If … Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics

Abstract

Whatever the cryptic title might suggest, the clear strength of this book is its timely interrogation of the conventional dichotomy between humans and machines, developed through a nuanced and wholly theorized study of how algorithms are bringing about a new era of relations between people and technology. “If … then” is a conditional control flow expression in computer programming, drawn upon here by Taina Bucher as a metonym for algorithms. She despairs that “algorithm” has become a buzzword of the digital age, a mythologizing discourse, and “sloppy shorthand” (p. 38) for the wider and more complex sociotechnical landscape that she intrepidly sets out to examine this book. Although the “power and politics” formulation of the subtitle is used repeatedly throughout, she makes it clear at the outset that the book is not about “politics with a capital P,” nor even political communication (p. 3). Rather, she sees politics as “ways of world-making” and, with a nod to the “ontological politics” of the Science and Technology Studies school, argues that algorithms are political, to the extent that “they help make the world appear in certain ways rather than others” (p. 3). As for power, Bucher takes the Foucauldian view of power as immanent, with the power of algorithms being so diffuse as to be “indistinguishable from life itself,” yet productive rather than repressive (p. 34). In this perspective, algorithms become “technologies of government” (p. 37).