Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet

Algorithms have a significant impact on cultural decision-making and shape culture. This book explores how algorithmic culture emerged, tracing its roots from medieval Baghdad to Silicon Valley. It emphasizes the importance of language in the history of technology and provides a historical and interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship between culture and computation.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 06 June 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Algorithms have an enormous impact on cultural decision-making, shaping and even reshaping the concept of culture. How were automated, computational processes empowered to perform this work? What forces prompted the emergence of algorithmic culture?

Before the Internet, the history of how culture and computation came to be entangled is explored in Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet. This book traces the critical junctures at which algorithmic culture began to coalesce in language long before it materialized in Silicon Valley's technological wizardry. Ted Striphas examines changing concepts and definitions of culture, including the development of the field of cultural studies, and emphasizes the importance of language in the history of technology.

Offering historical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the relationship of culture and computation, this book provides urgently needed context for the algorithmic injustices that beset the world today.

Dimension: 216 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231206693