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Comments on Lucas Introna’s Algorithms, Performativity and Governability”

We can’t gov­ern through knowl­edge, prop­er­ly speak­ing. Even if many algo­rithms are trade secrets, Lucas and oth­ers have remind­ed us near­ly all would not be sur­veil­l­able by human beings, even if we had access to their source code. We have to begin what­ev­er process from this fun­da­men­tal lack of knowl­edge. We need to start from the same epis­te­mo­log­i­cal place that many of the pro­duc­ers of algo­rithms do.

How Interfaces Demand Obedience

I’m going to dis­cuss the theme of inter­face and maybe the pol­i­tics of inter­face through the com­mu­ni­ca­tion cycle, the idea of pro­to­cols, and then I’ll try to sug­gest inter­faces for resis­tance, and ways for that to be addressed as well.