> Being self-conscious, then, relies on the gaze of someone else. “The Other penetrates me to the heart,” Jean-Paul Sartre writes, describing Hegel’s intuition

> Being self-conscious, then, relies on the gaze of someone else. “The Other penetrates me to the heart,” Jean-Paul Sartre writes, describing Hegel’s intuition about how we are dependent on one another in our very being. “I cannot doubt him without doubting myself, since ‘self-consciousness is real only in so far as it recognizes its echo (and its reflection) in another.’” > Personalizing algorithms thus offer a startling twist on Hegel’s idea, as we begin to see ourselves more and more through the gaze of these unselfconscious but intelligent and highly attentive algorithmic “others.” This article is a little heavy on prose, but this part was interesting. We define ourselves in part by how others see us (i.e., programmer, husband, poor, rich, crazy, inspired). As more of our social feedback comes from algorithms, it changes our self-perception. Anyone who's read through, say, Antisocial, is probably already aware. But the idea of the algorithm's gaze... that sticks with me a bit.