Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

by Hannah Fry

Steve Talley was asleep at home in South Denver in 2014 when he heard a knock at the door.42 He opened it to find a man apologizing for accidentally hitting his car. The stranger asked Talley to step outside and take a look. He obliged. As he crouched down to assess the damage to his driver’s side door,43 a flash grenade went off. Three men dressed in black jackets and helmets appeared and knocked him to the ground. One man stood on his face. Another restrained his arms while another started repeatedly hitting him with the butt of a gun. Talley’s injuries would be extensive. By the end of the evening he had sustained nerve damage, blood clots and a broken penis.44 ‘I didn’t even know you could break a penis,’ he later told a journalist at The Intercept. ‘At one point I was actually screaming for the police. Then I realized these were cops who were beating me up.’45