation of real-time music composition, music's increasing accessibility, the regeneration of music collecting, and the development of virtual music communities have also become prominent. This paper intr…
Reflecting on the digit(al)isation of music (originally published in February 2005)
This paper is a collection of notes written in response to the main themes contained in Martin Kretschmer’s essay "Artists’ earnings and copyright: A review of British and German music industry data in the context of digital technologies" (2005), which was published recently in First Monday. These notes are intended to focus briefly on the exploration of these themes with the intention of generating and developing questions that may open doors fo…
Reflecting on the digit(al)isation of music
This paper is a collection of notes written in response to the main themes contained in Martin Kretschmer’s essay "Artists’ earnings and copyright: A review of British and German music industry data in the context of digital technologies" (2005), which was published recently in First Monday. These notes are intended to focus briefly on the exploration of these themes with the intention of generating and developing questions that may open doors fo…
Sooner or later we will melt together: Framing the digital in the everyday
Digital technologies are increasingly pervading our everyday lives. Many of our everyday practices involve the appropriation of digital technologies. The aim of this piece is to discuss two central issues surrounding this digitalisation of everyday life: (i) what constitutes digital culture?; and, (ii) how do digital technologies transform ownership? These questions are considered in this work with the intention of creating a benchmark from which…
Capturing the Livingness and Liveliness of Critique-In-Action
The Pop-Pickers Have Picked Decentralised Media: The Fall of Top of the Pops and the Rise of the Second Media Age
The BBC has recently announced that Top of the Pops, the long-running weekly popular music programme, will broadcast its final episode in the summer of 2006. This brief 'rapid response' article considers how the conclusion of Top of the Pops' 42 year history may be understood as representative or indicative of broader transformations in musical appropriation. As such it considers the fall of Top of the Pops in relation to the rise of what Mark Po…
Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations
This paper introduces the idea of Web 2.0 to a sociological audience as a key example of a process of cultural digitization that is moving faster than our ability to analyse it. It offers a definition, a schematic overview and a typology of the notion as part of a commitment to a renewal of description in sociology. It provides examples of wikis, folksonomies, mashups and social networking sites and, where possible and by way of illustration, exa…
Thoughtful territories: Imagining the thinking power of things and spaces
This debate article considers the questions concerning the intelligence or thinking powers of things and spaces, and suggests that these issues now need to receive detailed attention in the development of social, cultural and urban theories of digitalisation. By outlining the implications of a set of existing and forthcoming technologies, this piece claims that we now need to begin to imagine the near future so as to keep up with what is commonly…
Tune Out: Music, Soundscapes and the Urban Mise-en-Scène
This paper focuses upon the intersection between the MP3 player and the city. In particular it takes issue with arguments concerning the ways in which mobile music devices enable a ‘recomposition’ of the urban soundscape. Drawing upon Michael Bull's work on the management of the experience of the time and space of the city, as facilitated through various mobile music reproduction devices, this piece questions Bull's central claim that these devic…
Making Friends with Jarvis Cocker: Music Culture in the Context of Web 2.0
The movement toward what has been described as Web 2.0 has brought with it some significant transformations in the practices, organization and relations of music culture. The user-generated and web-top applications of Web 2.0 are already popular and widely used, the social networking site MySpace already having more than 130 million members worldwide. By focusing specifically upon the presence of the popular music performer Jarvis Cocker across v…
Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious
The movement toward what is often described as Web 2.0 is usually understood as a large-scale shift toward a participatory and collaborative version of the web, where users are able to get involved and create content. As things stand we have so far had little opportunity to explore how new forms of power play out in this context of apparent 'empowerment' and 'democratization'. This article suggests that this is a pressing issue that requires urge…
Celebrity Gossip and the New Melodramatic Imagination
This article uses a range of media sources to 'follow' or 'trace' the well-known celebrity Miley Cyrus. Through the development of the concept of a new melodramatic imagination the case study develops the methodological potentials of the types of online archives that now exist. In this instance the authors exercise their own melodramatic imaginations to draw out substantive issues relevant to the case of Miley Cyrus. The article therefore has two…
Can You Dig It: Some Reflections on the Sociological Problems Associated with Being Uncool
Coolness is an elusive concept. This research note seeks to understand its place in the life of the sociologist. Reflecting on the recent experiences of the author, this piece focuses on the problems of studying music cultures where the interested researcher has become uncool. It begins by tracking this problem, with particular regard to the problems of identifying and studying the very aspects of culture that the researcher wishes to investigate…
The Sociological Imagination As Popular Culture
One of us recently contributed to a polemical article claiming to be able to identify a coming crisis in empirical sociology (Savage and Burrows, 2007). The article argued that the jurisdiction of the subject rested on its ability to innovate methodologically in such a manner that it could retain some form of privileged access to knowledge about social processes. It questioned whether this jurisdiction could still pertain in an era of 'knowing ca…
Consumption, Prosumption and Participatory Web Cultures: An introduction
The ivorine tower in the city: Engaging urban studies after The Wire
The Wire has been viewed as a panoptic and institutional dissection of the dysfunctions of late capitalist urbanism. The accomplishment and totality of this vision has perhaps provoked introspection by academics pondering their internal efficacy (engaging students through teaching) and external relevance (through the communication of research around urban problems). On both of these fronts, academic work arguably faces a crisis as new media forms…
Mobile Ideas: Tracking a Concept through Time and Space
John Urry’s defining work on mobilities calls for research into the movement of people, ideas and information. This article identifies that as things stand the work of the ‘mobilities turn’ has tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the movement of people and information and has given far less attention to the mobility of ideas. In order to address this absence this article focuses upon one idea in particular, the Spime neologism, and attemp…
Mobile Music, Coded Objects and Everyday Spaces
Building upon the existing work of Michael Bull and others on the everyday practices of mobile music, this article draws upon contemporary work on active and information dense urban spaces to begin to shape opportunities for a research agenda for mobile music that incorporates the technological and informational infrastructures within which it occurs. In particular the piece applies Dodge and Kitchin’s concept of logjects, devices that recall and…
Researching glossy topics: The Case of the Academic Study of Celebrity
The launch of Celebrity Studies journal represents an ideal opportunity to reflect upon the general trajectory of celebrity as an academic topic. This is a particularly pressing task given the increasingly uncertain socio-economic conditions within which we find ourselves. To this end, we draw upon the recorded outputs of the academy to provide a quantitative visualisation of the study of celebrity. To complement this statistical overview we weav…
The Wire as Social Science-fiction
This article examines the HBO television series The Wire as an example of a popular cultural form that stimulates the sociological imagination. It provides some examples of how it functions to do this. A brief case study of one character - 'Snoop' - is examined to illustrate a set of more general observations. It is suggested that The Wire, although still containing strong narrative elements, provides an intriguing popular cultural example of wha…
Open access and academic publishing: Some lessons from music culture
Using Social Media Data Aggregators to Do Social Research
This article asks if it is possible to use commercial data analysis software and digital by-product data to do critical social science. In response this article introduces social media data aggregator software to a social science audience. The article explores how this particular software can be used to do social research. It uses some specific examples in order to elaborate upon the potential of the software and the type of insights it can be us…
Sociology (56 works) · Computer Science (39 works) · Epistemology (38 works) · Political science (23 works) · Aesthetics (22 works) · Art (22 works) · Social science (22 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Media studies (19 works) · Law (16 works)