The relevance of algorithms

Abstract

Algorithms (particularly those embedded in search engines, social media platforms, recommendation systems, and information databases) play an increasingly important role in selecting what information is considered most relevant to us, a crucial feature of our participation in public life. As we have embraced computational tools as our primary media of expression, we are subjecting human discourse and knowledge to the procedural logics that undergird computation. What we need is an interrogation of algorithms as a key feature of our information ecosystem, and of the cultural forms emerging in their shadows, with a close attention to where and in what ways the introduction of algorithms into human knowledge practices may have political ramifications. This essay is a conceptual map to do just that. It proposes a sociological analysis that does not conceive of algorithms as abstract, technical achievements, but suggests how to unpack the warm human and institutional choices that lie behind them, to see how algorithms are called into being by, enlisted as part of, and negotiated around collective efforts to know and be known.