Bitwise: A Life in Code

Synopsis

An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and of who we are Bitwise is a wondrous ode to the computer lan­guages and codes that captured technologist David Auerbach’s imagination. With a philoso­pher’s sense of inquiry, Auerbach recounts his childhood spent drawing ferns with the pro­gramming language Logo on the Apple IIe, his adventures in early text-based video games, his education as an engineer, and his contribu­tions to instant messaging technology devel­oped for Microsoft and the servers powering Google’s data stores. A lifelong student of the systems that shape our lives—from the psy­chiatric taxonomy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to how Facebook tracks and profiles its users—Auerbach reflects on how he has experienced the algorithms that taxonomize human speech, knowledge, and behavior and that compel us to do the same. Into this exquisitely crafted, wide-ranging memoir of a life spent with code, Auerbach has woven an eye-opening and searing examina­tion of the inescapable ways in which algo­rithms have both standardized and coarsened our lives. As we engineer ever more intricate technology to translate our experiences and narrow the gap that divides us from the ma­chine, Auerbach argues, we willingly erase our nuances and our idiosyncrasies—precisely the things that make us human.

Copyright:

2018

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781101871300

Related ISBNs:

9781101871294

Publisher:

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Date of Addition:

07/10/19

Copyrighted By:

David Auerbach

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Science, Biographies and Memoirs, Computers and Internet, Technology, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.