Benjamin Jacobsen
@bnjacobsen.bsky.social
Lecturer in Sociology at University of York and Visiting Fellow on ALGOSOC project at Durham University.
Pinned
New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms
Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.
www.york.ac.uk
I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Berlin journalist @farangiesg.bsky.social writing on Palantir’s models & ICE, interviewed me about my work on the Deep Border & @erc.europa.eu research on machine learning worlds. Her article captures the violent spatial form of algorithmic targeting.
February 4, 2026 at 10:30 PM
Berlin journalist @farangiesg.bsky.social writing on Palantir’s models & ICE, interviewed me about my work on the Deep Border & @erc.europa.eu research on machine learning worlds. Her article captures the violent spatial form of algorithmic targeting.
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
The @leverhulmecal.bsky.social PhD studentships are now live here leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk/leverhulme-c... Are you looking for a PhD programme that supports interdisciplinary approaches to algorithmic life? Closing date 26 February
Funded PhD opportunities - Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life
leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk
January 19, 2026 at 6:07 PM
The @leverhulmecal.bsky.social PhD studentships are now live here leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk/leverhulme-c... Are you looking for a PhD programme that supports interdisciplinary approaches to algorithmic life? Closing date 26 February
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Our @leverhulmecal.bsky.social postdoctoral fellowship posts close for applications on 30 January. A few reflections on the frequently asked questions we have received. So much looking forward to reading your applications and building our team together youtube.com/watch?v=x4AMkxhe4bQ
Further Information for Fellowship Applicants
YouTube video by Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life
youtube.com
January 12, 2026 at 5:46 PM
Our @leverhulmecal.bsky.social postdoctoral fellowship posts close for applications on 30 January. A few reflections on the frequently asked questions we have received. So much looking forward to reading your applications and building our team together youtube.com/watch?v=x4AMkxhe4bQ
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Architecture Against Architecture: A Manifesto by Reiner de Graaf, out March 2026 from @versobooks.bsky.social! writers & reviewers, let me know if you’d like a copy!
January 6, 2026 at 8:25 PM
Architecture Against Architecture: A Manifesto by Reiner de Graaf, out March 2026 from @versobooks.bsky.social! writers & reviewers, let me know if you’d like a copy!
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Pleased to see this piece. Personally, I find these uses of synthetic data v concerning and I find the traction and endorsements that this work has to be quite baffling, esp given the well-storied role of algorithmic targeting in undermining democracy
"We risk inheriting a future in which institutions answer to synthetic publics rather than real ones" rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/researc...
Research Radar: Synthetic Data Is Redefining Representation
As governments experiment with AI to simulate public opinion, new questions are emerging about who these systems truly represent. This Research Radar examines the Collective Intelligence Project’s Dig...
rebootdemocracy.ai
December 22, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Pleased to see this piece. Personally, I find these uses of synthetic data v concerning and I find the traction and endorsements that this work has to be quite baffling, esp given the well-storied role of algorithmic targeting in undermining democracy
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
@bnjacobsen.bsky.social and colleagues at @geogdurham.bsky.social have published an article examining how prompting in machine learning is reshaping political power, expertise, and governmental decision-making in Economy and Society.
#Prompting #MachineLearning #PoliticalPower #Decision #Government
#Prompting #MachineLearning #PoliticalPower #Decision #Government
www.tandfonline.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:22 PM
@bnjacobsen.bsky.social and colleagues at @geogdurham.bsky.social have published an article examining how prompting in machine learning is reshaping political power, expertise, and governmental decision-making in Economy and Society.
#Prompting #MachineLearning #PoliticalPower #Decision #Government
#Prompting #MachineLearning #PoliticalPower #Decision #Government
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Good to see this bad boy out in the world!! New article from me on drone delivery, AI testbeds, and the long history science and technology testing in the colony.
Online first and gloriously open access ✨
doi.org/10.1177/2976...
Online first and gloriously open access ✨
doi.org/10.1177/2976...
November 5, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Good to see this bad boy out in the world!! New article from me on drone delivery, AI testbeds, and the long history science and technology testing in the colony.
Online first and gloriously open access ✨
doi.org/10.1177/2976...
Online first and gloriously open access ✨
doi.org/10.1177/2976...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Gilles Deleuze, On Painting: Courses, March-June 1981, ed. David
Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – @uminnpress.bsky.social, August 2025
www.upress.umn.edu/978151791840...
Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – @uminnpress.bsky.social, August 2025
www.upress.umn.edu/978151791840...
On Painting
Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze’s 1981 seminars on painting From 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze...
www.upress.umn.edu
August 22, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Gilles Deleuze, On Painting: Courses, March-June 1981, ed. David
Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – @uminnpress.bsky.social, August 2025
www.upress.umn.edu/978151791840...
Lapoujade, trans. Charles J. Stivale – @uminnpress.bsky.social, August 2025
www.upress.umn.edu/978151791840...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
53 years young and still trending
October 31, 2025 at 7:47 PM
53 years young and still trending
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think.
There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵
There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵
October 31, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think.
There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵
There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Travel data has historically been a correlative proxy. Early 2000s data mining used one way flights (*purchased third party) in terror algorithms. These apparent “errors” by HMRC illuminate machine learning logics: 1/ combine gov cloud data
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
HMRC cuts child benefit for 35,000 families based on incomplete travel data
UK tax agency apologises after flagging people as having emigrated, often when they return via different routes
www.theguardian.com
October 28, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Travel data has historically been a correlative proxy. Early 2000s data mining used one way flights (*purchased third party) in terror algorithms. These apparent “errors” by HMRC illuminate machine learning logics: 1/ combine gov cloud data
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Morten Høi Jensen, The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of "The Magic Mountain" - @yalepress.bsky.social, October 2025
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
The Master of Contradictions
The arresting story of how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain as a defeated Germany descended into political chaos Like many writers of his generation, ...
yalebooks.yale.edu
October 17, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Morten Høi Jensen, The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of "The Magic Mountain" - @yalepress.bsky.social, October 2025
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
October 17, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
New in Theory, Culture & Society: Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, 'Inhabiting the Face: From Fake to Deepfake' - traces how new technological developments in face recognition and artificial intelligence affect the way we inhabit our own faces. (Online First) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Inhabiting the Face: From Fake to Deepfake - Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, 2025
The face has had a privileged status in visual media, enrapturing cinematic audiences with its beauty and intensity of emotion. Yet, the study of the face and i...
journals.sagepub.com
October 9, 2025 at 8:30 PM
New in Theory, Culture & Society: Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, 'Inhabiting the Face: From Fake to Deepfake' - traces how new technological developments in face recognition and artificial intelligence affect the way we inhabit our own faces. (Online First) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n
Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI
This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...
www.tandfonline.com
October 7, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Such a nice paper on feature extraction as a project of perception - drone enclosures in digital India. “Feature extraction is an entirely speculative endeavour” rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library
Svamitva drone survey in Rajasthan. Source: Author.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 7, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Such a nice paper on feature extraction as a project of perception - drone enclosures in digital India. “Feature extraction is an entirely speculative endeavour” rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
✨Deeply honoured to deliver this year's Annual Digital Lecture at The National Archives! Drawing on our @erc.europa.eu Data Loss project, I'll explore how preservation creates loss in the digital age and what that means for the politics of archives. Nov 20 6pm at Senate House, London. Do join us!
Join us on 20 November for the Annual Digital Lecture, a partnership between The National Archives, UK and the School of Advanced Study. The wonderful @nannathylstrup.bsky.social will be speaking about ‘When saving becomes loss: archival memory in the digital age’. Free to register!
When saving becomes loss: Archival memory in the digital age
Explore archival memory, data loss, and attempts to preserve the past in the digital age at this year’s Annual Digital Lecture.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 7:00 AM
✨Deeply honoured to deliver this year's Annual Digital Lecture at The National Archives! Drawing on our @erc.europa.eu Data Loss project, I'll explore how preservation creates loss in the digital age and what that means for the politics of archives. Nov 20 6pm at Senate House, London. Do join us!
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
ICYMI: David Beer. 'Explorations in the Indeterminacy of Computation: An Interview with M. Beatrice Fazi' - this interview with M. Beatrice Fazi explores in detail her work on computation. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Explorations in the Indeterminacy of Computation: An Interview with M. Beatrice Fazi - David Beer, 2021
This interview with M. Beatrice Fazi explores in detail her work on computation. Focusing in particular upon her recent publications, it covers the themes of co...
journals.sagepub.com
September 9, 2025 at 11:03 PM
ICYMI: David Beer. 'Explorations in the Indeterminacy of Computation: An Interview with M. Beatrice Fazi' - this interview with M. Beatrice Fazi explores in detail her work on computation. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies – Samuel Weber, Deconstruction and the American Reception of French Theory
progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/07/g...
progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/07/g...
Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies – Samuel Weber, Deconstruction and the American Reception of French Theory
Several journals played a significant role in introducing so-called ‘French Theory’ to the United States. They would include Yale French Studies, Diacritics, boundary 2 and …
progressivegeographies.com
September 7, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies – Samuel Weber, Deconstruction and the American Reception of French Theory
progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/07/g...
progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/07/g...
I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms
Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.
www.york.ac.uk
September 4, 2025 at 3:22 PM
I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
If you are at the Association for Philosophy & Literature conference, check out the panel “Philosophies of Intelligence,” organised by @theoryculturesociety.org
I will be speaking alongside N. Katherine Hayles, Luciana Parisi and Joel McKim.
📆 22 August 2025
⏰ 1.45 pm
🗺️ APL 2025 Frankfurt
I will be speaking alongside N. Katherine Hayles, Luciana Parisi and Joel McKim.
📆 22 August 2025
⏰ 1.45 pm
🗺️ APL 2025 Frankfurt
August 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM
If you are at the Association for Philosophy & Literature conference, check out the panel “Philosophies of Intelligence,” organised by @theoryculturesociety.org
I will be speaking alongside N. Katherine Hayles, Luciana Parisi and Joel McKim.
📆 22 August 2025
⏰ 1.45 pm
🗺️ APL 2025 Frankfurt
I will be speaking alongside N. Katherine Hayles, Luciana Parisi and Joel McKim.
📆 22 August 2025
⏰ 1.45 pm
🗺️ APL 2025 Frankfurt
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
Digital Twins special issue in New Media & Society edited by Christoph Borbach, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Tristan Thielmann. 15 papers including one by Oliver Dawkins & myself. Interdisciplinary exploration of the conceptualisation and practices of digital twinning. journals.sagepub.com/toc/nmsa/27/8
New Media & Society - Volume 27, Number 8
Table of contents for New Media & Society, 27, 8
journals.sagepub.com
August 11, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Digital Twins special issue in New Media & Society edited by Christoph Borbach, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Tristan Thielmann. 15 papers including one by Oliver Dawkins & myself. Interdisciplinary exploration of the conceptualisation and practices of digital twinning. journals.sagepub.com/toc/nmsa/27/8
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
One study concluded 70% of increased electric cost across US due to AI data centers.
apnews.com/article/elec...
apnews.com/article/elec...
As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act
Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.
apnews.com
August 11, 2025 at 12:01 PM
One study concluded 70% of increased electric cost across US due to AI data centers.
apnews.com/article/elec...
apnews.com/article/elec...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
My essay “Because the twin is not a copy: the politics of digital twins” - written for a 2023 workshop organised by Christoph Borbach & out now in a special issue on digital twinning in #NewMedia&Society #DigitalTwins #algorithms journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Because the twin is not a copy: On the politics of digital twins - Louise Amoore, 2025
This essay explores the changing form of the digital twin as a political technology in the age of deep learning and generative artificial intelligence (AI). It ...
journals.sagepub.com
August 8, 2025 at 6:59 AM
My essay “Because the twin is not a copy: the politics of digital twins” - written for a 2023 workshop organised by Christoph Borbach & out now in a special issue on digital twinning in #NewMedia&Society #DigitalTwins #algorithms journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Reposted by Benjamin Jacobsen
I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology
#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Do Artifacts Have Political Economy? - Kean Birch, 2025
Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay “Do artifacts have politics?,” my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question—namely, do artif...
journals.sagepub.com
August 5, 2025 at 1:15 PM
I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology
#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...