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Surveillance Graphs: Vulgarity and Cloud Orthodoxy in Linked Data Infrastructures
- Author(s):
- Jonny Saunders (see profile)
- Date:
- 2023
- Subject(s):
- Linked data, Information superhighway, Cloud computing, Semantic Web, Artificial intelligence
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- AI Ethics, digital surveillance, information infrastructure, Knowledge Graphs, Large Language Models, Linked Data, Semantic Web
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/syv8-cp10
- Abstract:
- Information is power, and that power has been largely enclosed by a handful of information conglomerates. The logic of the surveillance-driven information economy demands systems for handling mass quantities of heterogeneous data, increasingly in the form of knowledge graphs. An archaeology of knowledge graphs and their mutation from the liberatory aspirations of the semantic web gives us an underexplored lens to understand contemporary information systems. I explore how the ideology of cloud systems steers two projects from the NIH and NSF intended to build information infrastructures for the public good to inevitable corporate capture, facilitating the development of a new kind of multilayered public/private surveillance system in the process. I argue that understanding technologies like large language models as interfaces to knowledge graphs is critical to understand their role in a larger project of informational enclosure and concentration of power. I draw from multiple histories of liberatory information technologies to develop Vulgar Linked Data as an alternative to the Cloud Orthodoxy, resisting the colonial urge for universality in favor of vernacular expression in peer to peer systems.
- Notes:
- Please see the web version at https://jon-e.net/surveillance-graphs and document source at https://github.com/sneakers-the-rat/surveillance-graphs
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 5 months ago
- License:
- Attribution-ShareAlike
- Share this:
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surveillance-graphs.pdf