The object of this study is the interface as both a technological and an ontological form through which algorithmic procedures are rendered into user experience. This experience is connected to diagnosing a new contour of the tragic within the digital environment – namely, the disproportionality between the “measure of life” and the “measure of procedure” manifested in personalization and access protocols. The methodological framework combines conceptual analysis, an actor-network approach to rationality understood as reproducibility within a network, semiotic examination of the interface, and a hermeneutic interpretation of extra-subjective regimes of meaning. Borges’s “Library of Babel” is employed as a thought experiment. Results:(1) A definition of algorithmic predetermination is proposed as a regime in which a principle becomes operationalized into a repeatable procedure and is consolidated through interface infrastructure; (2) a three-stage architecture of predetermination is described: operationalization, network standardization, and interface exposition; (3) it is demonstrated that the interface makes the measure of procedure affectively tangible and translates probabilistic expectations into practical necessity; (4) levels of the tragic are identified – humanity, creator, and the “little man” – each with characteristic modes of recognizing predetermination; (5) the analytical value of Borges’s model is substantiated for describing normalized pathways of attention and the loss of surprise. Conclusions: The interface functions as a key mediator between the algorithm and lived experience, while tragedy serves as an analytical operator that clarifies already perceptible yet diffuse problems of digital predetermination.
Lisenkova et al. (Fri,) studied this question.