This question has been a staple of academic philosophy since the eighteenth century. But it seems to be taking on new urgency at this historical moment, which is characterized by public disagreement over basic “facts.” Promiscuous Knowledge, a new book by John Durham Peters and Ken Cmiel, charts two processes that have shaped the modern […]

“Data diversity” carries remarkably different meanings in different domains of research today. In one sense, the phrase responds to the racism perpetuated by common algorithms, such as Google’s search engine (see, for instance, Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression). Researchers who use the tools of machine learning to improve user-oriented algorithms use “data diversity” to refer […]

Scholars who pose this question understand it in two distinct ways. Some scholars ask if the internet is democratic in the sense of allowing its users equal opportunities for public self-expression regardless of their race, class, gender, or economic status. Digital media promise such equality, but do they actually achieve it? Others ask if the […]

The term “atlas” usually describes a book of maps or charts, or a book of scientific diagrams. The most common examples are world atlases, road atlases, and anatomical atlases. As collections of drawings or visualizations, atlases typically depict a particular object from a variety of perspectives. Usually identified with scientific illustration practices, atlases have also […]

The creators of encyclopedias aspire to include everything. Theoretically, to create an encyclopedia is to dream of being able to encompass the infinite amounts of information that exist. But this is, of course, a paradox: we cannot truly confine infinite knowledge to the (finite) pages of a book, website, or other hyper-media form of the […]