{"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":30,"pdf_page":40,"physical_index":40,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"125243554ee0ba81c4d823efb1e7e608f6fe30f75287af53d89f487b8587ce6e"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"If an expanded understanding of software and algorithms does not necessarily mean discarding technical details from analysis, what does it mean? One view, inspired by actor network theory and similar perspectives, takes software and algorithms to be complex technical systems that cannot merely be described as technological alone because their ontological status remains unclear. As Mackenzie argues, software has a “variable ontology,” suggesting “that the essential nature of the entity is unstable” (2006: 96). The variable ontology of software means that “questions of when and where it is social or technical, material or semiotic cannot be conclusively answered” (2006: 96). Similarly, Gillespie suggests that “‘Algorithm’ may, in fact, serve as an abbreviation for the sociotechnical assemblage that includes algorithm, model, target goal, data, training data, application, hardware—and connect it all to a broader social endeavour” (2016a: 22). Moreover, as Seaver points out, “algorithmic systems are not standalone litle boxes, but massive, networked ones with hundreds of hands reaching into them, tweaking and tuning, swapping out parts and experimenting with new arrangements” (2013: 10). Another way of answering the question of what algorithms are beyond their technical definition is to see them as inscriptions of certain ideologies or particular ways of world-making (Goodman, 1985). For example, scholars have analyzed the algorithmic logic underpinning search engines and high-frequency trading in terms of how they can be said to advance a capitalist ideology (Mager,  2012; Snider,  2014). Another option, not unlike the networked view, is to emphasize the ways in which algorithms are “entangled in practice” (Introna, 2016; Gillespie, 2014; Orlikowski & Scot, 2015). This is the notion that algorithms do things as part of what else they are entangled with. As Gillespie writes, “algorithms are built to be embedded into practice in the lived world that produces the information they process” (2014: 183). Researchers have drawn on notions of sociomateriality, performativity, or ideas of entanglement to focus their atention not on what algorithms do in technical terms but on what they do in terms of constituting and being constituted in and through practice. What maters is not so much the precise instructions or the theorem underlying the  algorithm, but how it is incorporated within specific sociomaterial practices (Introna, 2016).\n\n30\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":29,"next_page":31}