• Are algorithms nature?
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jul/13/ted-global-2011-glastonbury-nerdstock

    Algorithms are no longer just a set of instructions that tell a computer what to do. They’ve become a force in their own right, according to Kevin Slavin, the co-founder of games company Area/Code. The world has now become a place where algorithms battle each other for supremacy. The financial markets now consist of one set of algorithms trying to outsmart another set, and nobody can be exactly sure any more of what it exactly is that we’re doing. “We’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world that we’ve made.”

    He cites the example of the “Flash Crash”, when at 2.42pm on 6 May last year, 9% of the Dow Jones index simply disappeared “and nobody knew where it went”. No person was in control; it was simply a bunch of computer algorithms battling it out against each other. This, he says, is not information: it’s culture.