Introducing the “Age of Algorithms”

This is now widely acclaimed to be the “age of algorithms”, which refers both the pervasive personalization of web sites and other services, and to the employment of computer algorithms (often based on some form of Machine Learning) to various complex social-technical systems. There is an urgent need to document this new world, which I believe demands a major departure from traditional archival perspectives, and the methodologies for creating this documentation are very poorly explored. They are related to — but, ultimately, distinct in important ways — from the methodologies that have been proposed by various social scientists, policy analysts, and social justice advocates for "auditing algorithms" or "holding algorithms accountable", to use a few popular slogans.

I first discussed my initial ideas on this topic at this seminar in Spring 2017; since then I have had several opportunities to share them more publicly, and have developed a paper on the topic that has been submitted for publication. At this discussion, I'll summarize my conclusions and opportunities for future research in this overlooked area.

An Ontology-based Model of Information Behavior — Paulo Ohtoshi

In addition, Paulo Ohtoshi, a visiting doctoral student from the University of Brasilia, will briefly introduce his research.