{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":156,"pdf_page":166,"physical_index":166,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"97905a7026869d414533592c9122b897516492c0b1161099b89aa1315bd4cc2f"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"While algorithms do not determine how people behave, they shape an environment in which certain subject positions are made more real and available to us. As Sara Ahmed suggests in her book Queer Phenomenology, we are “directed in some ways more than others” (2006: 15). Her book takes up the question of what it means to be oriented, that is, to become atuned in certain ways. Ahmed instructively asks: “What diference does it make ‘what’ we are oriented toward?” (2006: 1). While Ahmed talks about human orientations mainly in terms of how social relations are arranged spatially, algorithms are certainly also oriented toward users. Algorithms, particularly in the age of machine learning, need us, depend on us, and thrive on us. In the midst of ongoing, fervent arguments about Facebook disseminating “fake news,” Facebook worries about “data-dirtying” practices, whereby users willingly provide misinformation (Ctrl-Shift, 2015). As chapter 5 shows, these worries are far from unwarranted. People do not necessarily post what is on their mind (to paraphrase Facebook’s status update prompt) or what is actually happening (to use Twiter’s expression). Instead, people may post much more strategically, in atempts to make themselves more or less “algorithmically recognizable” (Gillespie, 2017).\n\nAhmed suggests that “orientations mater,” because they shape how the world coheres around us. That is, orientations mater because this is “how certain things come to be significant” as part of situated encounters (Ahmed,  2010: 235). Moreover, Ahmed writes, orientations mater in that it “afects how subjects and objects materialize and come to take shape in the way that they do” (ibid.). As I have suggested, algorithms are not just oriented toward us, we are increasingly becoming oriented toward algorithms and algorithmic systems as well. In chapter 5 I show how we are developing our own sense of sociality and sense of self in, through, and around algorithms. There is an interesting relational drama at play when a single person gets served an ad for engagement rings or a middle-aged woman gets suggested recommendations for wrinkle cream. Was it an algorithm or merely the person’s clicking behavior that was responsible for these recommendations popping up, and to what degree does it mater? Can one simply atribute agency to the machine, and laugh of the stereotypical ways of depicting personal relations inscribed into the design of algorithms? What would it mean to take responsibility in this case?\n\nI suggest in chapter 5 that the atribution of agency is realized in the encounters that people have with what they perceive as algorithmic phenomena. Depending on specific situated encounters, algorithms are perceived as creepy, helpful, disturbing, intrusive, and so on. The notion of the “algorithmic imaginary” was introduced to denote ways of thinking about what algorithms are, what they should be, how they function, and what these imaginations, in turn, make possible. While algorithms may produce certain conditions for action, these conditions are not necessarily atributable to algorithms in a purely technical sense. Rather, how and when people perceive algorithms may sometimes mater even more. Thus, when looking at what people do online, there is no way of telling what made them act in certain ways. The notion of the algorithmic imaginary suggests that what the algorithm is may not always be about the specific instructions telling the computer what to do, but about the imaginations and perceptions that people form. It follows from the logic of machine learning, that what people “do in anticipation of algorithms,” as Gillespie suggests, “tells us a great deal about what algorithms do in return” (2017: 75). In terms of accountability and responsibility, then, we are all implicated, machines and humans alike.\n\n156\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":155,"next_page":157}