{"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":49,"pdf_page":59,"physical_index":59,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"38495660bb2d72cc65f03694b284843d558b98179907b7e90d1aa89f2b3f6bd1"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"T H E E V E N T FU L N E S S O F A L G O R I T H MS\n\nTheoretically, this ontological shift is indebted to diverse but interrelated perspectives, including actor-network theory and post-ANT (Latour,  2005; Mol, 1999; Law;  1999), process-relational philosophy (Deleuze & Guatari,  1987; Simondon,  2011; Whitehead, 1978), agential realism (Barad,  2003;  2007), and new materialism (Bennet, et al., 2010; Braidoti, 2006).9 While these perspectives do not represent a homogeneous style of thought or a single theoretical position, even among the thinkers referenced here as belonging to a specific category, they all,  in one way or another, emphasize a relational ontology and the extension of power and agency to a heterogeneity of actors, including non-humans or the morethan-human.10\n\nIn arguing for an understanding of algorithms as eventful, I am drawing on a Whiteheadian sensibility that puts emphasis on processes of becoming rather than being. For Whitehead (1978), actual entities or actual occasions (such as algorithms) are combinations of heterogeneous elements (or what he calls prehensions).11 Actual entities are only knowable in their becoming as opposed to their being. As Whitehead suggests, “how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is. Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming’. This is the ‘principle’ of process” (1978: 23). This view of entities as processes breaks with the more traditional view of entities as substance and essence. Indeed, “‘actual entities’ are the final real thing of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real” (Whitehead, 1978: 18). This has important consequences for the analytical treatment of algorithms, since there is nothing “more real” behind the ways in which they actualize to form novel forms of togetherness.12 It is not enough simply to state that algorithms are eventful, understood as constituents that co-become. Analytical choices have to be made as to which relations and which actors to include in the study of actual entities. As Mike Michael suggests, the value of studying processes or events “rests not so much on their empirical ‘accuracy’ as on their capacity to produce ‘orderings and disorderings’ out of which certain actualities (such as practices, discourses and politics) emerge” (2004: 9, 19).13 What this means for an understanding of algorithms is a shift in atention away from questions of what algorithms are to what they do as part of specific situations.\n\nAt the most basic level, algorithms do things by virtue of embodying a command structure (Gofey, 2008: 17). For the programmer, algorithms solve computational problems by processing an input toward an output. For users, algorithms primarily do things by virtue of assistance—that is, they help users find something they are searching for, direct atention to the “most important” content, organize information in a meaningful way, provide and limit access to information, or make recommendations and suggestions for what to watch or buy. The doing of algorithms can also be seen in the various ways they shape experience and make people feel a certain way—for example, in how they animate feelings of frustration, curiosity, or joy (see chapter 5). As Introna suggests, “the doing of algorithms is not simply the execution of instructions (determined by the programmers),” algorithms “also enact the objects they are supposed to reflect or express” (2016: 4). The notion of performativity that Introna draws on here posits that algorithms, by virtue of expressing something, also have the power to act upon that world.14 When algorithms become part of people’s everyday lives, incorporated into financial markets or entangled in knowledge production, they do something to those domains.\n\nNeither Black nor Box\n\n49","previous_page":48,"next_page":50}