{"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":38,"pdf_page":48,"physical_index":48,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"81828a039430d4249bdda49f57d4411a6b95934eb9378abe532f0e50cfa2a6f0"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"To conceive of algorithms as technologies of government in the Foucauldian sense, however, is not to restrict analysis of algorithms to the material domain. As Lemke writes, “an analytics of government operates with a concept of technology that includes not only material but also symbolic devices” (2012: 30). Discourses and narratives are “not reduced to pure semiotic propositions; instead they are regarded as performative practices” and part of the mechanisms and  techniques through which the conduct of conduct is shaped. Throughout the book, the diferent ways in which algorithms operate as technologies of government will be both explicitly and implicitly addressed. In chapter  4, Facebook’s news  feed algorithm is explicitly framed as an architectural form that arranges things (relationships between users and objects) in a “right disposition.” Chapter 5 highlights the ways in  which narratives and beliefs about algorithms constitute a double articulation, shaping both the conduct of individuals and the algorithm through feedback loops. Chapter 6, meanwhile, considers how algorithms are used to govern journalism in a digital age, looking at how algorithms do not just enact a particularly understanding of journalism but also through the ways in which algorithms now occupy the minds of news professionals, making them act and react in certain ways.\n\nTargeting the Algorithm as the Target\n\nA final word needs to be said about the choice of making the algorithm the target in the first place. While I maintain a broad conception of algorithms throughout the book as a way of talking about the imbrication of computer rules and instructions on everyday life, it is worth noting that using the algorithm as the target is not without its problems. As Ian Bogost has argued, there is a certain danger of theologizing the algorithm by singling it out as the target for describing contemporary culture. While I agree with Bogost (2015) that algorithms are not simple, singular systems but, rather, multipart and complex, involving a “varied array of people, processes, materials, and machines,” it does not discredit algorithms as objects of study and phenomena of interest, quite the contrary. Precisely because of their entangled and complex nature, there is an obvious need to disentangle their meanings and ways of acting in the world.\n\nWhat I want to do in this book is to explore and understand beter what it means to have algorithms interwoven in the social fabric of the contemporary media landscape. Targeting the algorithm is primarily about developing a beter understanding of the rhetorical registers that these mechanisms of proceduralization have. That is,  precisely because the “algorithm has taken on a particularly mythical role in our  technology-obsessed era” (a “sloppy shorthand” for something much more complex, as Bogost puts it), not-so-sloppy descriptions are called for. When platforms such as Twiter and Instagram publicly announce that they are introducing an “algorithmic timeline” or when the media are repeatedly reporting on incidents of “algorithmic discrimination” and bias, there is also an increasing need to examine not just what the term means but, more importantly, how and when “algorithms” are put to use as particularly useful signifiers and for whose benefit. In the way Katherine Hayles (2005: 17) sees computation as connoting “far more than the digital computer” and “not limited to digital manipulations or binary code,” this book sees algorithms as much more than simply step-by-step instructions telling the machine what to do.29 When a London bookstore labels a bookshelf containing employees’ book recommendations their “human algorithm” or when the BBC starts a radio show by announcing that “humans beat robots,” there is clearly something about the notion of an algorithm that seems to inform the way we think and talk about contemporary culture and society that is not just strictly confined to computers.30\n\n38\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":37,"next_page":39}