Questioning Algorithms. Interview with Igor Pelgreffi

Andrew Feenberg, one of the greatest living philosophers of technology, addresses the question of the algorithm starting from a comparison with some of his typical topics, in particular his vision of technology as a social construction derived from works like Critical Theory of Technology (1991) and Questioning Technology (1999). Automation in work is one of the logical centres of the evolutionary and historical movement that today leads to the primacy of what may be called ‘algorithmic governmentality’. After an analysis of Marx’s thought in the Capital and in the Grundrisse, the question of the Jacquard loom and of Babbage is also touched upon in the line of a capitalism of machine automation, which deskills and eliminates labour at many levels, including the intellectual one. Feenberg also dwells on other theoretical references, such as his concept of ‘technical code’, that of Foucault’s dispositif and above all the possibility of re-actualizing Marcuse’s thought, in the key of a critique of technology today. Furthermore, Feenberg explores the question of the loss of the Lebenswelt as a symptom of the one-dimensionality of the human being due to extensive digitalization in the historical-social world, and the future possibility of emancipation.