A(l)gora: The Mindscape

This essay for the inaugural issue of Technology and Language articulates how we inhabit public space in the critical tradition of the Enlightenment and in the condition of contemporary cyber-technologies. The fabled agora of the ancients has forfeited its intersubjective relevance and imaginary potency. Community no longer hinges on communing: Algorithmic Gate-Keeping is taking command. This paper sounds the bell for a new approach to envisaging social cohesion based on the notion of an “algora,” a term coined to describe a state of affairs that has a longer, largely overlooked, philosophical pedigree. The history of cognitive ideation is also the history of “mindscapes.” They are occasioned by the conjuncture of technology and language, an insight articulated by Kant, formalized by Turing and now practiced by the global citizenry of users, daily hammering out on keyboards what this means in practice.