Hidden Fibers: Mapping the intimacies and infrastructure between information capital and policing (with Brian Jefferson)

Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois and author of Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age, Brian Jefferson joins the WBI show to discuss the history of digital computing and criminal justice, revealing how big tech, computer scientists, university researchers, and state actors have digitized carceral governance over the past forty years. We cover everything from Deleuze to how the ‘92 production of Candyman hits different now. Keep it locked to the We Be Imagining podcast to hear from scholars, journalists and activists at the intersection of tech, race and data policy.

How did the War on Terror provide the impetus and funding for the NYPD to set up a separate proprietary fiber optic cable network for their surveillance infrastructure in the backdrop of historically low crime rates? How are IT companies—that are the equivalent of industrial manufacturing companies in the late 18th century—actively driving urban policies and the physical infrastructure of 21st century smart cities? 

Hosts: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Stanley Muñoz and Ilan Mandel
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:
Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization by Alexander Galloway
Leading Foundations Pledge to Give More, Hoping to Upend Philanthropy
How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities
Adolphe Quetelet and the Evolution of Body Mass Index (BMI)

Recommendations:
Brian Bridge Trilogy Series by William Gibson, RZA as Bobby Digital, El Producto, Cannibal Ox
Ilan Radical Perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia Pacific
Stanley Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book by Hortense J. Spillers, Wiz Kid
Khadijah Homies by Danez Smith