orders of discourse: 2017, distracted boyfriend, and peak seo

part 2 of a series

In my last post, I shared some takes about algorithms as a way of ordering a discourse. Michel Foucault talks about “discourse” as the ensemble of technologies, rituals, institutions, and rules involved in communicating ideas—and our discourses are always changing across history, just like the ways for making clothes or preparing food are always changing. (Every time I type the word “discourse,” I think of Twitter discourse, but that is not what I am talking about here.)

My idea of what’s happening with the election, or what happened in World War II, is as much based on facts as it is on the discourse I use to receive and understand those facts. That discourse is made up of A) specific choices and tools made by others to develop those facts into narratives and deliver them to us, and B) my specific situation and intentions when I receive the information. Algorithmic technology has changed the way we do this by involving automated computer processes at each step, which changes how the …