{"product_id":"proxies-isbn-9780262045148","title":"Proxies","description":"\u003cb\u003eHow those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share. In \u003ci\u003eProxies\u003c\/i\u003e, Dylan Mulvin examines how we arrive at those standards, asking, \"To whom and to what do we delegate the power to stand in for the world?\" Mulvin shows how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor designers of technology, some bits of the world end up standing in for other bits, standards with which they build and calibrate. These \"proxies\" carry specific values, even as they disappear from view. Mulvin explores the ways technologies, standards, and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultural milieus of their bureaucratic homes. Drawing on archival research, he investigates some of the basic building-blocks of our shared infrastructures. He tells the history of technology through the labor and communal practices of, among others, the people who clean kilograms to make the metric system run, the women who pose as test images, and the actors who embody disease and disability for medical students. Each case maps the ways standards and infrastructure rely on prototypical ideas of whiteness, able-bodiedness, and purity to control and contain the messiness of reality. Standards and infrastructures, Mulvin argues, shape and distort the possibilities of representation, the meaning of difference, and the levers of change and social justice.Acknowledgments \u003cbr\u003e1 Samples of the World\u003ci\u003e Out There\u003c\/i\u003e: The Surrogate Logic of Proxies\u003cbr\u003e2 How to Clean a Kilogram: Standards, Data Hygiene, and the Theater of Objectivity\u003cbr\u003e3 The Visual Culture of Image Engineers (Or the Lena Image, Part 1)\u003cbr\u003e4 Proxy Justice (Or the Lena Image, Part 2)\u003cbr\u003e5 Living Proxies: The Standardized Patient Program\u003cbr\u003e6 Canned Chance: Methods for Following Infrastructure\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex\"Underneath the world we know, there is a hidden landscape of carefully constructed stand-ins, models, prototypes. This ferociously original book maps that region and opens up new ways to explain how our technological infrastructures become what they are.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eFred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University; author of \u003ci\u003eThe Democratic Surround\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Moving from fake towns built by the US military in Arizona as proxies for ‘enemy territory’ to \u003ci\u003ePlayboy \u003c\/i\u003ecenterfolds at the heart of image processing, Dylan reveals the dance between abstraction and embodied labor that underlies politics of ‘standing in.’ Insightful and engaging, this book is key to understanding how proxies affect our capacity to imagine the world.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eWendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Communication, Simon Fraser University; author of \u003ci\u003eUpdating to Remain the Same\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eProxie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cu\u003es\u003c\/u\u003e should be mandatory reading for anyone who has ever relied on a proxy—and that means all of us.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eNanna Bonde Thylstrup, Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School; author of \u003ci\u003eThe Politics of Mass Digitization\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eDylan Mulvin is Assistant Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300400713957,"sku":"NP9780262045148","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262045148.jpg?v=1767735188","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/proxies-isbn-9780262045148","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}