Afterword

This essay explores relations among algorithms, everyday experience, and contemporary systems of knowledge and production. It considers one kind of image as emblematic of late capitalism: online pictures of food, with particular attention paid to #avocadotoast. The essay traces such images’ implications and equivocations, indicating the technoscientific chains that produce both food and images. The reading thus operates at the level of code—an exercise of cultural decipherment—and of craft—a history of making and using. The creation and distribution of digital images is both a constitutive part and a (ripe) symbol of the material and semiotic ecosystems of algorithmic culture. These systems are characterized by globally distributed scenarios of consumption, predation, and metaconsumption.