Notes for a Political Epistemology of Algorithms

Algorithms are everywhere: they watch us, they give us advice, sometimes they take autonomous decisions. They are agents mediating between reality and us by virtue of their capability to treat huge amounts of data and to see patterns that are invisible to us. It is pretty clear that they are political actors by virtue of their epistemic features. In this article, I try to put together these two points and outline a political epistemology of algorithms. Firstly, I define political epistemology as concerned with epistemic performances that are essentially situated and therefore political all the way down. Secondly, I show that, in this sense, an epistemic analysis of algorithms cannot help being a piece of political epistemology