The Cultural Logic of Computation

The Cultural Logic of Computation
Title The Cultural Logic of Computation PDF eBook
Author David Golumbia
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 268
Release 2009-08-30
Genre Computers
ISBN 0674053885

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Advocates of computers make sweeping claims for their inherently transformative power: new and different from previous technologies, they are sure to resolve many of our existing social problems, and perhaps even to cause a positive political revolution. In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, confronts this orthodoxy, arguing instead that computers are cultural “all the way down”—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics. From the perspective of transnational corporations and governments, computers benefit existing power much more fully than they provide means to distribute or contest it. Despite this, our thinking about computers has developed into a nearly invisible ideology Golumbia dubs “computationalism”—an ideology that informs our thinking not just about computers, but about economic and social trends as sweeping as globalization. Driven by a programmer’s knowledge of computers as well as by a deep engagement with contemporary literary and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory, The Cultural Logic of Computation provides a needed corrective to the uncritical enthusiasm for computers common today in many parts of our culture.

The Cultural Logic of Computation

The Cultural Logic of Computation
Title The Cultural Logic of Computation PDF eBook
Author David Golumbia
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 268
Release 2009-04-30
Genre Computers
ISBN 0674032926

Download The Cultural Logic of Computation Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, argues that computers are cultural “all the way down”—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics.

Digital Shift

Digital Shift
Title Digital Shift PDF eBook
Author Jeff Scheible
Publisher U of Minnesota Press
Pages 123
Release 2015-03-15
Genre Art
ISBN 1452944377

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Emoticons matter. Equal signs do, too. This book takes them seriously and shows how and why they matter. Digital Shift explores the increasingly ubiquitous presence of punctuation and typographical marks in our lives⎯using them as reading lenses to consider a broad range of textual objects and practices across the digital age. Jeff Scheible argues that pronounced shifts in textual practices have occurred with the growing overlap of crucial spheres of language and visual culture, that is, as screen technologies have proliferated and come to form the interface of our everyday existence. Specifically, he demonstrates that punctuation and typographical marks have provided us with a rare opportunity to harness these shifts and make sense of our new media environments. He does so through key films and media phenomena of the twenty-first century, from the popular and familiar to the avant-garde and the obscure: the mass profile-picture change on Facebook to equal signs (by 2.7 million users on a single day in 2013, signaling support for gay marriage); the widely viewed hashtag skit in Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night show; Spike Jonze’s Adaptation; Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know; Ryan Trecartin’s Comma Boat; and more. Extending the dialogue about media and culture in the digital age in original directions, Digital Shift is a uniquely cross-disciplinary work that reveals the impact of punctuation on the politics of visual culture and everyday life in the digital age.

The Politics of Bitcoin

The Politics of Bitcoin
Title The Politics of Bitcoin PDF eBook
Author David Golumbia
Publisher U of Minnesota Press
Pages 107
Release 2016-09-26
Genre Computers
ISBN 1452953813

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Since its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been widely promoted as a digital currency that will revolutionize everything from online commerce to the nation-state. Yet supporters of Bitcoin and its blockchain technology subscribe to a form of cyberlibertarianism that depends to a surprising extent on far-right political thought. The Politics of Bitcoin exposes how much of the economic and political thought on which this cryptocurrency is based emerges from ideas that travel the gamut, from Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises to Federal Reserve conspiracy theorists. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

What Algorithms Want

What Algorithms Want
Title What Algorithms Want PDF eBook
Author Ed Finn
Publisher MIT Press
Pages 267
Release 2017-03-10
Genre Computers
ISBN 0262035928

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The gap between theoretical ideas and messy reality, as seen in Neal Stephenson, Adam Smith, and Star Trek. We depend on—we believe in—algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman's curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking. Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things. If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.

Foundations of Computation

Foundations of Computation
Title Foundations of Computation PDF eBook
Author Carol Critchlow
Publisher
Pages 256
Release 2011
Genre Computers
ISBN

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Foundations of Computation is a free textbook for a one-semester course in theoretical computer science. It has been used for several years in a course at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The course has no prerequisites other than introductory computer programming. The first half of the course covers material on logic, sets, and functions that would often be taught in a course in discrete mathematics. The second part covers material on automata, formal languages and grammar that would ordinarily be encountered in an upper level course in theoretical computer science.

Digital Cultures

Digital Cultures
Title Digital Cultures PDF eBook
Author Milad Doueihi
Publisher
Pages 0
Release 2011
Genre Digital divide
ISBN 9780674055247

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Doueihi explores the multidimensional question of what it means to participate in online culture, covering issues such as literacy and citizenship to texts, archiving and storage.