Recommender Systems as Techniques of the Self?

Abstract

This paper aims to give a renewed perspective on the normative stakes involved in the algorithmic recommendation of cultural content. Two prevalent framings of technological normativity and transparency need to be overcome. First, algorithmic design seems convinced that accessing the behavioral level of interaction is coincidental with a greater level of truth and authenticity, as if the subject were incapable of speaking honestly of itself. Conversely, critics of the 'black-box' normativity imagine that being able to access the code, the written structure of the algorithm, we will unveil something of its essence. By reading Foucault's notion of techniques of the self, as exposed in L'Hermeneutique du sujet, together with the cybernetic theory of feed-back and Simondon's philosophy of individuation, the author claims that users do not need to see through the algorithm nor see the actual workings of the algorithm, but that they need to be able to see themselves when using the algorithm.