Market Value and the Everyday Life of the Algorithm

The final chapter explores how a market can be built for an algorithmic system. It draws together studies of algorithms with the growing literature in science and technology studies (STS) on markets and the composition of financial value. It uses performativity to explore market making for algorithms. To accomplish market work and build a value for the algorithm, the chapter suggests, the project coordinators had to build a market of willing customers who were then constituted as a means to attract others to (potentially) invest in the system. This final chapter will suggest that market work is an important facet of the everyday life of an algorithm, without which algorithmic systems such as the one featured in this book, would not endure. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the distinct and only occasionally integrated everyday lives of the algorithm.