"We ain't your target market, and I ain't your target market", sang the band Sisteray on their 2018 song Algorithm Prison. They don't wish, as they put it, to be “trapped in a code". Who would? Yet Sisteray know that we are all exposed to a powerful and judgmental data gaze – as the camera zooms out at the end of their official video, the bandmembers all stare blankly at their phones, the words target market etched into the dirt on the back windscreen of their van.
The song shows how algorithms have risen in fame and notoriety in the last few years. And it is illustrative of a widely held concern over what these algorithms are doing to us. Often depicted as shadowy and constraining structural forces, algorithms are a source of significant anxiety. People often worry that these bits of code have a powerful but unknown sway over their lives. With an algorithmic grading system implemented to produce the recent A Level results, this anxiety is something we have seen magnified in recent days.
It seems that there was an implicit assumption on the part of those awarding the grades, that simply evoking the concept of the algorithm would be enough to reassure people of the objectivity and systematic fairness of the results. The calculative logic behind algorithmic decisions is often based on ideals of objectivity, neutrality and accuracy. In assuming that others would also see algorithms in those positive terms, the existing unease and scepticism about such systems was missed.
