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 lan-guages and codes that captured technologist David Auerbach's imagination. With a philoso-pher's sense of inquiry, Auerbach recounts his childhood spent drawing ferns with the pro-gramming language Logo on the Apple IIe, his adventures in early text-based video games, his education as an engineer, and his contribu-tions to instant messaging technology devel-oped for Microsoft and the servers powering Google's data stores. A lifelong student of the systems that shape our lives--from the psy-chiatric 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 examina-tion of the inescapable ways in which algo-rithms 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 ma-chine, Auerbach argues, we willingly erase our nuances and our idiosyncrasies--precisely the things that make us human.
"A hybrid of memoir, technical primer and social history . . . [Auerbach] suggests that we need to be bitwise (i.e. understand the world through the lens of computers) as well as worldwise . . . We need guides on this journey--judicious, balanced and knowledgeable commentators, like Auerbach."
--The New York Times Book Review "[A] fun and informative memoir of a life in coding explains what makes coding deeply fascinating, and is tamped full, like a scientist's experiment in sphere-packing, of history, fact, and anecdote."
--Popular Mechanics, Best Sci/Tech Books of the Year "A valuable resource for readers seeking to understand themselves in this new universe of algorithms, as data points and as human beings."
--The New Republic "With wit and technical insight, former Microsoft and Google engineer Auerbach explains how his knowledge of coding helped form him as a person, at the same time showing how coding has influenced aspects of culture such as personality tests and child-rearing . . . An enjoyable look inside the point where computers and human life join."
--Publisher's Weekly
"An eye-opening look at computer technology and its discontents and limitations."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A profound memoir, a manifesto, and a warning about the digital world. Auerbach spins out the secret history of the computational universe we all live in now, filtering insider technical know-how through a profoundly humanistic point of view like no book since
Gödel, Escher, Bach."
--Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not to Be Wrong "Auerbach artfully combines a personal and professional narrative with a philosophical examination of the way the real and digital worlds contrast and intertwine. It is a subject that will take on ever more importance as algorithms continue to gain dramatically more power and influence throughout our world."
--Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots "Very attractive (in all senses). The sentences resemble something both plain and clear, like a Shaker desk--a kind of generous transparency, and about things that are not transparent at all."
--John Crowley, author of Little, Big "A delightful journey through the history of personal computing. It succeeds brilliantly at conveying what it's like to be a coder and at exploding common stereotypes. I couldn't stop reading."
--Scott Aaronson, David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin
