Algorithmic Governmentality and the Government of Algorithms. Epistemological Implications and Political Perspectives (Starting with Gilbert Simondon)

Abstract

The article analyses the political performance of the technical object “algorithm” by drawing on Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of technics. The first part studies the reduction of society and politics to the automatic functioning typical of algorithmic governmentality, tracking it back to the ideological assumptions implicit in the cybernetic model of the automaton. The second part shows that only a critique of such model allows for a departure from those assumptions and for the theorisation of algorithmic technology in view of a possible government of algorithms.