David Beer

Professor of Sociology at the University of York. His books include The Data Gaze, Metric Power and The Quirks of Digital Culture. Information about his writing can be found on his website davidbeer.net . He also writes a newsletter about technology, media and culture.

‘Trapped in a code’ – the fight over our algorithmic future

We grudgingly tolerate algorithms that predict our cultural consumption – but applying them to exam results has highlighted our unease about how algorithms override individuality.

By David Beer

/ 21 Aug 2020

‘Trapped in a code’ – the fight over our algorithmic future

Can we really change the tech sector?

A review of Wendy Liu’s ‘Abolish Silicon Valley’

By David Beer

/ 28 May 2020

We need to change who can analyse our data – as well as who owns it

Building a digital commons will require new rules to govern data analytics, as well as new models of ownership.

By David Beer

/ 17 Jun 2019

We need to change who can analyse our data – as well as who owns it

Facebook’s new currency is an attempt to create a platform we never leave

'GlobalCoin' will allow Facebook to harvest data about transactions that would previously have occurred outside its ever expanding walls.

By David Beer

/ 27 May 2019

Facebook’s new currency is an attempt to create a platform we never leave

The oppressiveness of creativity

Has capitalism co-opted our creative juices? A review of Oli Mould’s new book ‘Against Creativity.’

By David Beer

/ 30 Oct 2018

Ripping up the Yellow Pages

The print version of the Yellow Pages may be coming to an end, but the cultural legacy of classification it embodied goes on – in the encoding even of our very eyes...

By David Beer

/ 14 Sep 2017

The backfire effect, bad objects, and changing our minds online

On social media, when exposed to opposing views, are we likely to change our minds? Or is there a 'backfire effect' which in fact consolidates communities around common "bad objects"?

By David Beer

/ 19 Jul 2017

The backfire effect, bad objects, and changing our minds online

On social media, when exposed to opposing views, are we likely to change our minds? Or is there a 'backfire effect' which in fact consolidates communities around common "bad objects"?

By David Beer

/ 19 Jul 2017

Dominance and disruption: power is won by consent, and resisted through understanding

On the history of hegemony: an informed sense of how power has been understood can only cultivate a much stronger sense of how it operates today. Book review.

By David Beer

/ 6 Jul 2017

The cold intimacy that comes when the TV calls your name

This pretence of being friendly and of knowing us is a well-worn tool of capitalism – as noises crowd our lives, it becomes harder to find peace.

By David Beer

/ 2 Jun 2017

The cold intimacy that comes when the TV calls your name

This pretence of being friendly and of knowing us is a well-worn tool of capitalism – as noises crowd our lives, it becomes harder to find peace.

By David Beer

/ 2 Jun 2017

The power of money: how the rich took hold of our monetary systems to make themselves richer

To wrest back control from private finance, to reclaim our “hollowed out democratic institutions,” we must begin with a public understanding of money. Book review.

By David Beer

/ 5 May 2017