Data-mining reveals a digital unconscious akin to Benjamin’s optical unconscious

Evidence

One may understand Big Data in analogy to a movie camera. As a digital magnifying glass, data-mining would enlarge the picture of human actions; behind the framework of consciousness it would then disclose another scene shot through with unconscious elements. Big Data’s microphysics, then, would make actomes visible – that is, micro-actions that elude detection by the waking mind. Thus, Big Data could also bring to light collective patterns of behaviour, of which individuals are unaware. This would render the collective unconscious accessible. In analogy to the ‘optical unconscious’, one could call such a microphysical or micropsychical web of relations the digital unconscious. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 148

Categorization

• DEFINE: Coins the term ‘digital unconscious’ by analogy to the optical unconscious.
• XREF: connects to: Big Data is blind to the singular event that actually shapes history — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 176; Data mining actively reshapes and changes human minds — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1680; Affective computing treats unconscious emotions as measurable behavioral signals. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 888 (+6 more)

Related

• Media technologies expose unconscious dimensions of perception that the eye and mind miss (similarity 0.80)
• Data mining actively reshapes and changes human minds (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Affective computing treats unconscious emotions as measurable behavioral signals. #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 888
• Data mining actively reshapes and changes human minds #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1680
• Machines can capture emotional reactions the subject cannot consciously report #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 882
• Digitalization reduces the sensory continuum to standardized discrete units manipulable by logic #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 208
• Unaccountable incidents can reveal blind gaps in normal perception #expands (0.78) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 417
• Classification systems function like surrealist art in revealing new relationships #expands (0.75) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 458
• Renaissance psychology theorized fantasized monsters as real perceived data #complicates (0.72)