Since ancient times, algorithms have been one of several definitions of rules, but by no means the only or even the most prominent one. Lorraine Daston’s 2022 book, Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, traces the rise of rules of algorithms in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This event will be a discussion of the book, prefaced by a brief introduction to its themes, with special emphasis on the rule-as-algorithm and its alternatives.
Lorraine Daston is Director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She has published broadly on topics in the history of science, including probability, wonders, objectivity, and observation. Her most
recent books are Rules: A short History of What We Live By(Princeton University Press, 2022) and Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate(Columbia Global Reports, 2023).
Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorrain...
Book: press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691156989/rules
Audrey Borowski is a research fellow with the Desirable Digitalisation project, a joint initiative of the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge that investigates how to design AI and other digital technologies in responsible ways. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savantis forthcoming with Princeton University Press: press.princeton.edu/books/har...