Sixth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Human embodied cognition and algorithmic learning form a mutualistic cyborg system. Through the medium of data, each fills the niche created by the other’s inabilities. In particular, algorithms, which lack human abilities for perception and action such as reading, writing, typing, and recognizing images, act as parasites upon humans to compensate for this lack. In this paper, I draw on cognitive science, bioinformatics, and cyborg theory to critique human-computer communication. First, I argue that misdirections by early researchers in robotics and artificial intelligence created a path-dependent trajectory in which human beings increasingly become, in the words of Simon Penny, “the perceptual front-end of Internet-based machine learning” and the “perceptual prosthetic of data mining”. Next, I carry these observations further by analyzing them through extended phenotype theory. This framework understands biological organisms as primarily gene-centered information transmission and preservation systems. I generalize it to non-biological systems as a method for explaining the persistence of a world in which human beings are coerced and suffer for the benefit of data-mining and machine learning algorithms and their creators. Ultimately, I contend that recognizing and grappling with human strengths and weaknesses in perception and reasoning with respect to big-data algorithms is crucial in promoting human flourishing—the remaking of typographic man—that would otherwise be impossible if our current trajectory continues.