Physics

Archaeology

Mathematics

History

Indexicality

Optics

Statistics

Epistemology

World Wide Web

Philosophy

Identifier

Matching (statistics)

Focus (optics)

Programming language

Digital data

Subject (documents)

Context (archaeology)

Computer science

Transmission (telecommunications)

Telecommunications

Theory Culture & Society

This essay explores the return of the subject in the computational context, which I address as a digital subject. This digital subject encompasses a digital identifier, correlations in data or a data profile, moving between biological characteristics and symbolic expression. I focus on the processes through which digital subjects are constructed by matching, correlating, modelling, as well as how they become enactive. The ways of pulling data together into a digital subject is often presented as a logic of fact, where data is equated with documentary evidence. Instead, I propose the notion of the distance in which digital subjects are produced. Indexicality comes from outside of data, whereas the regard for the thick distance becomes a mark of the form of knowledge. I conclude by arguing for a posthumanities approach that establishes the distance while allowing for different subjects to be called upon.

The Digital Subject: People as Data as Persons