Full Circle
Nope, don’t touch that dial. Don’t get out of that chair. Listen to me. Algorithms are all the talk of the day. Religious people make the sign of the cross when they hear the word. Social media people complain when they get bad stuff on their Facebook page. As usual, people blame someone else, like “Well, I wasn’t looking for that kind of stuff.” Really? Well, now, I will give you something else to be angry with me. I am going to tell you that whatever algorithms you are having fault with, are your fault! Yes, you! Now I am going to tell you another secret, and they aren’t new either. Oh, sure they have changed, they have evolved. I bet you get tired of hearing me say that word, don’t cha? Let’s take all of you back to your Bibles, at least the ones of you that have one, a part of the passage from Proverbs 23-7. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Our minds are like a big computer. When you first buy it, it has a clean hard drive. It is empty, it is inert. Then you start to program it. You give it a brain or an operating system. Then, you embed the part of it that gives it tools, like it arms and legs, and its voice and its ears. You train it in the areas that you want it to be educated in. And while in its infancy, you teach it, and give it jobs. When it gets old enough, you introduce it to the internet, and make it a part of that big community of computers, who are just like people. Some are nice and some are not so nice. Computers use algorithms to learn how to serve you best, to give you what you want, to make you happy. So I am sorry if your computer is not making you happy, it is your fault. Sorry, but it is your fault, as you are not feeding it your correct feelings. You may say you don’t like politics but you will spend all day liking and loving and caring and laughing and being shocked and being sad and then angry. But all the time you are still scrolling through these. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” You see, y
