Welcome to Algocracy !
What is an Algorithm?
An algorithm is a logical decision-making sequence. Tarleton Gillespie explains that for computer scientists, ‘algorithm refers specifically to the logical series of steps for organising and acting on a body of data to quickly achieve a desired outcome.’
Nowadays, social media platforms use content-recommendation algorithms to track and organise series of data with a specific order, creating flows of content. The News Feed algorithm on Facebook selects and orders the stories in your feed.
At the same time they don’t follow a specific order but they operate similar to complex machine learning processes. They are based on progressive learning feedback and not on stable sequences. Algorithms are developed in concert with specific data sets — they are ‘trained’ based on pre-established judgments and then ‘learn’ to make those judgments into a functional interaction of variables, steps and indicators.
But when it comes to improve an algorithm, that simply means that designers are “tuning” the parameters and the threshold. “In a web search, this might mean the weight given to a word based on where it appears in a webpage, or assigned when two words appear in proximity, or given to words that are categorically equivalent to the query term. These thresholds can be dialled up or down in the algorithm’s calculation of which webpage has a score high enough to warrant ranking it among the results returned to the user.”
Algorithms, members of our society
How the words crowd, information and algorithm are linked together and how they evolve in the cultural aspect of our civilisation. Is algorithmic culture driven by these three terms?
Algorithmic culture is the historical process through which computational processes are used to organise human culture. Ted Striphas argues that ‘over the last 30 years or so, human beings have been delegating the work of culture — the sorting, classifying and hierarchizing of people, places, objects and ideas — increasingly to computational processes.’
His definition makes clear the fact that cultures are systems of judgments and decision making. Cultural values, preferences and tastes are all systems of judging ideas, object, practices and performances: as good or bad, cool or uncool, pleasant or disgusting, and so on. Computational machines operate in order to simulate these forms of judgement and therefore they form a culture around them, which is operating according to computation processes in order to sort, classify and hierarchise people, places, objects, and ideas, and also the habits of thought, conduct and expression that arise in relationship to those processes.
Ordering culture or driving out “Anarchy”?
In our everyday life we are surrounded by algorithmic decisions distributed by electronic devices and platforms. At the same time these algorithmic decisions surround us and we are experiencing them in physical spaces like buildings. Designers and Architects are using Algorithms (GAs), a computational technique of evolution, in order to solve the complicated functional and formal problems.
For example, when architects are studying the surroundings in order to achieve the highest adaptation for their design, GA is searching through a series of available possibilities that they can serve best the specific design requirements. At the same time GA is operating as a problem solver in terms of buildings performance, regarding light/wind/thermal conditions, mechanical solutions, sustainability performance and interactive design like kinetic facades and smart systems. Last but not least they are helping designers to extend their skills using parametric design softwares where by changing one single data in the model, architects could easily shape the appearance of buildings and its programming.
Functionality but also building’s appearance are products of an algorithmic equation. We can advocate the fact that results are most of the times impressive and technology and ergonomics perform in a high lever but at the same time what happens if we admit that buildings have feelings? How well an algorithm can capture and translate memories, feelings, biases, cultural insights and emotions into a new proposal for someone to inhabit or work in. Are they really capable of transferring correctly “the sense of place”?
Usually architects are designing using architectural qualities like materiality, light, and sound, and they can create an architectural journey where the narrative pushes and pulls at different emotions. In other words, they tell a story with their work using different architectural characteristics. They tend to trigger certain emotions in occupants and this is where architecture connects with humanity. They connect beauty and experience, feelings and memories.
sources:
<The Relevance of Algorithms> http://culturedigitally.org/2012/11/the-relevance-of-algorithms/
<Algorithmic Culture> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367549415577392
