Visability, state, and Identity

The other day I was thinking about "visability", state, and algorithms and decided to search the expression "algorithms have state". I was thinking about Yiri Gurevich's paper on the subject. Instead I found three video's by
Gurevich himself. Lecture three. answers the question "What is an algorithm". The same search turned up this very topical video "How Algorithms Shape our World".

Edit: Why don't the links connect? fixed.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html
The Gurevich link seems to be too long to cut and paste. You can find it under Channel 9, Gurevich. This seems to work, select the lecture.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Yuri-Gurevich-Introduction-to-Algorithms-and-Computational-Complexity/