IV. ADDITIONNAL BUNZ
Between 04/10/18 & 18/10/18

M. Bunz article "When Algorithms Learned How to Write" addresses the effect of algorithmic writing in relation to her profession as a scholar and journalist. She inquires the journalist’s role in late cognitive capitalism and information warfare as well as the socio-economical threat of knowledge global digitalisation and the meaning of truth in a post-truth era. Meanwhile concluding her chapter on an interesting reflexion on the paradigm shift from a material to a cognitive base economy facilitated by digital technologies.
 Yet, the terminology she employs grants full agency to “the machine”, “the algorithm” and the “digitalisation-effect” while obliterating the responsibility of the agents acting behind those terms turning them into “transcendental placeholders” (CF: Elena Esposito and her analysis of the term “crisis”). Her text lacks an undermining of the capitalists motivations supporting this digitalisation and the political and scholar responsibility toward such knowledge paradigm shift. Her vocabulary becomes a “catch-all signifier for contingencies” (CF: Elena Esposito) wherein testifying an anxiety transcending her critical judgment. By remaining in an observer position she offers no alternative, only a narrative — which cynically mimics some consequences of algorithmic information processing. She depicts “digitalisation” and “algorithms” as fixed entities embodying them with contingency, wherein one could assume technology is a process and not the finitude. Further, she dresses symptoms of a defunctioning socio-economical system which misuses technology and leads the public to refer to it as the source of the problem. Concurrently the author grants agency to technology while its perpetrator (engineer and other participants in algorithmic processes) should be the ones held responsible. In this regard, I believe that Stiegler’s proposal for a pharmacological understanding of technology is way more accurate method. On the contrary to M. Bunz, Bernard Stiegler warns us about the responsibilities of governments in technology's disruptive effect. His book "In Disruption – How do we not go mad?" propose ways to counter such effects through digital literacy, education and so forth. Stiegler provides agency to its reader where M. Bunz offers fear and anxiety.

“The digitalisation threat is not an observed condition, “it's an observation that produces meaning” only in hindsight.”. 
As it is believable that current shift of socio-economical paradigm is facilitated by digital technologies (and not because of them) M. Bunz analyse felt one-sighted in its portrayal of technology as threat. Techne is never an end in itself; it is only a mean through which agents achieve things. It is both those agents and things which are to be looked as threats.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reference: Bunz, Mercedes. "When Algorithms Learned How to Write." In The Silent Revolution, pp. 1-24. Palgrave Pivot, London, 2014.
Additional ressources
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137373502
https://mercedesbunz.net/about/
DEFINITIONS
_ Digitalization — https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/digitalization :
1. Economical : The use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.
2. Social : The integration of digital technologies into everyday life.
3. Cultural : Refers to the technology of digitalizing information.
4. Cultural : The method, practice, or process of converting (usually analog) information into a digital form which is computer-readable. Digitizing information makes it more feasible to archive, readily access, and share. A term that is sometimes also referred to as digitization, an interrelated concept, which refers to the actual conversion of analog data into digital bits of series of 1s and 0s, binary language.
FURTHER READINGS
https://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff-abtesting/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/04/29/digitization-digitalization-and-digital-transformation-confuse-them-at-your-peril/#45dcee642f2c
http://theamericanreader.com/on-theory-and-finance-review-of-berardis-the-uprising/
http://nonstop-future.org/txt?tid=57c26a6cc2bae24a2e71c3f8a3da5ca4
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/27/67999/time-acceleration-and-violence/
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/39/60284/emancipation-of-the-sign-poetry-and-finance-during-the-twentieth-century/

Liam Young @ Tomorrow Thoughts Today
- Where the city can't see
[ An interesting example of alternative distopian tales which use technologies as means to resist... Technology. ]