How Algorithms Undermine Consciousness
Eran Fisher
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Guest Introduction
As algorithms rise to play larger roles in how we interact with the world, how are they recursively acting upon us to play larger roles in how we experience ourselves? What, in short, does an algorithmic society do to consciousness?
Eran Fisher is a professor of sociology at the Open University of Israel, and has a recent book out titled: Algorithms and Subjectivity: On the Subversion of Critical Knowledge. In it, he digs beneath the more obvious conversation around how algorithms are changing our worlds, to ask how they're changing our-selves.
In the conversation, we discuss:
- How do algorithms change the promise of freedom society offers?
- What does it mean for algorithms to "undermine" subjectivity?
- How do algorithms pose different threats to freedom than mass media of the 20th century?
- How much of the threat of algorithms derives from their for-profit deployment in a world with insufficient mechanisms for democratic data governance?
Plus tangents into psychedelics, the politics of subjectivity, and all that sort of good stuff.
Enjoy!
Time Map
- 12:45 - How do algorithms promise a new kind of freedom than that traditionally sought by enlightenment values?
- 21:20 - What does it mean to think of “subjectivity” as a political project, or a dynamic horizon?
- 30:00 - What is “critical knowledge,” and how do algorithms undermine it?
- 60:00 — Already in the 20th century, critics of mass media were concerned over how it was producing ‘one-dimensional’ humans, and mass producing the mind. How do algorithms present a different kind of threat?
- 55:50 — Drawing a connection between algorithms, predictive processing, and psychedelics; what is the role of surprise/free energy/uncertainty?
- 1:04:20 — Is the problem with algorithms a problem with capitalism, or is it intrinsic to the technology itself? What is the role of more democratic regimes of data governance, public-owned AI services, etc?
- 1:11:10 — What difference could giving users more transparent control over the design of their algorithms make? Can we design our own algorithms that help make us more of who want to become?
- 1:16:40 — On the relationship between economic environments and human development.
Links from the Conversation
Eran's academic site, and book: Algorithms and Subjectivity: The Subversion of Critical Knowledge.
Salomé Viljoen's excellent paper, "A Relational Theory of Data Governance", plus a non-academic write-up.
Andy Clark's paper on predictive processing, cultural evolution, and the adaptive value of surprise.
Hartmut Rosa's book, Resonance: A Sociology of our Relationship to the World.
We didn't discuss this, but an absolutely spot-on paper about predictive algorithms as "extraction of discretion."
My conversation with Christian Arnsperger on economics & emancipation
And my conversation with Emma Stamm about digital capaitalism and acid communism.