Paper short abstract:

I follow David Beer's advice to explore not only the social impact of the algorithm as code but more importantly the meanings and ideas about algorithms circulating in society. In this context, I look at the meanings of the power and agency of algorithms in Catholic online discourse.

Paper long abstract:

The power and causality of algorithms are - on the one hand - a code by which the society we live in is increasingly becoming a society of 'black boxes' and enigmatic technologies (Pasquale 2015), and on the other hand - which interests us more - the meanings we are willing to attribute to them. As David Beer (2017: 2) writes: "when thinking about the power of the algorithm, we (…) need to think about the powerful ways in which notions and ideas about the algorithm circulate through the social world". The extent of power, agency and control that algorithms take over us depends on how much power, agency, and control over us we are willing to give up to the algorithms - and, in the longer term, to artificial intelligence by building up an idea of their omnipotence.

In the context of ambiguous definitions of the term "algorithm", it is worth looking at how it is perceived and defined in the Catholic online discourse, especially in the context of the causality of the algorithm, as a causality that mixes human and machine causality and sits alongside divine causality and human causality. The range of meanings that are attributed to 'algorithms' is wide in the discourse: from an algorithm taken literally as a computational or scientific procedure to treating God’s work as an act that runs according to a specific algorithm.