With stock markets crashing pretty hard these days, this is an interesting reminder in the form of a riveting TED talk. Today, 70 percent of the stock market are operated by algorithms in what’s apparently called black box trading. Huge amounts of money are invested or de-invested with no human action involved. The essence of Slavin’s talk is that we are now at a point where such complex algorithms are written that we can no longer read. And that we, in fact, have come to rely on them so heavily that we literally let them shape our world.

From Weekly Filet #31, in August 2011.