Algorithmic Misfits

What does your online behaviour reveal? Have you noticed that the internet gives you exactly what you need? Do you hide your activities from algorithms which might be ‘watching’? Does the internet really know us better than we know ourselves? Artist Ben Landau invites you to participate in Algorithmic Misfits, a roaming discussion series introducing experts in the bewildering world of data privacy.

Spending time on the internet is rewarding because it delivers what we want. However this is no accident. Increasingly, algorithms bias what we see and hear, according to what ‘they’ want us to buy, believe, or actually be. As a self-confessed internet junkie, Ben is disturbed by how narrowly he is typecast, the intention of his controllers, and how little of the ‘splinternet’ he actually sees.

Algorithmic Misfits introduces audience members to professionals on both sides of the internet privacy war – algorithm nerds, freedom fighters and obsessed academics, who will help untangle what’s real and what’s fiction. Even considering known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns (to borrow a Rumsfieldian expression). How can we ever be truly free on the internet?