Algorithms bear the image of their makers, and toil like their servants. Technology of any sort cannot be neutral, as it is embedded in a social matrix of why it was created and what work it performs. An algorithm, its context, and what it lacks should be understood as a political statement carrying great consequences, and as a society we should respond to each as needed, engaging the purveyors of these algorithms on a political level as well as legal and economic.

Three algorithmic systems are revealed to embody various class interests. First, a population ecology modeled simply by a pair of predator-prey equations leads one to conclude that socialist revolution and compulsory leisure are the only routes to avoiding civilizational collapse. Second, a formula for labor supply reduces us to lazy drones who work as little as possible to support our choice of lifestyle. Finally, advertising on Wikipedia could yield a multi-billion-dollar fortune—shall we put it up for sale or double-down on radical equality among all people?