{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","uuid":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"pressedfortimetheaccelerationoflifeindigitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","isbns":["9780226196473","9780226196503"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":228,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Pressed%20for%20Time%20The%20Acceleration%20of%20Life%20in%20Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/search"},"page":{"printed_page":179,"pdf_page":191,"physical_index":191,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"bddeef281fa64ad5122cde3f3b1944bc34daf085ce6f2fd34353349e2dbf0037"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"This instrumental philosophy of maximizing eficiency is at the heart of engineering. According to this logic, automation is the perfect solution because human “interference” is a potential source of error and should be eliminated. The latest, fastest, most automated systems appear as objectively the best, rather than as the congealed product of particular localized choices, histories, ideas, technical instruments, and materials.29\n\nTake something we rarely think about, searching the web. We interface with IT apparatus as if it was immaterial, screens providing neutral, value-free information. The speed of Google’s search engine so enthralls us that we seldom reflect on the fact that it favors some content over others. Nor are we alert to the way that entering a search term into Google triggers an instant auction that determines the order in which advertisements appear. This is especially true for the all-important first page of search results. What matters here, the way power is exercised, is in what is excluded—the vast number of relevant websites that we do not see.\n\nIt used to be the case (until Google changed the results) that a search for the phrase, “she invented,” would return the query, “Did you mean “he invented?”.” As Google explained, this “correctly” reflects past searches, in that over the entire corpus of the web the word “invented” is preceded by “he” much more often than “she.” Google’s algorithm recognized this— and presumed it meant the first search query was merely a typographical error. Thus the conventional wisdom that the world’s greatest inventors are male presents itself as factual. We could have more diverse search engine technology, running diferent algorithms, instead of the standardization of the key filter for most web users.30 This would be much slower. But might it be more eficient in the sense of acknowledging the diference between data, information and knowledge? Might the articles that a computer program quickly tells you are “popular” on the Internet not necessarily be the same as those that are actually worth reading?\n\nThere is growing recognition that software algorithms are not impartial.31 Diferent software embeds diferent philosophies, and these philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible. Code is written by people, it contains inferences and assumptions and embodies certain human values and biases. Indeed, the surface structure of flexibility and freedom, heralded by computing, is undergirded by a rigid infrastructure of legal and economics protocols. Software systems shape output— computer-generated predictions, recommendations, and simulations. What appears to be eficient, the constant upgrading of computer software and hardware packages, “are instances of a restrictive strategy, locking users into existing configurations producing enforced obsolescence, reproducing the contours of the existing technological zone in a trivially ‘new’ form.”32 The flip side of accelerated novelty production, the continual simulation of the new, is a mounting pile of trash.\n\nFinding Time in a D igi tal Age\n\n179","previous_page":178,"next_page":180}