Brief
Discuss how the meaning of these 5 terms have changed, drawing from Chapter 1 of Neyland’s The Everyday Life of an Algorithm (2019) to help explain the role of algorithms in reconfiguring their meanings.
- Informed consent
- Fair use
- Discrimination and Net Neutrality
- Personalization
- Friend
Preface
An algorithm is conventionally defined as 'a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer'. In this sense, an algorithm strictly speaking is nothing more than the ordering of steps that a combination of software and hardware might subsequently put into operation (p. 4)
Neyland starts off the chapter by defining the conventional idea of what we think algorithms are and what algorithms do, providing examples of how we utilize algorithms to sift through job applications, drive predictive policing for potential crime, and market Nutella sales based on what it believes consumers find attractive.
However, he is not interested in how algorithms affect the “humdrum banalities of our everyday life”, rather, he is interested in the everyday life of the algorithm, specifically through what means were they produced, how were they imagined and brought into being and put to work.
He poses three insightful questions that framework the rest of the book:
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- How do algorithms participate in the everyday?
- How do algorithms compose the everyday?
- How (to what extend, through what means) does the algorithmic become the everyday?
The following sections will briefly lay out some important concepts that Neyland utilizes to answer the questions above before diving into my own analysis on how his way of perceiving algorithms have altered the meanings of the five given words in our modern life.
Power
It is apparent the power that algorithms have in modern living, and two notions of power can be discerned. In the traditional sense, “the power in which algorithms act to influence and shape particular effects”; and in the Foucauldian sense, “algorithms as part of a set of relations through which power is exercised” (p. 6).
To elaborate the latter, the Foucauldian sense of power is distributed and dispersed through the ongoing “plaiting of relations” between the human and non-human operatives that each are required to play their roles to carry through the demands of the algorithm and the effect of the consequences that follow through. This emergent system of participants in an array of activities that are bound to each other with the production of effects, unanticipated or otherwise intentional is how algorithms participate in our everyday life.
Everyday Life of Things
Much emphasis is placed on the analysis of the everyday as it is a “site of containment and potential change”, and “necessary to attend to the human practices that then shape the algorithm” (p. 10).
Latour’s idea of the “missing masses” takes the everyday life of objects, materials and technologies into serious consideration, especially the roles that these non-human things play “social, moral, ethical and physical actions” (p. 11) as part of the ecosystem that humans and non-humans participate in.
Recognizing that the algorithmic participation provides a grounds for establishing the nature of things that is always at stake, as "being at stake is the political condition in which the nature of things is both settled and unsettled"[...] Drawing from the Latin etymology of the word mundane (mundus) to explore how matters are not just ordinary or pervasive, but become the world. What is settled and unsettled, what is at stake, is this becoming. (p.11)
Such selections are made in order to delimit what will become part of the world and what will be dismissed, and consequentially, the responsibilities and accountabilities for action are distributed such that “the status of people and things will be made always and already at stake by the very presence of the algorithm” (p.14).
Terms Reconfigured
Informed Consent
In the context of data collection and privacy, often the algorithm may collect and process personal information in ways that are not completely transparent to users, challenging the traditional concept of “informed” consent. Oftentimes, the only way to access certain online services is to accept the terms and conditions without having full transparent and freely given consent, as the alternative would be to not use the service or to boycott it, in which the Foucauldian power struggle is brought to the surface of such interaction.
Fair Use and Personalization
Here I have decided to discuss the the terms fair use and personalization together, as I believe they are similar in the ways that algorithms have impacted the prioritization and influence of certain information on digital platforms based on profit-driven engagement. This may limit access to more diverse or opposing perspectives of public discourse, and can create echo-chambers keeping participants in insulated digital bubbles, further perpetuating the algorithm to feed into the cycle.
Discrimination and Net Neutrality
Expanding on the consequences of fair use and personalization, algorithms can perpetuate biases when trained on biased datasets, potentially leading to discriminatory influence on users themselves. Challenging the original concept of “net neutrality” of internet service providers enabling access to all content and applications regardless of source without favoring or blocking particular websites, the internet is rendered non-neutral.
Friends
With connections being mediated online through social media, who appears on your social media feed is also being filtered be the order and prominence of posts via engagement statistics, potentially impacting the depth and quality of our connections. I would argue that for the terminally online, this would be more of an issue, but for those who don’t have a strong online presence, but continue to keep in contact with friends via other means (i.e. text messages, phone calls, snail mail, etc.) are less impacted by the algorithm. I believe with intention, one can bypass the algorithmic barriers!
In our modern age, the greatest impact of algorithms on informed consent, fair use, discrimination, net neutrality and friends is greatly impacted by the digitization of interactions. With participation in such activities being more technologically mediated, there will be imbalances in power structure and how that reshapes the ways we are held accountable and responsible in relation to each other.
References
Neyland, D., Springer Social Sciences eBooks 2019 English/International, OAPEN, DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books, SpringerLink (Online service), & SpringerLink Fully Open Access Books. (2019;2018;). The everyday life of an algorithm (1st 2019.;1; ed.). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00578-8