The winner of the 2016 CRDM Dissertation Award is Dr. Fernanda Duarte. Dr. Duarte defended her dissertation, “OpenAnalogInput(): Hybrid spaces, Self-making and Power in the Internet of Things”, in December 2015. Her committee members included Dr. Adriana de Souza e Silva (chair), Dr. Jeremy Packer, Dr. David Rieder, and Dr. Steve Wiley.

Dissertation Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the emergence of the Internet of Things and the embeddedness of sensors and networked connectivity onto things, physical spaces and biological bodies rearticulates embodied spaces, devises practices of self-making and forms of power in the governance of the self and society. In the Internet of Things, the development of pervasive computing applications has enabled computing capacities to be discretely distributed across environments and bodies. Personal data collection and big data mining traverse all dimensions of life and create forms of knowledge that integrate data
embodiments of multiple scales. Personal data from an individual creates a data double of her physiology; data lakes of traffic patterns, consumer habits, are correlated to create demographics predictions. The consequence of this seamless geared informational design is twofold. While networked data processing becomes more efficient and manageable, it also becomes more complex and more subtle. Simultaneously, as pervasive computing capacities allow networked technologies to be available on the go and activated by individual subjects, these same individual subjects also act as bodies that are integrated into the networked environment and subjected to its asymmetrical power dynamics. This study investigates: (1) how embodied spaces are built upon data mining strategies through the production and correlation of aggregated data, (2) the practices of self-making that emerge with the Internet of Things, and (3) the forms of power at work in the biotechnological topologies of the Internet of Things. In this dissertation I adopt a materialist framework that reconciles perspectives in the fields of Digital Humanities and Critical and Cultural studies to discuss media technologies and networks as a procedural material articulation of discourses, social practices and actions. This dissertation follows methodological guidelines of Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006) and addresses the research questions through a tripartite method approach. (1) I started this investigation through auto ethnographies to produce accounts of my use of self-tracking technologies. (2) Based on this initial experiences, I developed a critical making experiment titled “Truth or Dare: a moral mobile compass for ethical living” (ToD). ToD is an interactive installation that mimics the function of a lie detector. In this installation I installed analog sensors in a micro-controller that when held by the installation participant produce values that measure her emotional distress (similarly to a typical lie detector, emotional distress is measured based on the variation of electric conductivity). The values are relayed to an app in a smartphone that interfaces with Twitter. As the participant tweets, the app inputs how her values fall into the threshold of distress. If the value is off range of the baseline for normalcy, the app tags the tweet with lie. ToD produces an ironic and critical approach to the adoption of biometric and computational parameters for the construction of truth and reveal a wide range of symbolic negotiations that shape the construction of mediated subjectivities. (3) And lastly, I also observed discussion threads of the online forum of the Quantified Self movement, which is a community of “self-trackers” that mostly uses sensors and wearable computing for self knowledge and life-logging. This dissertation contributes to the fields of Digital Media theories and Cultural Studies by developing further critical making as a method that can overlap social-political perspectives with discursive and material analysis. Through this dissertation, I also argue for further interdisciplinary collaboration among the fields of Humanities, Social Sciences and Computer Science to nurture further debates about the social, ethical and political implications of new media technologies, specifically regarding data mining practices and physiological information.

About the Award

Every Spring semester, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State requests nominations for the year’s Dissertation Award. Since 2016, the CRDM committee ranks the dissertations nominated to the CHASS award and chooses its awardee as the top ranked nominee.