The Contest between Information and Uncertainty
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2427789 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joy Rohde (0000-0002-5043-9500, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 405-416 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Public Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0899-2363 • E-ISSN: 1527-8018 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/08992363-10742579 |
| OpenAlex | W4388233010 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article argues that the Cold War - era battle between information and uncertainty is a critical origin point for contemporary social theory - informed, data-intensive projects of the US national security state. Beginning in the 1950s, international relations experts and government officials turned to digital computing to help make decisions under the unavoidable pressures of geopolitical uncertainty. By the 1970s, their data banks of political knowledge and novel statistical tools purported to forecast political unrest long before an unaided human could. These efforts sparked a new epistemology of political knowledge, one that is now common in data science, in which designers and users prioritize correlation over causality and the instrumental management of problems over scholarly understanding or explanation. Far from a historical curiosity, this history is a warning. The sensibilities of Cold War technopolitical projects are continually rematerialized in contemporary computational security projects. Left unchallenged, their durability will continue to increase in tandem with the national security state's continued investment in computational social scientific projects for geopolitical management
Big data · China · CONTEST · Economics · Geopolitics · Government (linguistics · National security · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Computer Science · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law · Political Science Research and Education · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research
International encyclopedia of the social sciences.
The Taming of Chance
How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind
Beautiful Data
How Our Days Became Numbered
Age of System
The Closed World
The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900
Imaginaries of omniscience
The quiet revolution in the scientific study of international politics and foreign policy
Society on the Edge
War Virtually
Pax Technologica
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |