Bitwise: A Life in Code

Auerbach, David

ISBN 10: 1101871296 / ISBN 13: 9781101871294

Published by Pantheon, New York, 2018

About this Item

Light shelf wear. Text bright and tight. Seller Inventory # 038438

Bibliographic Details

Title: Bitwise: A Life in Code

Publisher: Pantheon, New York

Publication Date: 2018

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

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.

About the Author:

DAVID AUERBACH is a writer and software engineer who has worked for Google and Microsoft. His writing has ap­peared in The Times Literary Supplement, MIT Technology Review, The Nation, The Daily Beast, n+1, and Bookforum, among many other publications. He has lectured around the world on technology, literature, philosophy, and stupidity. He lives in New York City.