Algorithms are lauded as new processes in capitalism’s arsenal. While traditional capitalism dealt in heavy metals such as gold, machines, production, and labor to move assets, the new model is a light extractive filter sitting atop a tangled web of connected network traffic, siphoning off the nectar.
While increasing efficiency and value creation, an algorithm sits atop an already exploitative digital economy (harvesting of personal data and clicks), much as traditional capital set atop early civilizations (militarized states protect merchants and allow factories and supply chains). This additional layering offers benefits yet increasingly attenuates production from the physical into the abstract and speculative.
Arguably, the reliance on coordinated, cooperative networks provides stability beyond material reality until chaos ensues, at which point the revenge of the real reduces artificial systemic complexity very rapidly: algorithms are not capital but pleasant parasites easily swatted.