Comments on: Week 8 Synthesis – Playing around with a digital algorithm https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/emajoos/2015/03/09/week-8-synthesis-playing-around-with-a-digital-algorithm/ Life. Love. Technology Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:30:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.38 By: sbayne https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/emajoos/2015/03/09/week-8-synthesis-playing-around-with-a-digital-algorithm/#comment-120 Wed, 11 Mar 2015 11:48:20 +0000 http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/emajoos/?p=230#comment-120 This is a great surfacing of the effects of a particular algorithm Em. I wonder how far you feel this has ‘got’ you in terms of understanding how the WatchTime algorithm works? It raises the question for me of how we might design more extended research projects which interrogate these algorithms. How far would this kind of ‘play’ take you? Presumably this algorithm isn’t openly accessible, so even if you had the programming knowledge to dig around, hack and re-work it, you wouldn’t be able to – does that mean that, as researchers, we will never be able to really surface how these things work, and what effects they have on our various modes of digital selfhood? What else might we do to think about them and research them more deeply?

I’m not suggesting you do this, but these questions all seem to me to be important, and have been prompted by the work you’ve done here – so thanks for that!

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