Description
Book SynopsisGolumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, argues that computers are cultural all the way downthat there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics.
Trade ReviewThe Cultural Logic of Computation is a brilliant, audacious book. It might be described as a rollicking, East Coast version of Alan Liu's
The Laws of Cool-- or one part
Laws of Cool, one part
Seeing Like a State, with more than a dash of Baudrillard and Virilio for brio. Golumbia's argument is that contemporary Western and Westernizing culture is deeply structured by forms of hierarchy and control that have their origins in the development and use of computers over the last 50 years. I look forward to pressing this book on friends and colleagues, starting with anyone who has ever recommended
The World is Flat to me. -- Lisa Gitelman, author of
Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of CultureThe Cultural Logic of Computation is a fascinating and wise book. It takes us with great care through the history of the computational imagination and logic, from Hobbes and Leibniz to blogging and corporate practice. Its range includes the philosophy of computation, the ideology of the digital revolution, the important areas of children's education and education in general and glimpses of brilliant literary insight. Required reading for the responsible citizen. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Golumbia is no Luddite; he readily admits that computers have brought a wide range of benefits to society. His chief purpose, though, is to demonstrate that these benefits come at the cost of accepting the technophilic ideology, and changing how we perceive our own essence as human beings. -- Rob Horning * popmatters.com *
A work to be read as rawly new in the brute force with which it confronts the disavowed fatal flaw in a contemporary academic disciplinary formation: here, the intractably cultural First Worldism of digital media studies...[A] meticulously crafted polemic. -- Brian Lennon * Electronic Book Review *
This is a thought-provoking book, full of interesting ideas that would be valuable to teachers and researchers in the area of contemporary culture...The work should also appeal to general readers who are interested in computerization's effects on culture. -- R. Bharath * Choice *
Table of Contents* The Cultural Functions of Computation Part I. Computationalism and Cognition * Chomsky's Computationalism * Genealogies of Philosophical Functionalism Part II. Computationalism and Language * Linguistic Computationalism * Computational Semantics, Digital Textuality Part III. Cultural Computationalism * Computation, Globalization, and Cultural Striation * Computationalism, Striation, and Cultural Authority Part IV. Computationalist Politics * Computationalism and Political Individualism * Computationalism and Political Authority * Epilogue: Computers Without Computationalism * Notes * References * Acknowledgments
