Eli West

The Algorithms We Worship: A Modern Day Tower of Babel

To understand the state of American sociopolitics, the Tower of Babel, a well-known story in the book of Genesis, provides tremendous insight. The unified civilization wants to build “a tower with its top in the heavens,” only for God to eventually “come down and baffle their language,” leading to their ultimate downfall. In this TEDx Talk, Eli West argues that, thousands of years later, it seems like we’ve encountered the same problem. Only this time, social media is our Tower, and god is the algorithms we worship.