Week 08: Critique on Tarleton Gillespie's "The Relevance of Algorithms"

     Scholar and author Tarleton Gillespie begins his scholarly article/essay, "The Relevance of Algorithms", in diving deep within the meanings and social placement of algorithms in our current, increasingly digital age.  According to Gillespie, all algorithms can be classified under one or more of "six dimensions of public relevance" with some political tie-in of sorts.  Of the six dimensions there are patterns of inclusion, cycles of anticipation, the evaluation of relevance, the promise of algorithmic objectivity, entanglement with practice, and the production of calculated publics.  Gillespie spends much of the essay reaching into his meaning behind each of these dimensions and how they fit the current definitions of an algorithm, or "public relevance algorithms", as he refers to them.  Without pushing too far into the specifics of Gillespie's ideas, it is key to note his overall skeptical tone on the issue.  Furthermore, it is not the algorithms specifically that he feels are at fault, but rather the way that we, through division of labor, force flawed automation in an attempt to highlight only the most important information  while eliminating instances of human error and bias.  The issue being that in a world where even automated logic and knowledge must hold some degree of human oversight, censorship, human error, and biases are still prevalent factors in distributing information via digital algorithms.  On top of this, Gillespie argues that it's hard to even ask the creators of algorithms like those behind Google about the nature of their algorithms because algorithms "remain outside our grasp, and they are designed to be."  Algorithms are implicitly designed to fit certain criteria and then expand upon those criteria in a way that is difficult to track or control through practical methods making it difficult for the creators of algorithms even to make sense of algorithmic patterns.

     Although some concepts felt a bit rushed and it would have been interesting to see him reach a little deeper into some of the ideas he was bringing out, Gillespie does a phenomenal job in this essay creating an expansive evaluation of the emergence of algorithms.  In breaking down "the relevance of algorithms" into six dimensions, Gillespie finds plenty of ideas to draw upon in stating his argument against the constant growth of algorithms and the dangers that ought to be considered with any form of new "knowledge logic."  The only question that arises in my critique of Gillespie's overall thesis is, "are algorithms all that vital to critique for the average consumer?"  To the consumer, algorithms often only come across as the means to an end.  Algorithms curate and create doors to entire worlds of public information, but algorithms do not create the information itself, they only decide where and how it should appear.  At least in terms of Google, algorithms may push down or pull up certain results, but in the end the user often finds what he or she is looking for, regardless of the algorithm that may, behind-the-scenes, alter where we're getting the information from,  The key to an effective algorithm is one that directs the user to the most relevant sources of information, failing that, it is no longer an effective algorithm.  In terms of Facebook and Twitter, things get a little more complicated, however most people use social media sites like these for the same reasons, and although algorithms may tweak what is seen on these sites, users still make use of social media features for the same general purposes.  Just food for thought.  Otherwise, Gillespie poses a highly appealing analysis of algorithms and the social and political implications embedded within them.

     

     Gillespie, an accredited scholar, is an associate professor in the department of communication and the department of information science at Cornell University.  In the past, Gillespie has authored a book titled Wired Shut:  Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture which received favorable reviews calling it “bold” and “essential” in regards to its subject matter.  This particularly essay has been heralded by many as a unique perspective on the often ignored issue of algorithms.  The essay is linked to by several people on the web all of whom give it good reviews.  Then again, who’s to say Gillespie himself didn’t pay a little extra to tweak the algorithms and push all the bad reviews to the second page of which nobody is desperate enough to visit?