
What Algorithms Want
Imagination in the Age of Computing
Ed Finn(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 10. March 2017
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-262-03592-7 (ISBN)
No shipping information available
Description
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
17 s/w Abbildungen
17 b&w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-262-03592-7 (9780262035927)
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Book
10/2018
MIT Press
€36.40
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Additional editions

Book
10/2018
MIT Press
€36.40
Article exhausted; check different version

E-Book
03/2017
MIT Press
€38.99
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