Algorithmic worldmaking : the rhetorical craft of networked order /
In Algorithmic Worldmaking, Jeremy David Johnson discusses how algorithms shape democratic discourse and determine the ways we think, talk is especially true given how ubiquitous digital media, most of which is filtered through algorithmic systems-has become in our everyday lives. Thus, Algorithmic...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Tuscaloosa :
University of Alabama Press,
[2025].
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| Series: | Rhetoric + digitality.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | In Algorithmic Worldmaking, Jeremy David Johnson discusses how algorithms shape democratic discourse and determine the ways we think, talk is especially true given how ubiquitous digital media, most of which is filtered through algorithmic systems-has become in our everyday lives. Thus, Algorithmic Worldmaking studies how that centrality affects and distorts our processes of civic and political engagement. Algorithms are squarely in the business of judgment and interpretation, Johnson argues, and those judgments are the products of human error and biases. He revitalizes a term not often explored in rhetoric, kosmos, as a way of understanding algorithmic worldmaking. Kosmos is often translated from ancient Greek as meaning "order," but not of a static or rigid kind. The pre-Socratics saw order as ever-changing, moving and flowing like a river, a philosophy largely abandoned by Plato and later thinkers. The kind of kosmos that interests Johnson manifests in patterns, repetition and flux. Drawing on Herodotus, Homer, Gorgias and others, Johnson makes the case that earlier views of kosmos better describe how the confluence of algorithms, humans and our environments creates the spaces and positions we inhabit. These views of kosmos undercut propositions that algorithms are objective, unbiased and natural applications of mathematics and computing, asserting instead that algorithms are interwoven and inextricable from people and their environments. Civic life today is largely networked. To understand and traverse algorithmic civic life, Johnson identifies four repeating patterns, or tropes, that transcend individual platforms and processes, navigation, exploration, maintenance and monetization. While these are not the only functions of algorithms, they are the most pertinent for civic and political processes. With these ideas in mind, Johnson argues that political changes can tell us something about algorithmic worldmaking via the recurrence of fascism, pandemics, war and capitalist inequality. Individual chapters explore algorithmic controversies in Google searches, mapping systems, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitch and other platforms. These cases show how algorithms both shape and delimit human discourse. And Johnson offers four accompanying theses, that algorithms and humans share in agency, but humans still have exceptional power and responsibility, that algorithmic kosmos both reflects and shapes the oppressive and harmful patterns of society, that algorithms enact capitalist values and that algorithmic power is a threat to democratic deliberation and decision-making. |
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| Physical Description: | xviii, 225 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780817322212 0817322213 9780817361846 0817361847 |