What is an algorithm?
The fastest way to answer this question is to Google it. So let's do that.
Our first result comes from Oxford Languages, which gives a simple, computational definition for algorithms. Under this definition, algorithms are often described as recipes or instructions: they tell the computer what to do with inputs, such as numbers to be divided or costs to be summed.
But algorithms are more than just mathematical models. How else do we talk about them? How else does Google talk about them?
Flowcharts. Algorithms define sequences, processes, and, importantly, results.
The suggested videos come from educational sources. Algorithms are tools, tools apparently worth caring about. But we also see a music video: "Algorithm." Something cultural.
And algorithms are making headlines. This week, we get tech headlines: "Deep-Grid MAP-Elites." Last week, we got different headlines.
When I last searched "algorithm," the conversation was focused on...
free speech...
higher education...
and racial bias.
What was once a computational model, something to be boiled down into flowcharts, has become a source of a cultural dialogue spanning music and education. Clearly, algorithms are more than just instructions for numbers; they are recipes for how we experience the Internet and the world. One last example: searching "algorithm" yielded 367,000,000 results in 0.57 seconds. An algorithm determined which results we saw first. Based on these Google trends, algorithms will only become more important in our conversations about artificial intelligence, tech-dependency, and the dangers of the Internet.
