Caring for the monstrous algorithm: attending to wrinkly worlds and relationalities in an algorithmic society
Preprint, 2023

This text proposes that we, social analysts of algorithms, need to develop a split vision for the algorithm-as-technological-object and the algorithm-as-assemblage in order to effectively attend to, analyze, and critique algorithms in society. The point of departure is that we need to distance ourselves from a simplified and reductive understanding of algorithms-as-objects, and care for them as part of a relational algorithmic assemblage. A simplified notion of algorithms is problematic for two reasons: First, as it produces a reductive notion of the world where decision makers point to algorithms-as-objects to make simplified decisions about the world. Second, by taking a simplified and delineated object called “algorithm” as the point of departure for analysis and critique in an algorithmic society, we risk producing technologically deterministic understandings of complex and composite problems. We illustrate this argument through two example drawn from the handling of Covid-19 pandemic, where we attend to a universalist mathematical epidemiology and the particularities of field epidemiology to problematize how we should care for, understand, and analyze algorithms in society.

covid-19

models

epidemiology

care

assemblages

algorithms

actor-network theory

Författare

Francis Lee

Chalmers, Teknikens ekonomi och organisation, Science, Technology and Society

Catharina Landström

Chalmers, Teknikens ekonomi och organisation, Science, Technology and Society

Karl Palmås

Chalmers, Teknikens ekonomi och organisation, Science, Technology and Society

The New Scientific Revolution? AI and Big Data in Biomedicine

Marianne och Marcus Wallenberg Stiftelse (DnrC2020-0150), 2020-08-01 -- 2025-08-31.

Styrkeområden

Informations- och kommunikationsteknik

Ämneskategorier

Idé- och lärdomshistoria

Filosofi

Sociologi

DOI

10.31235/osf.io/rg7k6

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2023-10-06