The Algorithms may be beyond our control, but we can choose how to engage with them.

Sara Rubin here, ready to seize the new year—and knowing that is easier said than done. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about how so much that happens is beyond our control. I’ve been thinking about that in the grandest possible terms of life and death, and how our brief time on this Earth is a gift that might be interrupted at any time. But it’s true also of a great many other things, including the information ecosystem in which we all live, whether we like it or not. 

The latter is the subject of the cover story in the Jan. 1 edition of the Weekly, by astrologer Rob Brezsny, whose name you will recognize if you read the horoscope section titled Free Will Astrology. 

In this piece, Brezsny has crafted what he calls a Prayer to the Algorithms—one of those things that seems far beyond our control. We worked with Carmel artist Corinne Whitaker (who has blogged at Digital Giraffe) on artwork to accompany this story, and she shared a short piece with me that captures some of the uncertainty in this moment in time—including rethinking what change itself means.

“We understand change when it means changing jobs, planes, diapers, money,” Whitaker writes. “But what's happening now is a radical redefinition of change.

“It means we are not sure who we are any more. We're not sure what's a bot and what's a me. Where does that leave a human being? Being what?

“At the moment, being confused. Being frightened. Borders are crumbling. Boundaries are vanishing. Old definitions evaporate.”

In this time of old definitions evaporating, the boundaries we knew to be firm becoming mushy, I think it’s as good a time as any to rethink how we may still seize some control over what we can. Of course the Algorithms may or may not hear our prayers, but we certainly can choose how much or how little to engage with them.