Reflections on 'The Hymn of Acxiom'

I was re-listening to Vienna Teng's "The Hymn of Acxiom" the other day and it prompted me to think a little bit about how the song's meaning has evolved as AI and algorithmic curation have become more prevalant and intrusive in our everyday lives. If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend you check it out!

Something that struck me during my listen was the power and emotion behind the part of the song where the algorithm says "a brand new need is born". The song crescendoes into religious fervor now that the algorithm, and its backing company, have locked us into another desire, another "perfect lust". It's a victory. It's a hallelujah. The song hammers the point home by quite literally ending on an "Amen".

'The Hymn of Acxiom' was released in 2013 — funnily enough, the same year that Cambridge Analytica was founded — and while it centers on data collection and algorithms spoon-feeding us content during the Big Data era, the encroachment of AI and AI-generated content has exacerbated those same issues and strenghtened the song's themes. We've gone from companies using machines to feed us other people's content to machines feeding us content made by other machines approximating and acting as a facsimile of our creative output.

Owning our curation process is important now more than ever if we want to regain and retain control of what we consume and how it shapes us, rather than letting our views get shaped for us. The decay of Twitter into a fetid corpse filled with racism and discrimination, along with the very public "personality" shifts of Grok, serve as a very stark reminder of how just how pliable our culture is to the whims of those in power.

In an era where there is ever-increasing weaponization of our digital footprints, it's also important to be aware of the breadcrumbs you leave behind and take steps to protect your privacy, not just to prevent companies from using your data to advertise to you or steer your taste in media, but to safeguard yourself from increasingly hostile government entities. These aren't new problems, they've been around as long as I can remember (sheesh, what a depressing thought), but AI has made it more efficient to collect our data and monitor us at enormous scales.

'The Hymn of Acxiom' serves as a view of the cultural zeitgeist and response to Big Data and information collection twelve years ago. Twelve years before its release, the Patriot Act was signed into law. I hope we're in a better place twelve years from now.