Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies, Issue Three (2013)

This issue of the journal treats “the database [as] one of the crucial social technologies of our time. As such, it is in urgent need of technically informed critical analysis, the kind of analysis that has tended to be demoted in favour, for instance, of the more semiotically amenable exploration of the more obviously cultural widgets and interfaces of the front end of Web 2.0 technologies. Yet the history of the development of the database casts an interesting light on otherwise frequently algorithm-centric eulogies to the development of computing.” (from the Editorial)

With contributions by Michael Castelle, Evelyn Ruppert, Anne Helmond, Taina Bucher; reviews by Thor Magnusson, Harry Halpin, Håkan Råberg, Alan F. Blackwell, and Lone Koefoed Hansen.

Editorial group: Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Olga Goriunova, Graham Harwood, Adrian Mackenzie
Published in November 2013
Open access
ISSN 2047-2390

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Olga Goriunova (ed.): Readme 100: Temporary Software Art Factory (2006)

“This book discusses projects and research completed in the framework of the Readme 100 Temporary Software Art Factory, which took place in Dortmund in November 2005 and was co-organized by Hartware MedienKunstVerein.

It deals with the topic of production as it relates to software, software art and software cultures. Thus, it focuses not only on software as a product itself, but also on the experiment of its production through methods including outsourcing, use of open source solutions and self-production. Topics addressed include economies of arts, desire and openness, harmony of markets, the unmarketable, reverse outsourcing, resistant mapping and others.

The result is a multi-faceted collection of project descriptions, illustrations, research texts and features relating to the theme of software art production.”

Authors include: Amy Alexander, Inke Arns, Christophe Bruno, Javier Candeira, Yves Degoyon, Elpueblodechina, Olga Goriunova, Francis Hunger, Sven Konig, Eric Londaits, Alessandro Ludovico, Ilia Malinovsky, Alex McLean, Special guest, Julian Rohrhuber, Alexei Shulgin, Leonardo Solaas, Mitchell Whitelaw, Renate Wieser.

Publisher Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, 2006
ISBN 3833443693
168 pages

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Christopher Steiner: Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World (2012)

Long gone are the days of jocks and preppies running the trading desks of Wall Street. For more than a decade, a group of math and technology geeks known as the “quants” have completely transformed the financial markets.

Christopher Steiner traces the stories if these quants and their complete makeover of Wall Street. As more an more colleges became hotbeds of quant knowledge, more engineers and math majors infiltrated the job market. And not just on Wall Street but in countless ither fields.

Steiner explores how algorithms and the science behind them are starting to permeate our daily lives, destroying professions and creating new ones. Sooner than we think our music, our food, our medicine, our blind dates, and more will be governed by procedural equations rather than human intuition.

In many cases these innovations are beneficial. But there will inevitably be troubling side effects, like the Flash Crash of May 2010. Steiner explores what will happen, both good and bad, when algorithims more fully control hospitals, transportation and many other fields.

Publisher Portfolio / Penguin Group US, 2012
ISBN 1101572159, 9781101572153
256 pages

review (Evgeny Morozov, The Wall Street Journal)
review (Wendy M Grossman, ZDNet)

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