Andreas Bernard - The Triumph of Profiling

1 Cover

2 1: Profiles: The Development of a Format A conceptual history of the profile in the twentieth century The triumph of the self-made profile Profiles and the culture of job applications Constants of external control Cyberspace and profiles: from the boundless to the captive self Notes

3 2: Locations: GPS and the Aesthetics of Suspicion The history of satellite navigation On the way to locating individuals Paradoxes of location Electronic ankle bracelets Location-based games Notes

4 3: Cavity Searches: Bodily Measurements and the Quantified-Self Movement Fitbit Genealogies of self-tracking Measuring, classifying, discriminating Introspection and data generation Lifting the veil Witnesses for the prosecution Notes

5 4: The Forgotten Fear of Registration The drama of the census The police as a catalyst of electronic registration The semantics of the net The glamour of datafication Nineteen Eighty-Four from today's perspective Stigmatization and self-design Notes

6 5: The Power of Internalization Competitive individuality The governability of the self in digital culture Notes

7 Works Cited

8 Index

9 End User License Agreement

1 Chapter 2 The Spider-Man comic from 1977 that supposedly inspired a judge in New Mexico t… On the left, a device for electronically monitoring criminals (2009); on the ri…

2 Chapter 3 The automatic step counter kept in Hans Gross's “travelling office box” around … An advertisement on Fitbit's website (2017).

3 Chapter 4 The “residential form” from the 1987 census in West Germany.

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2 Table of Contents

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Andreas Bernard

Translated by Valentine A. Pakis

polity

First published in German as Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. Das Selbst in der digitalen Kultur © S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2017

This English edition © Polity Press, 2019

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3629-0

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3630-6 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bernard, Andreas, 1969- author.

Title: The triumph of profiling : the self in digital culture / Andreas Bernard.

Other titles: Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. English

Description: Cambridge : Polity Press, 2019. | Translation of: Komplizen des Erkennungsdienstes. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018050589 (print) | LCCN 2018051482 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509536313 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509536290 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509536306 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Self-presentation–Social aspects. | Self-perception–Social aspects. | Social representations. | Personality assessment. | Social media–Psychological aspects. | Subjectivity.

Classification: LCC HM1066 (ebook) | LCC HM1066 .B4713 2019 (print) | DDC 126–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050589

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon Roman by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon

The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

An old political debate reopened when, within just a few months in 2012, the United States was shocked by two mass shootings, one in a movie theatre in Denver and the other at an elementary school in Connecticut. The question was whether there might be better ways to identify potential perpetrators in advance so as to prevent similar atrocities from happening in the future. To the familiar suspicious signs – the introverted nature of the predominantly male offenders, their social isolation, and their history of psychiatric treatment – was now added an additional criterion: the reluctance of the killers to participate on social media. As reporters were quick to point out, neither James Eagan Holmes nor Adam Lanza had a profile on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Like the Norwegian Anders Breivik, who had committed a similar crime the year before, Holmes and Lanza refused to join the internet's omnipresent portals for communication and self-representation, and this refusal was being characterized as a warning sign. Recruitment managers at large companies reminded the public that it was now a common practice to look at the online profiles of job applicants and that an applicant's complete absence from social networks was highly peculiar.