Machine readable race : constructing racial information in the Third Reich

Luke Munn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper examines how informational processing drove new structures of racial classification in the Third Reich. The Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH (Dehomag) worked closely with the government in designing and integrating punch-card informational systems. As a German subsidiary of IBM, Dehomag's technology was deployed initially for a census in order to provide a more detailed racial analysis of the population. However the racial data was not detailed enough. The Nuremberg Race Laws provided a more precise and procedural definition of Jewishness that could be rendered machine-readable. As the volume and velocity of information in the Reich increased, Dehomag's technology was adopted by other agencies like the Race and Settlement Office, and culminated in the vision of a single machinic number for each citizen. Through the lens of these proto-technologies, the paper demonstrates the historical interplay between race and information. Yet if the indexing and sorting of race anticipates big-data analytics, contemporary power is more sophisticated and subtle. The complexity of modern algorithmic regimes diffuses obvious racial markers, engendering a racism without race.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)143-155
Number of pages13
JournalOpen Information Science
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Open Access - Access Right Statement

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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