Programmed Visions by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
A theoretical examination of the surprising emergence of software as a guiding metaphor for our neoliberal world.New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things-mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates "programmed visions," which seek to shape and predict-even embody-a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability.
Chun argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known-its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware-makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780262518512 |
| ISBN 10 | 0262518511 |
| Title | Programmed Visions |
| Author | Wendy Hui Kyong Chun |
| Series | Software Studies |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | MIT Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2013-01-11 |
| Number of pages | 254 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |