The Anxieties of Big Data
As authority shifts from humans to algorithms, we may no longer view the world as the playground of autonomous individuals struggling to make the right choices. Instead, we might perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms, and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-e
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
... See moreIn her 2019 dissertation titled Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art, the scholar Patricia de Vries defined algorithmic anxiety as a condition in which "the possible self is perceived to be cir-cumscribed, bounded, and governed by algorithmic regimes." Her words feel breathtakingly accurate. The possibilities that we perceive for ourselves--our
Our discomfort with this indifference manifests in a predictable pattern: we try to turn AI into a comprehensible villain. In reference to Girard, every society is built, in part, on the ritual of scapegoating, a mechanism by which collective anxieties, rivalries, and fears are projected onto a villain or outcast, thereby restoring temporary order ... See more
Tina He • AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion
Rather than prestige, this cultural moment is dominated by metrics, as George S. Trow predicted in a 1980 New Yorker essay called “Within the context of no context”:
“That movement... from wonder that a country should be so big, to the wonder that a building could be so big, to the last, small wonder, that a marketplace could be so big—that was the... See more
The prestige recession
On the other side of our algorithmic anxiety is a state of numbness.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
But in the age of ✨ networked computing ✨, this individual model of privacy just doesn’t scale anymore. There are too many exponentially intersecting relationships for any of us to keep in our head. It’s no longer just about what we tell a friend or the tax collector or even a journalist. It’s the digital footprint that we often unknowingly leave i... See more