Caring for the Monstrous Algorithm: Attending to Wrinkly Worlds and Relationalities in an Algorithmic Society

This text proposes that we, social analysts of algorithms, need to develop a split vision for the algorithm-as-technological-object and the algorithm-as-assemblage in order to effectively attend to, analyze, and critique algorithms in society. The point of departure is that we need to distance ourselves from a simplified and reductive understanding of algorithms-as-objects, and care for them as part of a relational algorithmic assemblage. A simplified notion of algorithms is problematic for two reasons: First, it produces a reductive notion of the world where decision-makers point to algorithms-as-objects to simplify decisions about the world. Second, by taking a simplified and delineated object called 'algorithm' as the point of departure for analysis and critique in an algorithmic society, we risk producing technologically deterministic understandings of complex phenomena.

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Lee, Francis, Catharina Landström, and Karl Palmås. 2024. "Caring for the Monstrous Algorithm: Attending to Wrinkly Worlds and Relationalities in an Algorithmic Society." In Reframing Algorithms: STS Perspectives to Healthcare Automation, edited by Francesco Miele and Paolo Giardullo, 99-119. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52049-5_5