Algorithms in Culture events

In this undated photo made available by Google, Denise Harwood diagnoses an overheated computer processor at Google’s data center in The Dalles, Ore. Google uses these data centers to store email, photos, video, calendar entries and other information shared by its users. These centers also process the hundreds of millions of searches that Internet users make on Google each day. (AP Photo/Google, Connie Zhou)

(AP Photo/Google, Connie Zhou)

Supported by a joint grant from Representations and the Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society presents a discussion on the topic of “Algorithms in Culture.” At this event, an interdisciplinary faculty working group will share their reflections about the place of algorithms in their disciplines and research. The discussion will take place on Friday, April 29, at 10:30am in 470 Stevens Hall, UC Berkeley. The event inaugurates an ongoing conversation that will be pursued further in a day-long workshop on May 13.

While algorithms are a foundational concept in computer science, there is increasing interest about the roles algorithms play in politics, media, science, organizations, and identity in everyday life. As algorithms become more prevalent and visible in contemporary life, issues around their development and deployment will continue to rise, both in academia and public discourse. In recent years, there has been a growing academic literature taking algorithms as an object of cultural inquiry, as well as many conferences and workshops focused on studying algorithms from a more social scientific or humanistic perspective. In response to this growing approach to algorithms as culture, this interdisciplinary group of scholars will take up algorithms as an object of study in order to examine them as computation, culture and their role in the construction of the self in this event to develop a special section of a journal that explores this topic.