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"Totalitalgorithms" (Totalgorithms?) captures the spirit of these algorithms. They seem like bugs but they're actually undirected, organic features of a total t
by ctrlp 5y ago
"Totalitalgorithms" (Totalgorithms?) captures the spirit of these algorithms. They seem like bugs but they're actually undirected, organic features of a total technocratic political system that is rapidly coming to dominate life in our modern societies. The filters will be tuned but not fixed because they aren't broken. They're part of what Tocqueville described as 'soft despotism':
"Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_despotism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_despotism
- washadjeffmad 5y agoAlgorithmic totalitarianism resonates strongly. It's not a human rights violation if it isn't a human doing it!
- dylan604 5y agoThe human's rights were still violated even if it was a machine that did it.