While I was reading the article: the Power of Algorithms: How software formats the culture, there was one line saying that "In a global market where enormous amounts of data are recorded and a rapid response rate gives you an edge over the competition, algorithms play a key role in analysis and decision-making."(Alvaro) made me think of the recent missing jet incident. The false report of the plane form the Malaysia Airline not only waste tons of the money but also risked all those passengers lives.
When the author was talking about the definition of Algorithms, he or she said that "An algorithm is a finite set of instructions applied to an input, in a finite number of steps, in order to obtain an output – a means by which to perform calculations and process data automatically."(Alvaro) When I first encountered the HTML editing, I had no idea that those beautiful webs were all nothing but lines of data. However, if I just simply copy DePauw's website's original code and paste it on a Word document, it would not mean anything. Where magical things happen were the softwares. If data are like the paint, I would like to say the softwares are the paper. Different kinds of paint are paired with different kinds of papers.
I do not know when do "numbers" mean so much to us now. Nowadays, especially in teenagers, "zero like" on ones' newest post can trouble he or she for days. Since when did those numbers reflect one's popularity, I really don't know. Nevertheless, before Facebook, before Twitter, there was no way of "measuring" one's popularity. One could not say that "I'm the most popular people because I get the highest score." or "I'm the most popular people because everybody says hi to me everyday." Now, with several looks at someone's posts from friends or the number of likes per post, we can easily tell who has higher popularity. So could we say it was those social network which formated this unique culture?
No comments:
Post a Comment