The Relevance of Algorithms: Tarleton Gillespie

This article is the 9th chapter out of Tarleton Gillespie's book "Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. This book brings together scholars working at the intersection of the studies of media, science and technologies (Gillespie).  This allows for the furthering of the view that media technologies are present always and everywhere.

Tarleton Gillespie is an associate professor in the communications department at Cornell University. He has received countless rewards and continuous admiration throughout his career including the Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award at Cornell University.  He received an undergraduate degree in English from Amherst College. Not long after, he received his masters and PH.D. in communications from the University of California: San Diego.  One of his most notable works "Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture" was published by MIT press in 2007.

The chapter we read, "The Relevance of Algorithms", highlighted how present algorithms are in our technology driven society.  He defines algorithms as the encoded procedures that transfer input data into the usable data that companies and establishments are able to utilize.  Gillespie notes that we are using algorithms to identify what we need to know instead of utilizing the once prevalent experts in the department, tapping into our common sense, or looking to God for the answers.  Throughout the piece, he describes six possible political ramifications that arise from the introduction of algorithms into the everyday functioning of our society.

The dimension that I found most interesting was his point of view on the entanglement within practice (between the algorithms and those they are evaluating). This section displays that the algorithms depend on the users in order to acquire the information, which they then use to cater new messages back to the users.  This entanglement process is multidimensional.  The users also shape their practices to cater to the algorithms.  They attempt to make themselves recognizable to the algorithms, for a multitude of different reasons.  For example, users utilize the hashtag algorithm on twitter in order to deliver their message to an audience that would otherwise have never seen their post.

Backstage access to insight into the logistics of algorithms can give you more exposure and thus more power.  Advertisers bid on preferred placement within an algorithm in order to receive increased exposure. This works on the contrary also.  If an organization has access to the algorithms, they are able to limit exposure.  Government can use this tactic to control what their society is able to access.  For example, the Chinese government requires their search engines to filter the information so heavily, that Google has completely retracted from the Chinese market.  Google has a promise of objectivity that the Chinese government demanded them to break.

The reviews on this book are extremely limited.  The combination of multiple different fields leaves the scholarly audience of this book few and far between.  Though the information in this book is useful to so many, the combination of scholars from all different areas of study shrinks the highly informed audience.