Editor's Introduction

it is rare that we have two issues on the same subject in close succession; this issue, which closely follows our spring 2019 issue also focused on algorithms, is an exception. It is an exception that we believe was well worth making as algorithms enter more and more aspects of our lives in ways that are both apparent and invisible.

While both issues cover the same general subject, they differ in several aspects. First, our spring issue was organized by Social Research; we invited all the authors. This second issue is based on papers given at a conference, "Persons without Qualities: Metrics, Algorithms, and the Shaping of the Self," organized by Joseph E. Davis, research associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, which took place in April 2019 and was sponsored by the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. The papers were, of course, reviewed by Social Research.

The most important substantive difference between the two issues is that the first explored both positive and negative effects of the increasing widespread use of algorithms, while the second focuses on the many untoward and perhaps unforeseen ways in which algorithms are changing our lives and who we think we are.

Read together, we believe, these two issues provide a robust discussion of many of the problems created, and the goals achieved by, the use of algorithms, and would make an excellent text for a course on the subject.