Changing Things: The Future of Objects in a Digital World by Johan Redström & Heather Wiltse

Author:Johan Redström & Heather Wiltse [Redström, Johan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Algorithms

Underlying the user-facing surfaces and interfaces of digital networked things is the running code that makes them tick. There are computational processes happening at the level of the device itself, and also at the level of interconnected components, services, and infrastructures. So, we turn now to consider algorithms from a perspective of considering the mediations and cultural work that these computational entities perform.

First, what are algorithms in terms of how they show up in the world? Ed Finn begins his superb study of algorithms with a good roundup:

The word algorithm frequently encompasses a range of computational processes including close surveillance of user behaviors, “big data” aggregation of the resulting information, analytics engines that combine multiple forms of statistical calculation to parse that data, and finally a set of human-facing actions, recommendations, and interfaces that generally reflect only a small part of the cultural processing going on behind the scenes. Computation comes to have a kind of presence in the world, becoming a “thing” that both obscures and highlights particular forms of what Wendy Hui Kyong Chun calls “programmability.” (Finn 2017, 16)

Here Finn points directly at one of the big puzzles of fluid assemblages: how can computation become a “thing” with a presence in the world? It is here at the level of algorithms that we find a key part of the answer. It is also worth noting how quotidian our interactions with algorithms have become. While many operate outside of our awareness and understanding, we are also now accustomed to algorithmic recommendations (of the form “since you enjoyed this, you might also like … ”) and wondering about how the Facebook algorithms determine what should be shown in our newsfeeds (Bucher 2012).

In considering algorithms, we need to first go even further back than the algorithms at work in a single thing to consider the historical logic and assumptions underlying them that guide what they do. Finn (2017) points to magic and sorcery as forerunners of the kind of logic in which words actually do things in the world, and to cyberpunk novels as explorations of how this logic plays out in the (imaginary) cultural space of computation. In addition to this mythological origin story is also the pragmatic engineering conception of algorithms in terms of problems and solutions, which is now the main logic governing computational development. This logic is also underpinned by what David Golumbia (2009) refers to in his critique of “computationalism”: a belief in the power of computing that tends to be associated with instrumental reason, the “essential politics of the algorithm” (Finn 2017, 18). The assumptions about the nature of the universe and how it can be dealt with that underlie the pragmatic conception of algorithms Finn (2017) refers to as “effective computability.” He traces it back to the Turing machine and its suggestion of universal computation, and to attempts at mathematical proofs of effective computability that seem to indicate a movement toward universal truth, but always with a remainder that does not fit left over.

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