Abstract

This chapter introduces the recent academic literature on algorithms and some of the popular concerns that have been expressed about algorithms in mainstream media, including the power and opacity of algorithms. The chapter suggests that, in place of opening algorithms to greater scrutiny, the academic literature tends to play on this algorithmic drama. As a counter move, this chapter suggests taking seriously what we might mean by the everyday life of the algorithm. Several approaches to everyday life are considered and a set of three analytic sensibilities developed for interrogating the everyday life of the algorithm in subsequent chapters. These sensibilities comprise: how do algorithms participate in the everyday? How do algorithms compose the everyday? And how (to what extent, through what means) does the algorithmic become the everyday? The chapter ends by setting out the structure of the rest of the book.

Highlights

  • Everyday Life and the Algorithm AbstractThis chapter introduces the recent academic literature on ­algorithms and some of the popular concerns that have been expressed about algorithms in mainstream media, including the power and o­ pacity of algorithms

  • The everyday, humdrum banalities of life are somewhat sidelined by an algorithmic drama

  • The focus is on algorithmic power, the agency held by algorithms in making decisions over our futures, decisions over which we have no control

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Summary

Introduction

Everyday Life and the Algorithm AbstractThis chapter introduces the recent academic literature on ­algorithms and some of the popular concerns that have been expressed about algorithms in mainstream media, including the power and o­ pacity of algorithms. It would need to ignore the importance of the methods through which the algorithm was designed in the first place, the software and hardware and human operatives that are each required to play various roles, institute further demands and that take action off in a different direction (see Chapters 3 and 5 in particular), before an effect is produced.

Results
Conclusion

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