Machine-built data doubles work like human doppelgangers built from others’ perceptions

Evidence

This machine-made doppelganger—or perhaps we should call it a digital golem since it is cobbled together from bits of inanimate data—is not made by us. It is made by exterior perceptions, interpretations, and predictions about us. In this way, it has a great deal in common with a human doppelganger: a person whom the world confuses with you but who is not actually you and yet can impact your life in profound ways. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 273

Categorization

• DEFINE: Klein defines the digital golem (not made by us, made by exterior perceptions and predictions) and explicitly articulates its structural kinship with a human doppelganger — the mechanism her whole book runs on.
• STORYSTEM: The digital golem as an entity ‘cobbled together from bits of inanimate data’ that externalizes interpretations of a person is a rich premise for speculative fiction.
• XREF: connects to: Aggregated digital traces reveal more than individuals intend and prompt greater self-editing — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 638; Algorithmic discrimination affects real people despite targeting only probabilistic data doubles. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 408; Machine intelligence quality improves with data volume, unlike industrial production — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 301 (+1 more)