The image above is The Monk By the Sea, by German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, overlaid by ones and zeroes. The monk is but a small figure, looking out at a vast sea — and you, as viewer, are contemplating his contemplation. The German Romantics philosophized about our condition as finite minds in an infinite world, drawing far-reaching conclusions from this meta-reflection: for example, that God is the medium of human consciousness. I superimposed bits on this painting, not only to represent my personal journey from German to Java, but to represent the digital consciousness I have gained from this new literacy. The algorithm is increasingly the mediator of our experienced reality. If the Romantics lived today, they would be fascinated by how algorithms “know” your habits even better than you, and present you with options that seem fortuitous, but in fact are always already constructed.
