Eight Notes on Power and Algorithms

Algorithmically controlled applications are becoming normal elements of our technoculture in more and more areas of practice. In a sober technical understanding, algorithms are automatable solution programs for machine-calculable goals. In the popular understanding, however, algorithms have become an object of fantasy. The popular topos of the ›power of algorithms‹ functions today in the digital revolution in much the same way as the topos of the ›power of genes‹ did thirty years ago in the euphoria of the molecular genetic revolution. Based on a re-analysis of Max Weber's classical definition of power, the present essay (1) develops a new dynamic understanding of power that allows for the analysis of power relations with respect to persons and quasi-personal corporate actors as well as with respect to a-personal software agents and other machine actors. The power that actors have in a situation is conceptualized modally and relationally as the capacity of actors, through forces that they can control in a counterfactually robust way, to steer other forces in order to come closer to achieving their goals. Furthermore, the present essay (2) outlines a heuristically useful concept of digital transformations by distinguishing three dimensions of analysis: technology, media, and culture.