Been thinking about the now-notorious A-level algorithm as an instance of the 'data abject' (as I once called it): the recognition that, in the face of data systems invested with outsize power, the individual human being amounts to not much more than an inconvenient residue.

You start to see this particularly in the early twentieth century with things like passports, ID cards, criminal profiling. And it has only gained ground since, including (perhaps especially) in education – interesting to see how a crisis has made it so much more visible.

The fancy version:

With fine serendipity, proofs of my review of Maurice S. Lee's *Overwhelmed: Literature, Aesthetics, and the Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution* have just landed in my inbox from @JBritishStudies. His final chapter ('Testing') is good on this stuff, too.