John Cheney-Lippold, Ph.D.

John Cheney-Lippold researches and writes on the impact of digital media on our social and political lives, with a particular emphasis on algorithms, artificial intelligence, and predictive technologies.

John Cheney-Lippold is a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication. A researcher and theorist of digital media, he is also an Associate Professor of American Culture and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan.

Cheney-Lippold’s first book, We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of our Digital Selves (NYU Press, 2017), explores the underlying structures and politics that algorithmically construct categories of identity using user and consumer data. His work has appeared in the journals, Public Culture, New Media & Society, and Theory Culture & Society and has been covered in The New York Times, NPR, and The Boston Globe.

Currently, he is finishing his second book, Ex Ante: A Theory of the Future. Through a series of case studies of real-time prediction technologies, this book argues that developments in machine learning are expanding what we expect from computational systems like those embedded in autonomous vehicles, hospitals, and even sports betting. Portions of this research have already been published on chess algorithms and the futurist cultures of Silicon Valley.