Book part: Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Capitalism, and the Incomputable
Abstract
Algorithmic cognition is central to today’s capitalism. From the rationalization of labor and social relations to the financial sector, algorithms are grounding a new mode of thought and control. Within the context of this all-machine phase transition of digital capitalism, it is no longer sufficient to side with the critical theory that accuses computation to be reducing human thought to mere mechanical operations. As information theorist Gregory Chaitin has demonstrated, incomputability and randomness are to be conceived as very condition of computation. If technocapitalism is infected by computational randomness and chaos, the traditional critique of instrumental rationality therefore also has to be put into question: the incomputable cannot be simply understood as being opposed to reason.
Preferred Citation
BibTex
author = {Parisi, Luciana},
title = {Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Capitalism, and the Incomputable},
year = 2015,
doi = {10.25969/mediarep/1180},
editor = {Pasquinelli, Matteo},
address = {Lüneburg},
booktitle = {Alleys of Your Mind. Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas},
pages = {125--137},
publisher = {meson press},
isbn = {978-3-95796-066-5},
}
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