Media Genealogy| The Future of Critique: Mark Andrejevic on Power/Knowledge and the Big Data-Driven Decline of Symbolic Efficiency

Abstract

Mark Andrejevic, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and J.J. Sylvia, Ph.D. student in the Communication Rhetoric and Digital Media Program at North Carolina State University, discusses the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance of critiquing surveillance through the theoretical framework of power in addition to that of privacy. Although the decline of symbolic efficiency, brought on at least in part by the rise of big data, seems to disrupt the link that Michel Foucault draws between power and knowledge, Andrejevic considers possibilities for reimagining the knowledge structures associated with big data’s infrastructure.