Podcast Summary: New Books Network – José Marichal, "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem: Renegotiating the Socio-Technical Contract"

Host: Jake
Guest: José Marichal (Professor, Political Science, California Lutheran University)
Date: October 21, 2025

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode delves into José Marichal's new book, "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem: Renegotiating the Socio-Technical Contract" (Policy Press, 2025), which argues for a reimagined relationship—framed as a "socio-technical contract"—between users and algorithmic systems. Marichal critiques our complicity and agency in algorithmic environments, surfaces the social harms of algorithmic curation, and proposes frameworks for more constructive engagement with algorithmic structures, especially in American society.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Path to the Book: Motivations and Early Insights

[02:00]

• Marichal’s background is in teaching internet technology and politics, with early work on Facebook’s impact.
• The Cambridge Analytica revelations post-2016 made everyone aware of algorithms’ role in shaping discourse.
• The post-2016 conversation missed something: "That a foreign actor is just manipulating us and we're all gullible" doesn’t fully capture the subtlety of algorithmic influence.
• During the pandemic, Marichal taught himself machine learning concepts and was struck by how optimization principles (e.g., gradient descent) echoed what people do in algorithmic environments:

  "We're acting like people who are kind of marching towards a local minimum. We're like optimizing ourselves in that way." [03:15, José Marichal]

• Recognized the need for a relational model—drawing from social contract theory—to articulate our mutual entanglement with algorithms.

2. "AI Slop" and the Food Analogy

[06:00]

• Marichal recalls a recent article for Tech Policy Press about "AI Slop"—the wave of cheap, low-quality AI-generated content.
• He draws an analogy between AI content and junk food:

  "We know intuitively that if we eat cookies and crackers and a six pack of beer every night... that's ultimately going to be really bad for our health." [06:45, José Marichal]

• The issue is not just what tech companies do, but our reciprocal desire and consumption:

  "The reason AI Slop works is because of our desire for it." [06:35, José Marichal]

• This reciprocal relationship leads to the core question: What do we and should we expect or demand from our algorithms?

3. The Algorithmic (Socio-Technical) Contract

[08:33]

• Marichal uses "social contract" as a metaphor for the user–tech relationship.
• Unlike standard market models, users can't simply exit platforms with high social costs; platform dynamics resemble the structuring power of states more than markets.

  "Macy's doesn't structure my ontology or my epistemology the way... TikTok might." [10:42, José Marichal]

• Social media has, at times, literally experimented with governance-like mechanisms (e.g., early Facebook policy votes).

4. Algorithms as "Reification Machines"

[11:25]

• Algorithms solidify ("reify") particular versions of reality for us—what Kate Crawford calls "ground truth."
• Marichal explores what we trade in these contracts:

  "We trade our autonomy for algorithmic curation and the security and comfort of relieving the anxiety of an uncertain world." [11:55, José Marichal]

• The false sense of agency is highlighted:

  "...we feel like we have the agency, we're driving. It's my content, I train the algorithm... when in reality, it's not just you choosing." [12:36, José Marichal]

• These systems offer relief from "the toil of choice" but at the cost of curtailing our subjective openness to the world.

5. Social Harms of the Algorithmic Contract

[14:03]

• Engagement algorithms reward extremes. Platforms emphasize content that provokes strong (especially negative) emotions.
• Platforms nudge users towards predictability for advertisers’ sake:

  "A more predictable subject is a better consumer, is something that's easier to sell to advertisers." [15:07, José Marichal]

• Result: A distorted sense of social reality where the loudest minorities ("2–3% of users") drive most content, promoting polarizations and false impressions of extremism.

  "The more time you spend on it, the more time you think that's the world as it is..." [17:02, José Marichal]

6. Why is the Algorithmic Contract So Attractive in the U.S.?

[18:23]

• The U.S. cultural emphasis on individualism and liberal market ideals predisposes Americans to seeing platforms as arenas for self-construction (see John Stuart Mill’s "experiments in living").
• The illusion: that curation lets us fully control our experiential world, avoiding disagreeable perspectives—a scenario antithetical to democratic engagement.
• There’s also a Romantic (Thoreauvian) strand—belief in the "divine spark" within—that aligns with algorithms’ ability to flatter users with perceived uniqueness and importance.

  "Algorithms kind of flatter us... construct this ontological, epistemological world that you want because you are so valuable." [21:24, José Marichal]

7. Renegotiating the Socio-Technical/Algorithmic Contract: Solutions

[22:35] Marichal outlines three pathways to healthier algorithmic relationships:

a) Encouraging Serendipity

• Echoes Robert Putnam and other political scientists: Community life once generated encounters with difference ("cross-cutting cleavages").
• Algorithms currently minimize serendipity; Marichal argues for designing systems to foster surprise, exposure to new ideas, and diverse affiliations.

b) Promoting Fuzziness (Nuance)

• Borrowing from fuzzy set theory: "Instead of seeing the world as a binary... you see the world as probabilistic."
• Platforms should blur rigid categories, allowing users to exist in overlapping, nuanced groupings—mirroring the complexity of human identity.

c) Fostering Imaginative Possibility

• Draws on Henri Lefebvre's "right to the city": Reimagining digital spaces to enable individual and collective flourishing.
• Cites examples of AI models producing "hallucinations" (e.g., depictions of diverse popes or alternative historical figures)—potentially useful for revealing new possibilities and sparking imagination:

  "We should maybe demand from these tools that they help us spark our imagination and our creativity in ways that unlock potentiality." [29:48, José Marichal]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "We also should demand from tech companies things that contribute to our health. So we should ask the question, what does AI owe us?" [08:05, José Marichal]

• "Algorithms are reification machines that calcify a particular ground truth." [11:25, cited by Jake]

• "If we are by nature multitudes... if the algorithm can't fully explain us... the next best thing that tech companies can do is to try to make us more predictable." [15:07, José Marichal]

• "If we're all individual islands, can we ever sort of engage with each other? ...The balance is tipped too far away from novelty seeking, self-creating, authentic self-creation." [22:35, José Marichal]

• "How do you create moments of serendipity so that we can all learn and grow individually from each other?" [24:39, José Marichal]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:00] Marichal on motivations, Cambridge Analytica, and the role of algorithms post-2016
• [06:00] Discussion of "AI Slop" and its analogy to junk food consumption
• [08:33] Defining the algorithmic contract and social contract theory for tech platforms
• [11:25] Algorithms as "reification machines" and the trade-off of autonomy for curation
• [14:03] Social harms: Engagement incentives, user predictability, and distortion of social reality
• [18:23] Why the algorithmic contract appeals in the U.S.—liberalism, individualism, Romanticism
• [22:35] "Becoming an algorithmic problem" and strategies for renegotiating the contract
• [26:30] Design interventions: serendipity, fuzziness/nuance, and promoting imaginative possibilities

Conclusion

Marichal’s book and this conversation urge listeners to think beyond user/consumer models and toward a "socio-technical contract" model—one that recognizes mutual responsibility, systemic harms, and the opportunity to reclaim more agency, creativity, and diversity in digital life. Renegotiating this contract means demanding better from platforms and changing our own habits, privileging serendipity, nuance, and growth over comfort and predictability.

Find more:
Bristol University Press (for the book), or search for José Marichal at California Lutheran University for articles and bio.