I guess we are all a bored with PowerPoint presentations these days. But when done well, presnetations can be brilliant for questioning what we are doing and should be doing. What are Algorithms? asks Simon Buckingham Shum, Professor of Learning Informatics / Director, Connected Intelligence Centre UTS. According to Paul Dourish in The Social Lives of Algorithm they are abstract rules for transforming data which to exert influence require programming as executable code operating on data structures running on a platform in an increasingly distributed architecture. Simon goes on to question the intentional secrecy technical illiteracy complexity of infrastructure that make algorithms opaque and looks at their growing impact in education.