Dissertation Defense | Clocked! Time and Biopower in the Age of Algorithms

PhD-Candidate: Evelyn Wan
Clocked! Time and Biopower in the Age of Algorithms
Utrecht University, 23 November 2018 | Supervisor: Maaike Bleeker

Clocked! investigates what algorithms are, how they operate, and how they evade our human perception through their machinic speeds of microtemporal processing. The study examines the influence of past and current technologies on human perception of time through the proposed concept of ‘techno-chrono-biopolitics’, and analyses how bodies are subjected to biopolitical control through time-related technologies. Highlighting the technological and chronological aspects of biopower, the works of Michel Foucault and his contemporaries are discussed to show how theories of discipline and biopower could be updated for the digital era. Against the ephemerality and invisibility that define our wireless internet, the work turns the focus back to bodies and the material dimension of technologies. From clock- use in colonisation and slavery to tracking algorithms on the Apple Watch and Quantified Self devices, the book traces how technology mediates time and inaugurates regimes of biopower on a planetary scale.

The abstract can be found here: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/373435 and here’s an even shorter summary: