InfoGlut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know

"Mark Andrejevic's compelling new book is an impressive survey of the impact of big data on domains extending from bodies and brains to policing, marketing, and senti- ment analysis. As it documents the shift from comprehen- sion to correlation, Infoglut raises disturbing questions re- garding new operations of power and control in a world of algorithms." -Jodi Dean, author of Democracy and Other Ne- oliberal Fantasies
Today, more mediated information is available to more people than at any other time in human history. New and revitalized sense-making strategies multiply in response to the challenges of "cutting through the clutter" of compet- ing narratives and taming the avalanche of information. Data miners, "sentiment analysts," and decision markets offer to help bodies of data "speak for themselves"-mak- ing sense of their own patterns so we don't have to. Neu- romarketers and body language experts promise to peer behind people's words to see what their brains are really thinking and feeling. New forms of information processing promise to displace the need for expertise and even com- prehension-at least for those with access to the data.
Infoglut explores the connections between these wide- ranging sense-making strategies for an era of information overload and "big data," and the new forms of control they enable. Andrejevic critiques the popular embrace of decon- structive debunkery, calling into question the post-truth, post-narrative, and post-comprehension politics it under-
writes, and tracing a way beyond them.
Mark Andrejevic is an ARC QE II Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. He is the author of iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era and Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on surveillance, digital media, and popular culture.