CANCELLED! Lecture: "The Metric We. On the Quantification of the Social"

Due to illness, the lecture can unfortunately not take place. The date will be made up.

Speaker:        Prof. Dr. Steffen Mau, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

This event is part of the ITeG lecture series "Digitale Gesellschaft - eine Gestaltungsaufgabe" (Digital Society - a design task) at the Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG).

Whether education, health, or consumption: data is now collected on just about every aspect of our person and our behavior. Step by step, a society of stars, scores, likes and lists is emerging in which everything and everyone is constantly measured and evaluated. This begins with the annual university ranking, extends to the Quantified Self movement of fitness enthusiasts who compare their best times with each other via the Internet, and ends with the evaluation of the efficiency of political measures. This talk discusses the techniques and technologies of this sociometry against the backdrop of digitization and new forms of data extraction. The evaluation systems of quantified society, he argues, do not simply map inequalities in the world, but ultimately play a role in determining the distribution of life chances.