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
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1101871296
• ISBN 13: 9781101871294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Biography
  • Science

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.