This book is recommended to me by Amazon.com today. Among all the spam recommendations I get from Amazon, this is probably the first book I care. Amazon’s recommendation algorithm is probably getting better by adapting itself to my shopping behavior.

If I buy this new book, I will give feedback to the algorithm and increase the weight of its possible scores about me. In other words, I will let Amazon to do better predictions about my future shopping behavior. If I keep getting good recommendations and buy whatever is recommended, I will adapt to Amazon’s recommendation software. Me adapting to the software from one end, the software adapting to me from the other end… is there a meeting point somewhere? Is this the peak of a conflict? Do I work for Amazon or Amazon works for me? Because of this bidirectional adaptation I am politically ambivalent in my position. A position in the informationally generated life.

This is an interesting encounter. The description of the book goes:

Today, in the twenty-first century, we witness the emergence of a new class of beings: organisms that are first imagined and then–through the agency of biotechnologies–brought to life. What once was myth is today a medium.

Eduardo Kac
http://www.ekac.org/

Alain Badiou
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/badiou.html

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