- Chapter 8
- The @lgorithmic Society:
Digitarians of the World Unite
- Kazimierz Krzysztofek
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- Introduction
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- The information society, the
knowledge society, the post-capitalist society, the post-mass
production society,
The list of terms describing future
society seems endless; and grows longer. People using these labels
normally single out and expose one or more features of such a
society. No-one has been able to encompass society as a whole,
even though many have tried.
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- The feature of future society
that is essential can be expressed by the name, the algorithmic
society: algorithmic beyond real needs. The tendencies leading
to this stage seem quite clear. This announces some benefits
for the future, but also many complications.
"In the beginning there was Algorithm." So announced
the well-known mathematician Steven Wolfram. Those who are not
convinced by such biblical paraphrases can find something similar
in leftist holy texts: the spectrum of algorithm is spinning
around the world.
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- Algorithms are real. They
are defined procedures. They usually refer to computer programs,
but they also explain the behaviour of living organisms. In these
cases they are genetic or hormonal algorithms. The term is rarely
used for people even though humans are also equipped with genetic
and hormonal programs. But people are also products of cultures,
which gives them both desirable and undesirable features.
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- The notion of algorithm may
be fruitful in explaining some cultural phenomena. Throughout
history, people have been programmed via community cultures,
cultures of fate, which did not leave much room for individual
decisions, private consciousness, morality and identity. The
history of European cultures can be interpreted as a long-lasting
process of freeing human beings from these cultural algorithms.
The most outstanding achievements date back to the age of the
Enlightenment, when millions of educated people started to guide
themselves by their own mind and free will. Yet, there were constant
attempts to assimilate the chaos brought about by freedom of
thinking and acting through certain endeavours meant to re-impose
algorithms on people. In the industrial society it was the mass,
redundant culture. In the 20th century, Nazi and Communist totalitarianism
were particular cases of this; these imposed strict procedures
of thinking and acting. This imposition of algorithmic thinking
did not fully succeed, yet it was detrimental to both society
and individuals: the victims of these systems.
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- The algorithm, seen as learned
behaviour, is necessary for the functioning of humans. Without
it people would waste their intellectual energy analysing all
their actions, even those that are minor and insignificant. Without
such algorithms humans would have never left the pre-human stage
of their development, before the emergence of homo sapiens.
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- However, algorithms are perplexing.
On the one hand the increasing use of algorithms will ease life,
yet on the other there are doubts, considering the scale that
will be achieved in the future, if they will be beneficial to
humankind in the longer term.
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- Behavioural automatism protects
people against unnecessary intellectual processing and, owing
to this, it gives people a chance to use their minds for creativity,
innovation and invention. Yet, there is a concern that a decreasing
number of people will be able to be creative. A striking contradiction
of 20th century civilisation was that on one side there was an
imperative to be creative and innovative, but on the other there
was rising pressure for predictable human behaviour, since unpredictability
gives birth to chaos which is difficult to manage.
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- The problem of algorithms
was relatively less important when technologies of the mechanical
age imposed procedures on muscles and senses. Information and
communication technologies however replace some functions of
brain, for instance memory, calculation, processing, etc., which
makes the problem much more complex and provokes anxieties.
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- It is possible that the near
future will see a move to information algorithmic-behaviour of
people. Those who succeed in freeing themselves from it will
produce algorithms to program people - the algorithmic masses.
This will not occur because of some Matrix, as in the film of
that name, will but because of the very nature and logic of the
bio-techno sphere. Its impetus makes futile any attempt to stop
this machine.
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