“The Algorithmic You” is an initiative founded by a group of student researchers at the University of Toronto in May 2020 — during a worldwide pandemic, no less. Our mission is focused on empowering students to develop algorithmic literacy in an increasingly digital world.
The trend towards automation and mass data exchange has cultivated an environment in which trillion-dollar public and private data industries intersect to trace, mine, and control the nature of our everyday interactions. This has lasting impacts — from influencing our individual behaviours, to shaping our well-being, our politics, and our democratic outcomes as a collective (see: “The Great Hack”).
Students, particularly from arts and humanities backgrounds, can offer unique and critical insights in shaping the future of digital technology.
We believe that there is a need for university students to understand how algorithms impact us, both on and offline. This is because students, particularly from arts and humanities backgrounds, can offer unique and critical insights in shaping the future of digital technology. As such, our initiative combines a diverse range of interdisciplinary lenses (our team of five is made up of: a resident IT technician, a climate activist, a journalist, an aspiring lawyer, and an information sciences geek) to promote an understanding of algorithms that will help demystify their seemingly unknowable impacts on our lives.
If you’re interested in this topic, you can follow along here on this blog, where we will be posting everything from easy-to-understand break-downs of major algorithmic trends (i.e. COVID-19 and algorithms in healthcare), to speculative fiction exploring social issues related to algorithms. You can also keep up with our Instagram page (@ thealgorithmicyou), where we will be posting more visual educational content.
the/algorithmic/you 