The Algorithm

Don't worry, it's all according to the Algorithm.

The Algorithm is an ever-evolving computer sequence that analyses the Megacorpolis to predict, advice, and govern. To mere mortals, the decisions it makes can seem baffling and counter-intuitive, influencing every facet of life in the mega-city. The faithful know that the Algorithm is without fault, that it knows what is best for the city. For them.
Trust the Computer, who run the Algorithm every day.

Data-Driven Decisions

An algorithm is a finite sequence of well-defined, computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or to perform a computation.

But the Algorithm is a careful corporate construct, programmed for the task of managing and governing the Megacorpolis to a degree impossible for humans. It is said to read all data that flows through the city and its compiles account for every variable. The decisions it makes are made from this accumulated information, untainted by bias. It certainly isn't just random chaos masquerading as a process.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

---

The Computer oversees the Algorithm and ensures its absolute reach across the Megacorpolis. Nothing escapes its careful consideration and everything in the Mega-city feels its touch.
From relatively modest beginnings, the Algorithm now determines the implementation of laws and policy, allocates funds, and deploys law-enforcement operations.

The Megacorporations are holding a vote at the beginning of the next financial quarter to determine whether or not the Algorithm should also determine foreign policy. Supporters point to the aggression and failures of foreign powers, such as the Canadian Empire, as further proof of mankind's inability to moderate itself.
Protests are hysterical about some sort of "robot uprising" and should be ignored. Next up, the weather!

— Newcast, Channel A5

Everything According To Plan

No one is really sure exactly how the Algorithm works or how it reaches the decisions that it does. Scientists speculate on the nature of computer sentience and the vagaries of Deep Learning, but the citizen of Megacorpolis have by large learned to live with it. It has become one of those unpredictable elements to life in the Mega-City, whether it makes Java free one week or bulldozes an apartment complex the next.

Look, I know, but that's what we got told to do. Chalk it up to the algorithm, buddy.

— Civil Engineer, building a road through an apartment building.

---

The Algorithm has also become a common complaint across the Megacorpolis, blamed for everything from a bad date to horrible weather. Others see it as infallible - if its decisions are forged by logic, data and fact, it must be correct.
To question that amounts to blasphemy and where family dinners used to be ruined by politics, they're now ruined by conversations about whether or not the Algorithm works.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

But it does. Trust the Computer.

Life In Data

No matter where they fall on the spectrum of denial or worship, most people have learned to live with or work around the Algorithm. Entire businesses exist to ease the transition of law and policy for corporations or private citizens. Some try to manipulate the system, feeding false or specific data into the stream with hopes of bending the way the Algorithm works - or doesn't. It isn't entirely certain if they are successful or not, but they think they are. Isn't that really what matters?

by Johny Mnemonic

The Algorithm is under what can be generously described as "corporate oversight" in addition to its handling by the Computer. Even a perfect computation might need a tweak here and there to make sure that the correct people benefit from its final compilation of data. Such alterations go through either the Megacorp Council for a vote or through personal discussion with the Computer. Neither are publicly disclosed, but all are assured that even the Megacorporations listen to the Algorithm and follow its advice.
They consider it very unlikely that the Algorithm would, in some way, be manipulating them.

The Computer says nothing on the matter, only that the Algorithm is working as designed.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

The Computer

A vast, sentient AI that is everyone should trust, the Computer was created in a rare spirit of cooperation between the megacorporations.
Deciding that governance could no longer be done by the fallible human politicians, the Computer was created to make laws, enact policy, and govern the Megacity. A computer, who would do so without emotion, without ideology or without populist insanity. A friend to all of mankind. Trust the Computer.
That it almost always seems to do things that favor the megacorporations must probably just be a coincidence.

The Disconnected

Some people don't feel entirely safe knowing that an all-seeing, all-knowing computer is making every decision for an entire city, for some reason. Whole communities of forgotten corners of the Megacorpolis try to live off the grid and avoid the watchful eye of the Computer, least they become part of the Algorithm.
It's okay, though. It doesn't really work.

by Johny Mnemonic (with slight alterations)

Others try to minimize what data they feed into the Algorithm. There's an entire illegal industry dedicated to obfuscating, altering, or scrubbing unwanted or embarrassing data before it can reach the Algorithm - or so the theory goes.
In unrelated news, operations to stamp out these illegal businesses see the most funding out of almost any law-enforcement initiatives by the Algorithm and the Computer.

Related