278 | Kieran Healy on the Technology of Ranking People

2024-06-10

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We claim to love all of our children, friends, and students equally. But perhaps deep down you assign a ranking to them, from favorite to not-so-favorite. Ranking and quantifying people is an irresistible human tendency, and modern technology has made it ubiquitous. In this episode I talk with sociologist Kieran Healy, who has co-authored (with Marion Fourcade) the new book The Ordinal Society, about how our lives are measured and processed by the technological ecosystem around us. We discuss how this has changed how relate to...

We claim to love all of our children, friends, and students equally. But perhaps deep down you assign a ranking to them, from favorite to not-so-favorite. Ranking and quantifying people is an irresistible human tendency, and modern technology has made it ubiquitous. In this episode I talk with sociologist Kieran Healy, who has co-authored (with Marion Fourcade) the new book The Ordinal Society, about how our lives are measured and processed by the technological ecosystem around us. We discuss how this has changed how relate to ourselves and the wider world.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/06/10/278-kieran-healy-on-the-technology-of-ranking-people/

Kieran Healy received his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University. He is currently a professor of sociology at Duke University, and a member of the Kenan Institute for Ethics. As an undergraduate at University College Cork he won the Irish Times National Debating competition. He has a longstanding interest in data visualization.