Karl Marx located us within material conditions and relations of production and argued that our consciousness is itself shaped by material conditions we live in. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, argued that a human being is inhabited by desires of which he is not fully conscious. Imanuel Kant, in contrast, placed a human being at a higher pedestal
The question of what it means to be a human has been discussed in philosophy and forms an important component of social thought. From the Cartesian thinking subject to Kantian autonomous individual, from Nietzsche’s Ubermensch to Iqbal's Shaheen, human beings have often been understood through their capacity to think, feel, choose, create, question and transcend the conditions imposed upon them. Humans don't merely adapt like other animals do , they express themselves too. Paulo Freire in the Pedagogy of the oppressed, calls a human being not a finished entity but an unfinished being capable of reflection and transformation. Humanization , he argues , is an ongoing process through which individuals exercise consciousness and the capacity to shape their existence.
To me , understanding the nitty gritties of human anatomy and physiology is insufficient to answer "what is a human being ?". We are undoubtedly more than a mass of cells , a collection of organs and organ systems. We know that Martin Heidegger, a great German philosopher, suggested that a human being is thrown into a world already saturated with language, meaning and history. Foucault taught us that a human doesn't simply exist within society he is immersed in relations of power and regimes of knowledge. Karl Marx located us within material conditions and relations of production and argued that our consciousness is itself shaped by material conditions we live in. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, argued that a human being is inhabited by desires of which he is not fully conscious. Imanuel Kant, in contrast, placed a human being at a higher pedestal. We have Nietzsche, Descartes and other philosophers as well who also wrestled with the question i raised in the very beginning of this article.
Having said that, perhaps the 21st century has given us a new complication. In the contemporary times, we are surrounded not only by language, immersed not only in power, embedded only merely in economic relations or driven not merely by unconscious desires,
we are increasingly surrounded by algorithms. Yes, in the current tech-savvy world we can't answer what it means to be a human. We live eat, play or discuss not with a human but to what i call "The Algorithmic Human". Algorithms have become actors on our behalf and we willingly handover countless choices to them. For instance it initially seems convenient and reasonable to assign a task to some chat bot but it risks atrophying the sacred muscles of human thought. And yes , convenience eventually melts into cognitive dependence.
We encounter algorithms in almost all domains of everyday life. They are present when we open Instagram, scroll through reels, watch a video on youtube or simply search for something on google. The algorithm quietly observes our moves and learns from them. What we watch, what we skip, what we like, what we share and even how long we stay on internet becomes part of our behavioural profile. Our facebook and Instagram profiles represent us more than we represent ourselves. We measure our worth based on likes, shares and comments we receive on our posts. But let's pause for a moment and think , do our social media profiles , virtual likes and comments define us who we really are ? Should a man be known or judged based on the feeds and reels he receives on his social media accounts ? And in this tech-savvy world , has our right to choose for ourselves or, in a broader sense ,our freedom become fragmented because we increasingly do not choose what we see rather what we see is increasingly chosen for us?
So the question i raised initially therefore, should no longer merely be what humans are.
We should ask what happens to a human being when he himself becomes an object of algorithmic knowledge?
Perhaps the first thing that happens is that the boundary between human agency and technological influence begins to blur.
No, i don't deny human agency because that would be a sociologically dumb argument. I accept that humans can resist, negotiate and reinterpret the influences exerted upon them by different external forces.
However, simultaneously, i reckon that algorithms condition the circumstances within which we exercise our agency. That is a more deeper peoblem.
I say it because an algorithm does not merely observe what we do, it increasingly participates in determining what we encounter and hence determines what we pay attention to. Guess what folks ! This creates a profound socio-philosophical problem that if the environment in which we make choices is itself being continuously and significantly curated by systems designed to predict and influence our behaviour, how autonomous are those choices?
Let's bring the great Karl Marx back into the conversation here. He vehemently argued that capitalism does not merely organise the production of commodities , it shapes social relations and human consciousness. In contemporary digital capitalism, human attention itself has become an enormously valuable resource. Our clicks, searches, preferences, conversations and moments of attention can be transformed into economic value. So technically, the user is therefore simultaneously a consumer and a producer. The old factory had workers producing commodities through their labour. The digital platform has users producing data through their everyday existence.
Now sociologically speaking, can it represent a new form of what Marx might have called alienation ? We increasingly produce something that we do not fully control and whose value we may never see. Our own behavioural traces return to us in the form of advertisements, recommendations, rankings and predictions.
Imagine a human being producing data that increasingly produces the environment in which he is doomed to live. What a pity !
Now is Nietzsche's critique of herd morality relevant in this age of Algorithms?. I would answer with a resounding YES !
Consider a lifestyle repeatedly presented as desirable or a video or an opinion spreading like wildfire on social networks with millions of likes, shares and views. Here popularity itself begins to function as a justification. The bandwagon effect of economics comes into play and hence the reinforcement of herd morality of Nietzsche. So we unknowingly surrender our independent judgment to the values of what Nietzsche would call the 'Herd'. Let's understand the irony here. A product becomes desirable not because it is worth it but because it is trending. An opinion appears credible not because it is thoughtful or exceptional but because it has accumulated thousands of likes, comments and shares. And yes , popularity generates further popularity, creating a self reinforcing cycle. So we may argue that the algorithm can turn collective preference into a mechanism for producing further collective preference by continuously displaying what is already popular. So the algorithm apparently gives each individual a different feed yet millions may end up consuming the same trends, videos and other stuff. It makes us believe the existence of individuality of our preferences but generates those preferences within the same technological environment. So the modern herd doesn't march together, it scrolls on individually personalised screens while being silently ushered to similar direction.
To me, the erosion of the autonomous human being is the most brutal consequence of the virus of algorithms. Human being is expected to think, feel , doubt , resist, struggle and shape himself. However , he now seems to be doomed to respond to what is presented to him. I believe the algorithmic human should apologize to Kant who otherwise had placed a human's dignity in the capacity for autonomous reason. Kantian human wasn't merely intelligent but had courage to use his own understanding. Nietzsche won't expect his Ubermensch endlessly scrolling or be driven by algorithms but transcending the values of the contemporary algorithmic herd.
The great Muhammad Iqbal(Rah) similarly celebrated the Shaheen, the eagle that symbolises khudi, selfhood, aspiration, courage and a blatant refusal to live as a passive creature.
The algorithmic environment, unfortunately, creates the possibility of a human being who increasingly does the opposite. Instead of asking what he wants to read, the feed tells him what to read, instead of searching for knowledge, the recommendation supplies it, instead of confronting unfamiliar ideas, the algorithm repeatedly presents what resembles his existing preferences. So an algorithmic human nolonger lives merely in an iron cage of Max Weber but also in the invisible echo chamber that cripples his doubt, thinking and critical understanding.
Bottom line
The deepest danger is not that algorithms will make humans unintelligent but that they may make independent thinking increasingly unnecessary, difficult or irrelevant. So folks ! The more efficiently machines think on our behalf, the less compelled we may feel to think for ourselves.
Email:----------------------------------tasaduqmaqbool9@gmail.com
Karl Marx located us within material conditions and relations of production and argued that our consciousness is itself shaped by material conditions we live in. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, argued that a human being is inhabited by desires of which he is not fully conscious. Imanuel Kant, in contrast, placed a human being at a higher pedestal
The question of what it means to be a human has been discussed in philosophy and forms an important component of social thought. From the Cartesian thinking subject to Kantian autonomous individual, from Nietzsche’s Ubermensch to Iqbal's Shaheen, human beings have often been understood through their capacity to think, feel, choose, create, question and transcend the conditions imposed upon them. Humans don't merely adapt like other animals do , they express themselves too. Paulo Freire in the Pedagogy of the oppressed, calls a human being not a finished entity but an unfinished being capable of reflection and transformation. Humanization , he argues , is an ongoing process through which individuals exercise consciousness and the capacity to shape their existence.
To me , understanding the nitty gritties of human anatomy and physiology is insufficient to answer "what is a human being ?". We are undoubtedly more than a mass of cells , a collection of organs and organ systems. We know that Martin Heidegger, a great German philosopher, suggested that a human being is thrown into a world already saturated with language, meaning and history. Foucault taught us that a human doesn't simply exist within society he is immersed in relations of power and regimes of knowledge. Karl Marx located us within material conditions and relations of production and argued that our consciousness is itself shaped by material conditions we live in. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, argued that a human being is inhabited by desires of which he is not fully conscious. Imanuel Kant, in contrast, placed a human being at a higher pedestal. We have Nietzsche, Descartes and other philosophers as well who also wrestled with the question i raised in the very beginning of this article.
Having said that, perhaps the 21st century has given us a new complication. In the contemporary times, we are surrounded not only by language, immersed not only in power, embedded only merely in economic relations or driven not merely by unconscious desires,
we are increasingly surrounded by algorithms. Yes, in the current tech-savvy world we can't answer what it means to be a human. We live eat, play or discuss not with a human but to what i call "The Algorithmic Human". Algorithms have become actors on our behalf and we willingly handover countless choices to them. For instance it initially seems convenient and reasonable to assign a task to some chat bot but it risks atrophying the sacred muscles of human thought. And yes , convenience eventually melts into cognitive dependence.
We encounter algorithms in almost all domains of everyday life. They are present when we open Instagram, scroll through reels, watch a video on youtube or simply search for something on google. The algorithm quietly observes our moves and learns from them. What we watch, what we skip, what we like, what we share and even how long we stay on internet becomes part of our behavioural profile. Our facebook and Instagram profiles represent us more than we represent ourselves. We measure our worth based on likes, shares and comments we receive on our posts. But let's pause for a moment and think , do our social media profiles , virtual likes and comments define us who we really are ? Should a man be known or judged based on the feeds and reels he receives on his social media accounts ? And in this tech-savvy world , has our right to choose for ourselves or, in a broader sense ,our freedom become fragmented because we increasingly do not choose what we see rather what we see is increasingly chosen for us?
So the question i raised initially therefore, should no longer merely be what humans are.
We should ask what happens to a human being when he himself becomes an object of algorithmic knowledge?
Perhaps the first thing that happens is that the boundary between human agency and technological influence begins to blur.
No, i don't deny human agency because that would be a sociologically dumb argument. I accept that humans can resist, negotiate and reinterpret the influences exerted upon them by different external forces.
However, simultaneously, i reckon that algorithms condition the circumstances within which we exercise our agency. That is a more deeper peoblem.
I say it because an algorithm does not merely observe what we do, it increasingly participates in determining what we encounter and hence determines what we pay attention to. Guess what folks ! This creates a profound socio-philosophical problem that if the environment in which we make choices is itself being continuously and significantly curated by systems designed to predict and influence our behaviour, how autonomous are those choices?
Let's bring the great Karl Marx back into the conversation here. He vehemently argued that capitalism does not merely organise the production of commodities , it shapes social relations and human consciousness. In contemporary digital capitalism, human attention itself has become an enormously valuable resource. Our clicks, searches, preferences, conversations and moments of attention can be transformed into economic value. So technically, the user is therefore simultaneously a consumer and a producer. The old factory had workers producing commodities through their labour. The digital platform has users producing data through their everyday existence.
Now sociologically speaking, can it represent a new form of what Marx might have called alienation ? We increasingly produce something that we do not fully control and whose value we may never see. Our own behavioural traces return to us in the form of advertisements, recommendations, rankings and predictions.
Imagine a human being producing data that increasingly produces the environment in which he is doomed to live. What a pity !
Now is Nietzsche's critique of herd morality relevant in this age of Algorithms?. I would answer with a resounding YES !
Consider a lifestyle repeatedly presented as desirable or a video or an opinion spreading like wildfire on social networks with millions of likes, shares and views. Here popularity itself begins to function as a justification. The bandwagon effect of economics comes into play and hence the reinforcement of herd morality of Nietzsche. So we unknowingly surrender our independent judgment to the values of what Nietzsche would call the 'Herd'. Let's understand the irony here. A product becomes desirable not because it is worth it but because it is trending. An opinion appears credible not because it is thoughtful or exceptional but because it has accumulated thousands of likes, comments and shares. And yes , popularity generates further popularity, creating a self reinforcing cycle. So we may argue that the algorithm can turn collective preference into a mechanism for producing further collective preference by continuously displaying what is already popular. So the algorithm apparently gives each individual a different feed yet millions may end up consuming the same trends, videos and other stuff. It makes us believe the existence of individuality of our preferences but generates those preferences within the same technological environment. So the modern herd doesn't march together, it scrolls on individually personalised screens while being silently ushered to similar direction.
To me, the erosion of the autonomous human being is the most brutal consequence of the virus of algorithms. Human being is expected to think, feel , doubt , resist, struggle and shape himself. However , he now seems to be doomed to respond to what is presented to him. I believe the algorithmic human should apologize to Kant who otherwise had placed a human's dignity in the capacity for autonomous reason. Kantian human wasn't merely intelligent but had courage to use his own understanding. Nietzsche won't expect his Ubermensch endlessly scrolling or be driven by algorithms but transcending the values of the contemporary algorithmic herd.
The great Muhammad Iqbal(Rah) similarly celebrated the Shaheen, the eagle that symbolises khudi, selfhood, aspiration, courage and a blatant refusal to live as a passive creature.
The algorithmic environment, unfortunately, creates the possibility of a human being who increasingly does the opposite. Instead of asking what he wants to read, the feed tells him what to read, instead of searching for knowledge, the recommendation supplies it, instead of confronting unfamiliar ideas, the algorithm repeatedly presents what resembles his existing preferences. So an algorithmic human nolonger lives merely in an iron cage of Max Weber but also in the invisible echo chamber that cripples his doubt, thinking and critical understanding.
Bottom line
The deepest danger is not that algorithms will make humans unintelligent but that they may make independent thinking increasingly unnecessary, difficult or irrelevant. So folks ! The more efficiently machines think on our behalf, the less compelled we may feel to think for ourselves.
Email:----------------------------------tasaduqmaqbool9@gmail.com
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