CASTRO, J. C. L. Building identities through composites of data. Book of abstracts of the Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture, Bowling Green (OH, Estados Unidos), 2013.

Resumo: This paper aims to discuss the phenomenon of algorithmization of identity in contemporary society, by way especially of database marketing and social networks. Corporations gather a huge amount of data about consumers, keeping track of the details of every transaction they make. Social networks, like Facebook, record standard bits of information filled out by users, links they establish with other people, and registers of other activities they do online. In both cases, data are selected and combined in many different ways, generating simulated identites, in the sense that they are modulated according to predefined targets, like Deleuze’s "dividuals." And the subjects themselves engage in this game, building their profiles and conducting their social interactions according to the logic of the database. We have then a process of reification and self-reification.

Palavras-chave: identity, dividual, Deleuze, reification, database marketing, social networks.