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Why do we feel excited, afraid, and frustrated by algorithms?
The Feel of Algorithms brings relatable first-person accounts of what it means to experience algorithms emotionally alongside interdisciplinary social science research, to reveal how political and economic processes are felt in the everyday. People’s algorithm stories might fail to separate fact and misconception, and circulate wishful, erroneous, or fearful views of digital technologies. Yet rather than treating algorithmic folklore as evidence of ignorance, this novel book explains why personal anecdotes are an important source of algorithmic knowledge. Minna Ruckenstein argues that we get to know algorithms by feeling their actions and telling stories about them. The Feel of Algorithms shows how taking everyday algorithmic emotions seriously balances the current discussion, which has a tendency to draw conclusions based on celebratory or oppositional responses to imagined future effects. An everyday focus zooms into experiences of pleasure, fear, and irritation, highlighting how political aims and ethical tensions play out in visions, practices, and emotional responses. This book shows that feelings aid in recognizing troubling practices, and also calls for alternatives that are currently ignored or suppressed.
The Feel of Algorithms brings relatable first-person accounts of what it means to experience algorithms emotionally alongside interdisciplinary social science research, to reveal how political and economic processes are felt in the everyday. People’s algorithm stories might fail to separate fact and misconception, and circulate wishful, erroneous, or fearful views of digital technologies. Yet rather than treating algorithmic folklore as evidence of ignorance, this novel book explains why personal anecdotes are an important source of algorithmic knowledge. Minna Ruckenstein argues that we get to know algorithms by feeling their actions and telling stories about them. The Feel of Algorithms shows how taking everyday algorithmic emotions seriously balances the current discussion, which has a tendency to draw conclusions based on celebratory or oppositional responses to imagined future effects. An everyday focus zooms into experiences of pleasure, fear, and irritation, highlighting how political aims and ethical tensions play out in visions, practices, and emotional responses. This book shows that feelings aid in recognizing troubling practices, and also calls for alternatives that are currently ignored or suppressed.
Price: $29.95
Pages: 240
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
23 May 2023
Trim Size: 8.25 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9780520394551
Format: Paperback
"Ruckenstein’s book offers a much-needed challenge to the pervasive analogy between algorithms and rationality and the obsession with intelligence."
"Minna Ruckenstein’s carefully composed new book predominantly sees algorithms through the lens of those engaging with their outputs. In its pages algorithms take on a material form fleshed."
"Minna Ruckenstein’s The Feel of Algorithms is a welcome intervention in the conversations about the multifaceted impacts of algorithms on our lives and society at large."
“The work is recommended for academics and students with interdisciplinary backgrounds to receive technological insight with broad human and social perspectives. The book is also highly recommended for professionals and policymakers in the tech industry, as it offers critical insight into the structure of human feelings and emotions driven by algorithms, facilitating the development of human-centered practices. Ethicists, philosophers, activists, and tech advocates will find this book invaluable to understanding individual agency with ethical and societal dilemmas. Lastly, tech-curious readers will have an accessible look into the impact of algorithms on society and how their personal experience can be interpreted in this era of algorithms.”
"This book is detailed, well evidenced, and novel in its approach. Anthropologists will appreciate how Ruckenstein brackets the truth value algorithm talk in favor of its pragmatic capacity to influence social life."
“The Feel of Algorithms is . . . a conceptual and cultural intervention. It succeeds in bringing [effect] to the forefront of algorithm studies and offers a much-needed vocabulary for discussing the textures of algorithmic life.”
Minna Ruckenstein is Professor in Emerging Technologies in Society at the University of Helsinki.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Structures of Feeling in Algorithmic Culture
2 Coevolving with Algorithms
3 The Digital Geography of Fear
4 Friction in Algorithmic Relations
5 Care for Algorithmic Futures
Ways Forward
References
Index
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Structures of Feeling in Algorithmic Culture
2 Coevolving with Algorithms
3 The Digital Geography of Fear
4 Friction in Algorithmic Relations
5 Care for Algorithmic Futures
Ways Forward
References
Index