Power of Algorithms
The starting premise for the book is the observation that algorithms have become a key site of power in the contemporary mediascape. During the past decade or so, social scientists and humanities scholars have started to explore and describe the increased presence of algorithms in social life and the new modes of power that these new “generative rules” entail (Lash, 2007; Beer, 2009; Cheney-Lippold, 2011; Gillespie, 2014; Diakopoulos, 2015). As Scot Lash argues, “[a] society of ubiquitous media means a society in which power is increasingly in the algorithm” (2007: 71). To say that algorithms are powerful, have power, animate, exert, or produce power needs some qualification and explanation. The concept of power is one of the most contested and important terms there is. While it is dificult to provide a short answer to the fundamental question of what power is, Michel Foucault’s scholarship provides one of the most comprehensive avenues for a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of the term. For Foucault, power was never just one thing but, fundamentally, about diferent forms of relations. Throughout his career, Foucault changed and modified his ideas of what power is, coining analytically distinct conceptions of power sensitive to specific contexts, institutions, objects of knowledge, and political thought.21 Generally speaking, Foucault identified three levels of power relations, which he termed strategic games between liberties, domination, and governmental technologies. As Foucault elaborates in an interview:
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