Algorithms, I want to suggest, constitute something of a cultural logic in that they are “much more than coded instruction,” drifting into the ways in which people think and talk about everything from the economy to knowledge production to culture. Algorithms exist on many scales, ranging from the operationality of software to society at large. However, in this book, I am less interested in asserting what algorithms are, as if they possess some essence that can be clearly delineated. What is of interest is the “ontological politics” of algorithms, the sense that “conditions of possibility are not given” but shaped in and through situated practices (Mol, 1999: 75). Algorithms are seen as multiple. This is to say that there is no one way in which algorithms exist as a singular object. By positing the multiple nature of algorithms, the intention is to take their manyfoldedness seriously.31
Drawing on Mol’s work in The Body Multiple (2002) in which she argues that there is no essence to what the disease arthrosclerosis is—only ever diferent versions that are enacted in particular setings, I argue that algorithms never materialize in one way only. This does not mean, however, that there cannot be a singular object called an algorithm or that algorithms are nothing but relations. Like the diseases studied by Mol or the aircraft studied by John Law, algorithms oscillate between multiplicity and singularity. As Law puts it: “Yes, atherosclerosis. Yes, alcoholic liver disease. Yes, a water pump [. . .] And yes, an aircraft. All of these are more or less singular but also more or less plural” (2002a: 33). Similarly, we might say: Yes, a neural network. Yes, a code writen in C++. Yes, PageRank. Yes, a conversation about how we organize our lives. All of which are more or less singular, more or less plural. In contrast to Mol and Law, however, this book is not about a specific object such as one specific aircraft (Law is specifically concerned with the military aircraft TSR2), disease (i.e., anemia), or algorithm (i.e., PageRank). The singularity and multiplicity in question are the result of analytical cuts. Sometimes, the algorithm might appear as a singular entity—for example, in chapter 4 on the Facebook news feed algorithm.
Th e M u ltip licity of A lgo rith ms
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