Название: Algorithms: Technology, Culture, Politics
Автор: Tobias Matzner
Издательство: Routledge
Год: 2024
Страниц: 193
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 10.2 MB
Algorithms: Technology, Culture, Politics develops a relational, situated approach to algorithms. It takes a middle ground between theories that give the algorithm a singular and stable meaning in using it as a central analytic category for contemporary society and theories that dissolve the term into the details of empirical studies. The book discusses algorithms in relation to hardware and material conditions, code, data, and subjects such as users, programmers, but also “data doubles”. The individual chapters bridge critical discussions on bias, exclusion, or responsibility with the necessary detail on the contemporary state of information technology. The examples include state-of-the-art applications of machine learning, such as self-driving cars, and large language models such as GPT. In consequence, as soon as programming becomes more than the most basic listing of machine code, it depends on algorithms in a two-fold manner: First, writing code is not just programming algorithms but most often calling other algorithms that are readily available in programming libraries. Second, code needs to be processed by specific algorithms, such as compilers, before it can execute the algorithm it “implements.”