The Everyday Life of an Algorithm

Description

This open access book begins with an algorithm–a set of IF…THEN rules used in the development of a new, ethical, video surveillance architecture for transport hubs. Readers are invited to follow the algorithm over three years, charting its everyday life. Questions of ethics, transparency, accountability and market value must be grasped by the algorithm in a series of ever more demanding forms of experimentation. Here the algorithm must prove its ability to get a grip on everyday life if it is to become an ordinary feature of the settings where it is being put to work. Through investigating the everyday life of the algorithm, the book opens a conversation with existing social science research that tends to focus on the power and opacity of algorithms. In this book we have unique access to the algorithm’s design, development and testing, but can also bear witness to its fragility and dependency on others. Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Introduction: Everyday Life and the Algorithm (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 1-20 Experimentation with a Probable Human-Shaped Object (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 21-43 Accountability and the Algorithm (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 45-71 The Deleting Machine and Its Discontents (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 73-92 Demonstrating the Algorithm (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 93-122 Market Value and the Everyday Life of the Algorithm (Daniel Neyland)....Pages 123-137 Back Matter ....Pages 139-151