Personalization purports to be about the individual, to be about nothing but the individual. It promises, in fact, to augment the individuality of the individual. But, at the same time, personalization necessitates a conversation about a particular form of grouping. This is especially true in networked and computational forms of personalization. This essay, in being about the burgeoning personalization industry that is now headquartered online, is then necessarily about that form of grouping or group form. This is not a paradox in a technical sense, although it will feel like one in most other senses. The groups I’ll be discussing aren’t ones built through selfconsciousness or will or even, exactly, by force or coercion. They are more passive voice constructions, assembled automatically, records of ordinary life lived in proximity to electronic networks. Data is the singular plural shorthand we give to this process, a process with neither end nor origin, whose subject is actually quite difficult to locate, given that the person form of personalization is a derivative: generated not just from the surveillance of a single, named life but also from the concatenation of lives that are depersonalized by newer, weirder forms of belonging such as likes and preferences. Personalization is yet another instance of the way that networked life mediates wildly between scales, disorienting all of our vocabularies of personhood and collectivity.

中文翻译：

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顾名思义，我们自己

个性化声称与个人有关，只与个人有关。事实上，它承诺增强个人的个性。但是，与此同时，个性化需要就特定的分组形式进行对话。在个性化的网络和计算形式中尤其如此。这篇文章是关于现在总部位于网上的蓬勃发展的个性化行业，因此必然是关于这种形式的分组或分组形式。从技术意义上讲，这不是一个悖论，尽管在大多数其他意义上它会让人感觉像是一个悖论。我将要讨论的群体不是通过自我意识或意志建立的，甚至确切地说，不是通过强制或胁迫建立的。它们是更多的被动语态结构，自动组装，日常生活的记录生活在电子网络附近。数据是我们给这个过程的单复数速记，一个既没有终点也没有起源的过程，它的主题实际上很难定位，因为个性化的人形式是一种衍生物：不仅产生于对单个的监视，命名的生活，但也来自被更新、更奇怪的归属形式（例如喜欢和偏好）去个性化的生活的串联。个性化是网络生活在尺度之间疯狂调节的另一个例子，使我们所有的人格和集体词汇都迷失了方向。考虑到个性化的个人形式是一种衍生物：不仅产生于对单个命名生活的监视，而且还产生于被更新、更奇怪的归属形式（例如喜欢和偏好）去个性化的生活的串联。个性化是网络生活在尺度之间疯狂调节的另一个例子，使我们所有的人格和集体词汇都迷失了方向。考虑到个性化的个人形式是一种衍生物：不仅产生于对单个命名生活的监视，而且还产生于被更新、更奇怪的归属形式（例如喜欢和偏好）去个性化的生活的串联。个性化是网络生活在尺度之间疯狂调节的另一个例子，使我们所有的人格和集体词汇都迷失了方向。