Pip Thornton

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  • geographies of (con)text: language and structure in a digital age

    Geographies of (con)text: language and structure in a digital age is an article I published last year (2017) in Computational Culture: a journal of software studies. It began life as an AAG paper called The Production of Context and Digital Reproduction of Language, presented in one of the Geographies of Software sessions organised by Nick…

  • The Meaning of Light: Seeing and Being on the Battlefield

    I haven’t always written about algorithms and digital capitalism, but I have previously used poetry as a lens through which to expose the politics and asymmetries of technology and space. The Meaning of Light: Seeing and Being on the Battlefield (cultural geographies Vol: 22 issue: 4) is a paper I published in 2015 based on…

  • What is Orwell’s 1984 really worth?

    £58318.14 to be precise. In theory anyway… to Google. I’ve been playing around with running longer texts through {poem}.py and eventually managed to process (and price) the whole of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I use the idea of Newspeak in my critique of Google’s monetisation of language, so I thought it made sense to use…

  • Politics and ethics in media & art technology | Exhibition & Symposium 3-8th Sept Mile End Arts Pavilion

  • Buying Brexit: the politics of Google ads & the general election

  • How the Tories wrote my thesis: the political economy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine

    Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented Google as students at Stanford in 1998. They knew from the beginning how advertising could interfere with the efficiency and integrity of their proposed search engine. In an appendix to their paper, on The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine, they noted that ‘the goals of the…

  • The Death of the Reader | UNDER THE INFLUENCE MAGAZINE

    My essay The Death of the Reader has been published in Under the Influence magazine. It’s a special issue on the subject of SPEED, so the essay reflects on the implications of machine reading, and includes a brief description of my own intervention against the quantification of language (specifically by Google’s AdWords platform) in my…

  • The key to data processing

    I had an unexpected (and puzzling) email a few weeks ago which said how much the author had enjoyed my article in the Wiener Zeitung (The Vienna Newspaper). This was news to me. I’m having trouble publishing anywhere, let alone in an Austrian broadsheet – but after some investigation I found the article in question.…

  • reclaiming poetry from the algorithmic marketplace

    I’ve been playing around with some ideas for my upcoming presentation at the Research in Real-Time – Practice in Progress conference at NUI Galway next month. I’ll be using some material from the Engineering Fictions workshop I did with CONNECT writer in residence Jessica Foley in Dublin in February, where we experimented with writing the…

  • Politics, Poetry and Google: The Value of Words in an Age of Linguistic Capitalism

    An alternative angle to the fake news and Google Ads debate. It’s more poetic, but by no means less political. “Control of language equals control of thought, and it is private capital and tech companies who are at those controls.”   I recently published a short piece on The Medium about the similarities between language…

  • SUBPRIME LANGUAGE: The Precarious Value of Words in an Age of Linguistic Capitalism, Digital Advertising and #FakeNews

    As the value of words shifts from conveyor of meaning to conveyor of capital, has Google become an all powerful usurer of language, and if so, how long before the linguistic bubble bursts? I’m giving a talk at Trinity College Dublin next week as part of the CONNECT centre and Engineering Fictions. I’ll be using…

  • PODCAST: Pip Thornton – Critiquing linguistic capitalism, Google’s ad empire, fake news and poetry

    Originally posted on Algocracy and the Transhumanist Project: My post as research assistant on the Algocracy & Transhumanism project at NUIG has come to an end, and I will shortly be returning to Royal Holloway to finish writing up my PhD. I have really enjoyed the five months I have spent here in Galway –…

  • Talk at NUIG 25th Jan – Linguistic Capitalism – technology & governance research cluster

    I’m giving a talk at NUI Galway on Wednesday 25th January as part of the Whitaker Institute Ideas Forum seminar series. It will be an explanation and exploration of all things Linguistic Capitalism, with a demonstration of my {poem}.py  project, as well as some new ideas about the role of Google advertising in the fake news…

  • Being Human | Human Being: a panel discussion of Ex Machina

    Originally posted on Algocracy and the Transhumanist Project: Back in March I co-curated a Passengerfilms event in London which used Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina to provoke a panel discussion about what it means to ‘be human’ in a world in which the digitally -or algorithmically – processed ‘virtual’ is increasingly experienced in the…

  • A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism: a short podcast from Pip Thornton

    Originally posted on Algocracy and the Transhumanist Project: I started work as the research assistant on the Algocracy and Transhumanism project in September, and John has invited me to record a short podcast about some of my own PhD research on Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction. You download the podcast here or listen…

  • NEWS | Curating (in)security at AAG 2017

    Great write up from Nick Robinson in anticipation of our AAG2017 sessions

  • Curating (in)security: Unsettling Geographies of Cyberspace CfP AAG 2017

    Curating (in)security: Unsettling Geographies of Cyberspace Call for Papers AAG 2017 Boston (April 5-9, 2017) In calling for the unsettling of current theorisation and practice, this session intends to initiate an exploration of the contributions geography can bring to cybersecurity and space. This is an attempt to move away from the dominant discourses around conflict…

  • {poem}.py : a critique of linguistic capitalism

    How much does poetry cost? What is the worth of language in a digital age? Is quality measured on literary value or exchange value, the beauty of hand-crafted, hard-wrung words, or how many click-throughs those (key)words can attract and how much money they earn the company who sells them? But haven’t words always been sold?…

  • Living with Algorithms workshop

    Mike Duggan and I have convened a workshop which will take place in London tomorrow (9th June 2016) on the subject of Living with Algorithms. A couple of people have been unable to make it at short notice, which is a huge shame, but it now gives me the opportunity to present and get feedback…

  • Feminist perspectives on global politics, in poems

    Originally posted on feminist academic collective: Tiina Vaittinen & Saara Särmä We have just finished teaching a course on feminist perspectives on global politics at the University of Tampere, with an international group of students with different disciplinary backgrounds. During the course, we introduced the students to a wide range of readings on feminist IR, and…