From Classical Alienation to Algorithmic Alienation: A Brief Genealogy for the AI Era

Abstract

This essay is commentative on the intellectual genealogy of alienation for undergraduate readers and applies its central questions to algorithmic mediation in the AI era. The discussion follows changing accounts of autonomy, recognition, labour, desire, lived experience, situated existence, institutional power, and subject formation. Rather than presenting successive philosophers as contributors to one doctrine, it identifies disagreements about what a self is, what freedom requires, and which relationships can become alienating. Heidegger marks an important challenge to the picture of a detached individual subsequently influenced by an external world. The contemporary application asks whether predictive systems support judgment or acquire authority over the purposes and identities they represent. Historical concepts illuminate this question without demonstrating that algorithmic influence necessarily produces alienation. Qualitative research supplies limited evidence of reported tensions, not proof of constitutive dependence. The Systemised Self remains a speculative hypothesis rather than the inevitable endpoint of this genealogy. The conclusion therefore emphasises contestability, solidarity, and institutional alternatives. Meaningful freedom requires neither an untouched inner self nor independence from every tool, but practical opportunities to understand, challenge, and collectively reshape the conditions through which technological assistance operates.

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