The spread of learning algorithms is changing the meaning and forms of prediction, affecting the image of the future and the way to deal with it in the present. Whereas in the modern view the future is seen as open and unknowable because it does not yet exist and depends on present actions and expectations, today’s predictive algorithms claim to foresee the future providing an individual score for singular persons or events. But knowing the future in advance is not only advantageous. In fact, for our society, shared uncertainty about the future is also a resource. What happens to the stabilized forms of management of the future as a consequence of digital techniques?
Elena Esposito
Vita
Elena Esposito is Professor of Sociology at the University Bielefeld and the University of Bologna. A leading figure in sociological systems theory, she has published extensively on the theory of society, media theory, memory theory and the sociology of financial markets. Her current research on algorithmic prediction is supported by a five-year Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Her latest book Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence will be published in 2021 by MIT Press.
Research Areas
theory of society
media theory
memory theory
sociology of fashion
sociology of financial markets
sociology of algorithms
theory of prediction, ratings and rankings
Publications (Selection)
Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence. Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming.
The Future of Futures. The Time of Money in Financing and Society. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011.
Transparency vs. Explanation. The Role of Ambiguity in Legal AI, Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law (CRCL) forthcoming.
Digitale Prognose. Von statistischer Ungewissheit zur algorithmischen Vorhersage. Pp. 177 – 198 in Alfons Labisch (Ed.) Kann Wissenschaft in die Zukunft sehen? Prognosen in den Wissenschaften. Halle: Acta Historica Leopoldina Nr. 79, 2021.
Unpredictability. Pp. 533-540 in Nanna Bonde Thylstrup et al. (Eds.) Uncertain Archives. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 2020.
A Pandemic of Prediction: On the Circulation of Contagion Models between Public Health and Public Safety (with Maximilian Heimstädt and Simon Egbert). Sociologica, 14(3), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11470
From Pool to Profile: Social Consequences of Algorithmic Prediction in Insurance (with Alberto Cevolini). Big Data & Society 7(2), 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720939228
What’s Observed in a Rating? Rankings as Orientation in the Face of Uncertainty (with David Stark). Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4): 3-26, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419826276
Predicted Uncertainty: Volatility Calculus and the Indeterminacy of the Future. Pp. 219-235 in Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk (Eds.) Uncertain Futures. Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
