Episode 5 (2020): Jérémy Grosman - Algorithmic Objects, Algorithmic Practices

Jérémy is a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy at the
University of Namur in Belgium His work sits between computer
science on the one hand and philosophy on the other. 


Jeremy’s talk today takes a deep dive into the daily practices of
engineers (practices like implementations, experiments,
publications). He says that these practices force engineers to
complicate the separation between algorithms, on one side, and
problems, on the other. His work focuses on a character named
Robin, an engineer working on recommender systems, who he
ethnographically observed in his research project. 


In today’s talk, he will focus on describing one bit of Robin’s
work, in order to hopefully teach us something about what
algorithms, as objects are, in between in between abstract
mathematical objects and concrete material objects, and he will
attempts to give us an insight into engineering endeavours.