Ellen Ullman: Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · artificial intelligence, code, computing, history of technology, internet, memoir, programming, technology
“The last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective.
When Ellen Ullman moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and went on to become a computer programmer, she was joining a small, idealistic, and almost exclusively male cadre that aspired to genuinely change the world. In 1997 Ullman wrote Close to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution.
Twenty years later, the story Ullman recounts is neither one of unbridled triumph nor a nostalgic denial of progress. It is necessarily the story of digital technology’s loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and it is a personal reckoning with all that has changed, and so much that hasn’t.”
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017
ISBN 9780374534516, 0374534519
viii+306 pages
via andre
Video talk (54 min, 2017)
Reviews: J.D. Biersdorfer (New York Times, 2017), Jessica Bennett (Elle, 2017).
Comment (0)Matthew Fuller: How To Be a Geek: Essays on the Culture of Software (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, algorithm, computation, computing, database, information, language, media, media theory, networks, programming, software, software studies, theory
“Computer software and its structures, devices and processes are woven into our everyday life. Their significance is not just technical: the algorithms, programming languages, abstractions and metadata that millions of people rely on every day have far-reaching implications for the way we understand the underlying dynamics of contemporary societies.
In this innovative new book, software studies theorist Matthew Fuller examines how the introduction and expansion of computational systems into areas ranging from urban planning and state surveillance to games and voting systems are transforming our understanding of politics, culture and aesthetics in the twenty-first century. Combining historical insight and a deep understanding of the technology powering modern software systems with a powerful critical perspective, this book opens up new ways of understanding the fundamental infrastructures of contemporary life, economies, entertainment and warfare.
In so doing Fuller shows that everyone must learn ‘how to be a geek’, as the seemingly opaque processes and structures of modern computer and software technology have a significance that no-one can afford to ignore. This powerful and engaging book will be of interest to everyone interested in a critical understanding of the political and cultural ramifications of digital media and computing in the modern world.”
Publisher Polity, 2017
ISBN 9781509517152, 1509517154
x+233 pages
Gene Kogan, Francis Tseng: Machine Learning for Artists (2016–)
Filed under handbook | Tags: · art, artificial intelligence, code, deep learning, generativity, language, machine learning, neural networks, programming, software, style
“This is an in-development book about machine learning. The first draft is expected early-2017. Some chapters are nearly complete, some are very rough, some are just stubs.
Guides and Demos are being released as we go. Guides are a collection of practical resources for working with machine learning software, including code and tutorials. Demos are are a collection of figures and interactive demos for highlighting important concepts in machine learning, and supplementing the book’s materials.”
Chapters (HTML)
Guides (HTML, Python)
Demos (HTML, Javascript)