2021: The Algorithm-Industrial Complex: Where is the Widespread Backlash?

My article in InnovationAus published on 14 September 2021.

PDF of the article can be found here.

OPINON: There’s a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises” in which a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways” he answers. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

And suddenly it would seem, the algorithm-industrial complex has erupted onto the civil society and policy landscape. Preconditions that have festered and been largely ignored for more than 20 years, have given rise to dynamics seen elsewhere.

The algorithm-industrial complex is characterised by a power and skills distortion: public sectors gutted of skills, and the influence of and outrageous expenditure on outsourcing, tech, and consultants.

But what defines the algorithm-industrial complex is the emergence of policy which can only be executed via algorithms.