Displaced Detection: Surveillance and Algorithmic Logic as a New Model of the Crime Calculus

Crime fiction, detective stories operate by letting the reader or viewer glimpse into the process of collecting logical morsels of a case into a sack and watching the mastermind (or the dick in the hard boiled genre) tighten the wiring at the end. For the detectives of the 21st century, these logical morsels are displaced by digital code collected by surveillance systems and arranged by clever algorithms into - literally - a case study to be read by the detective who then springs to action. While previously surveillance was a means of supporting evidence and backing up conviction, today it has become the very technology of detection per se. Identifying the culprit used to be the result of the process of logical deduction based on the evidence and human calculation - in fact a way of reconstructing the fabula of the cause and effect chain presented in the syuzhet, as performed by the classical, mastermind type of detective. Today identifying the culprit is the work of mathematical calculus and algorithmic logic - a way of weaving a narrative based on big data and surveillance technology, operated by a team of experts. I wish to focus on this shift of paradigm in televisual stories of crime and detection.

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Zoltán Dragon's slides presented @ Crime and Detection in the Age of Electronic Reproduction: Traditions, Expectations, Genres and Codes, 22–24 November 2013, Liberec, Czech Republic

Transcript