For the last 97 years, Time magazine has been anointing a ‘person of the year’ every year-end. As a child who grew up on a staple of Time and Newsweek, I would eagerly look forward to the year’s last editions simply to see if I could guess who it would be. I succeeded only half the time. Nevertheless, thinking of all the persons I could list as possibilities and then weeding most of them out was a fun exercise. It gave me a kick.
It wasn’t always called person of the year. In a less gender-sensitised era, it was called man of the year and, in some cases, woman of the year. It became the person of the year in the Noughties. What started in 1927 with the coveted space given to aviator Charles Lindbergh, was given to Donald Trump for 2024. Time features a person, group, idea or object that, “for better or worse”, has done the most to influence the events of the year.
I go back to the ways of my school days. I sit down and list my own person of the year for 2024. And it is not Donald Trump. It is not human at all. For me, it is the algorithm. Call it a he, she, them or it, the algorithm is the one biggest influencer of 2024. The algorithm has shaped the lives of billions, and continues to influence the future of everything.
Let me introduce you to this being. It is a lifeless form with a life all its own. The algorithm to me is a recipe. It is not a dish. It is a clever recipe that results in a good and tasty dish. It has many ingredients. It has many steps as well. It has a flow. It has both consistency and inconsistency loaded into it. It is what makes the world run today. All of life and living is governed by the algorithm.
A cleverly structured algorithm makes for all convenient outputs we are so used to in life. The clever point is that we live in an algorithm-led world, with very few of us understanding what it does. The algorithm is here, and at the same time, it isn’t. It is in hiding. The algorithm in more ways than one is Maya. It is not physical. Instead, it is a bigger meta physicality that runs our lives, our economy, our buying decisions, our consuming decisions and our very being. It’s scary, but it is amidst us. None of us can escape it, however much we try.
Let me tell you why I choose Ms Algorithm as the super-influencer of the year and equally the years ahead. Every passing day, each of us has progressively adopted the digital way of life. Anyone with a smartphone understands he is hooked to WhatsApp. If you are compromised to the ways of the digital and equally the ways of how an algorithm works its way into your lives, you will not resist the thought that the horse has bolted.
The algorithm is a computation aid. It helps you solve a common consumer or user problem by setting together a procedure that takes one baby step at a time. It simplifies to complicate. The end goal is to ensure the consumer’s life is made richer and easier.
The algorithm is, however, an animal. In the beginning, it is a simple recipe. And then it assumes a life of its own. It becomes a thinking recipe. It learns. It feeds itself, and by the end of the day you might as well expect it to be a sentient animal. In the beginning you make it happen. You teach it. It learns. It then teaches you back. It tells you who you are, what you like, what you want to do. In the case of the rogue algorithm it tells you what you can and must do as well.
The algorithm has many approaches, many lives, many ways and will eventually have many moods as well. And in the end, with its cousin learning and teaching mechanisms of machine learning and autonomous learning mechanisms that developers are working on to unleash in a more speedy manner, expect algorithm mayhem.
If I am to add an example, let me take the case of my smart refrigerator. It is 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Physicals apart, it is a mean machine. It is a multi-sensor equipped animal. I will stop calling it a machine now. It’s an animal with an algorithm that is more alive, kicking and learning oriented than any before. Of the 26 sensors strategically placed in it, there is one on the egg tray. I have space for 24 neatly placed eggs. Every time the eggs are taken out, the algorithm is quick to calculate and work out a replenishment schedule. Over a period of time, my refrigerator is learning my family’s love for eggs and is planning how much to replace and when.
My fridge, in the bargain, is never empty. And never over-full either. My refrigerator has learned my wife’s baking love and the periodicity of her passion. It keeps pace with egg replenishments, just as it plans for everything else my refrigerator is proud to stock. Give it time, and the refrigerator will tell me what I want and when. Life is easier than before. Life is boring as well. Less routine. Less replenishment planning oriented. In time my pal the refrigerator will tell me why we should not be consuming so many eggs a week for a family of 4. It, he, she or they (I have started respecting the algorithm that put my refrigerator mind together) might even want to guide me to the latest research on the subject of how many eggs are good.
The algorithm is more alive than before. It is influencing everything. It is making a lot of things easier than ever before. In many ways, it is giving birth to newer nuanced algorithms. Many of these have the ability to tell me what to do and what not to do. In the beginning I thought man made the algorithm. Today, the algorithm is making me.
My list of detailed and involved algorithm interventions in our lives today tells me there are a total of 186 spaces already touched. As the months go by, expect more and more of every space being touched. With the ability of quantum computing yet to be unleashed, the future looks loaded in favour of the algorithm and its super-abilities to be the biggest intrusive and influencing factor in our lives.
Many of us will not realise it, but there is a little bit of the algorithm in our lives already. The reactive algorithm is a reality today. The proactive algorithm is waiting in the wings, just as it is waiting to give all of us wings, even as we silently complain as to how a whole lot of decision-making is not in our hands anymore.
On that note, cheers to the person of the year, the algorithm.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)