Decolonising The Algorithm

 Maybe we need a movement to decolonise computing -

A history  of the algorithm would uncover the original work in

designing tables for ordnance and a lot of early work (e.g. in UCL at

dept of statistics) on eugenics (and its somewhat less offensive

cousin actuaries) - later on, the adoption of The Algorithm for

targetted advertising and market research derives mostly from its

shady past in cod psychology (psychometrics) and market research -

I suspect that there's a lot of early computing was done by code

slaves who tugged their forelocks at their better (much better) paid

bosses amongst the Mad Men, until later, that culture was "written

through" onto the very bones of the authors of the  recommender codes,

long after the advertising execs had retired to their beachfront

properties...

So not only to thee algorithms inherit the sample biases of the data,

they embed the cognitive biases of the culture...

Of all the past endeavours in computing, one area I think might have

some kind of honourable ancestry is in operations research - i

remember state monopoly utilities had armies of very smart

statisticians using cunning statistics to optimise the (centrally

planned) delivery of essential services (gas, water, electricity,

telecom, roads, town planning etc etc) - this all vanished during

western humanity's religious fervour and obsession with The Market,

and the  bizarre idea that the invisible hand would implement an

emergent, distributed optimisation that would out-perform the central

computation.

Now we see that the bias in that belief was really about what

optimisation goal was really  sought (rich get richer, rather than

lean, mean delivery of basical quality of life for all), but even more

ironically, the digital version of that market is a  now not a market,

but an oligopoly of profiteering, centralised planning - plus ca

change...

And we can see in the UK right now, all those privatised (non digital)

utilities are, under cover of bed time stories for little children

(i.e. lies) like Brexit, Covid, Ukraine, etc), making higher profits

than ever (check out transport, energy, food etc) -

Truly, we are in a world turned upside down, and it is well past time

to turn it back downside up once more...