Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
What Algorithms Want : Imagination in the Age of Computing, Paperback / softback Book

What Algorithms Want : Imagination in the Age of Computing Paperback / softback

Part of the What Algorithms Want series

Paperback / softback

Item not 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 Encyclopedie, 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.

Information

Save 18%

£14.99

£12.15

Item not Available
Item not Available
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information