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Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Capitalism, and the Incomputable

  • Luciana Parisi (author)
Chapter of: Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas(pp. 125–137)

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Metadata
TitleInstrumental Reason, Algorithmic Capitalism, and the Incomputable
ContributorLuciana Parisi (author)
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
CopyrightLuciana Parisi
Publishermeson press
Published on2015-07-14
Long abstractAlgorithmic 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.
Page rangepp. 125–137
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Luciana Parisi

(author)
Professor of Philosophy at Goldsmiths University of London

Luciana Parisi is Reader in Cultural Theory, Chair of the PhD programme at the Centre for Cultural Studies, and co-director of the Digital Culture Unit, Goldsmiths University of London. Her research develops philosophical conceptions of matter and thought in the context of technocapitalist investments in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology. Currently she is working on the history of automation and the philosophical consequences of logical thinking in machines. Her last book was Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (MIT Press 2013).