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What algorithms want : imagination in the age of computing
Finn E., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017. Type: Book (9780262035927)
Date Reviewed: Aug 9 2017

One aspect of the contemporary world is our large reliance on computation in all aspects of personal life and social interaction. We are likely to decide which movie to watch, which book to buy, or which restaurant to visit for a meal based on some computational systems running some barely known but implicitly trusted algorithms. Such systems have thus displaced our own independent thinking, as well as taken on the possibly undeserved role of trusted advisors and confidants. Algorithms are not merely tools and procedural abstractions that define the manner in which computers work; they now have a large cultural context, are implicitly trusted with our deepest secrets, and are used as aids to our most consequential judgments.

This is the context of this book, a detailed examination by the author of the cultural and social milieu in which computational systems are used and relied upon. This is a detailed, scholarly work that ties together a great many threads from prior literature and calls attention to issues connected with the interplay between computational systems and human values. With large streams of data (a lot of it compromising individual privacy to a large extent) now being generated every instant--with the processing of the same being guided not by core concerns for human rights, democratic values, and the like, but by corporate greed--the book is a timely reminder of an issue that has perhaps not received the attention it should.

The author’s style of writing is lucid and entertaining, and he takes the reader along on a journey through the landscape of the social context and consequences of computers. There is an attempt to correlate with historical thinkers, such as Plato’s lament that writing had dulled people’s minds, or the more recent cybernetics of Norbert Wiener. There is discussion of the views of other contemporary philosophers and social scientists, as well as some analyses of artificial intelligence (AI)-type tools by Netflix, Google, and so on.

While this book is surely a valuable addition to the important discourse around the social consequences of information technology, one is sometimes discomfited by the author’s occasional proclivity for “fashionable nonsense” [1] and loose reasoning, for example, “Algorithms span the gap between code and implementation, between software and experience” (p. 34). This is not only factually questionable (the gap between code and implementation is the compilation or build step; the algorithm is logically anterior to the code), but also suggests that the author is, in part, buying into the myth of the omnipotent algorithm, which he otherwise means to lampoon (as in the very title).

From a classical computer science perspective, it is also possible to add further objections to the culture of algorithmic scientism that the book does not consider: prominent among these might be the whole unsettled issue of the brain-as-computer (or the sufficiency, or lack thereof, of algorithms to explain minds) [2], as well as well-known algorithmic impossibility results such as Arrow’s theorem and the CAP theorem, which have important real-life consequences. Last but not least, there is of course the overarching issue that information technology, the substratum that makes algorithms possible, is not eco-friendly or “green,” and needs improvement to make it so.

More reviews about this item: Amazon, Goodreads

Reviewer:  Shrisha Rao Review #: CR145472 (1710-0657)
1) Sokal, A.; Bricmont, J. Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science. Picador, New York, NY, 1997.
2) Penrose, R. The emperor's new mind: concerning computers, minds and the laws of physics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1989.
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