The Rise Of The Algorithms

Download The Rise Of The Algorithms full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Rise Of The Algorithms ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Automate This

Author : Christopher Steiner
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101572159
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Automate This by : Christopher Steiner

Download or read book Automate This written by Christopher Steiner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.

What Algorithms Want

Author : Ed Finn
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262035928
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis What Algorithms Want by : Ed Finn

Download or read book What Algorithms Want written by Ed Finn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-03-10 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gap between theoretical ideas and messy reality, as seen in Neal Stephenson, Adam Smith, and Star Trek. We depend on—we believe in—algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman's curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking. Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things. If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.

The Rise of the Algorithms

Author : John M. Jordan
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271098430
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Rise of the Algorithms by : John M. Jordan

Download or read book The Rise of the Algorithms written by John M. Jordan and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2024-02-10 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Rise of the Algorithms

Author : John M. Jordan
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271098449
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Rise of the Algorithms by : John M. Jordan

Download or read book The Rise of the Algorithms written by John M. Jordan and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Algorithms and the End of Politics

Author : Timcke, Scott
Publisher : Bristol University Press
ISBN 13 : 1529215315
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Algorithms and the End of Politics by : Timcke, Scott

Download or read book Algorithms and the End of Politics written by Timcke, Scott and published by Bristol University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society. Timcke provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. He looks at the impact of these new platforms and technologies on their users who have made them among the most valuable firms in the world. Offering bold new thinking across data politics and digital and economic sociology, this is a powerful demonstration of how algorithms have come to shape everyday life and political legitimacy in the US and beyond.

Language and the Rise of the Algorithm

Author : Jeffrey M. Binder
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226822540
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by : Jeffrey M. Binder

Download or read book Language and the Rise of the Algorithm written by Jeffrey M. Binder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging history of the algorithm. Bringing together the histories of mathematics, computer science, and linguistic thought, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm reveals how recent developments in artificial intelligence are reopening an issue that troubled mathematicians well before the computer age: How do you draw the line between computational rules and the complexities of making systems comprehensible to people? By attending to this question, we come to see that the modern idea of the algorithm is implicated in a long history of attempts to maintain a disciplinary boundary separating technical knowledge from the languages people speak day to day. Here Jeffrey M. Binder offers a compelling tour of four visions of universal computation that addressed this issue in very different ways: G. W. Leibniz’s calculus ratiocinator; a universal algebra scheme Nicolas de Condorcet designed during the French Revolution; George Boole’s nineteenth-century logic system; and the early programming language ALGOL, short for algorithmic language. These episodes show that symbolic computation has repeatedly become entangled in debates about the nature of communication. Machine learning, in its increasing dependence on words, erodes the line between technical and everyday language, revealing the urgent stakes underlying this boundary. The idea of the algorithm is a levee holding back the social complexity of language, and it is about to break. This book is about the flood that inspired its construction.

Language and the Rise of the Algorithm

Author : Jeffrey M. Binder
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226822532
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by : Jeffrey M. Binder

Download or read book Language and the Rise of the Algorithm written by Jeffrey M. Binder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-12-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging history of the intellectual developments that produced the modern idea of the algorithm. Bringing together the histories of mathematics, computer science, and linguistic thought, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm reveals how recent developments in artificial intelligence are reopening an issue that troubled mathematicians long before the computer age. How do you draw the line between computational rules and the complexities of making systems comprehensible to people? Here Jeffrey M. Binder offers a compelling tour of four visions of universal computation that addressed this issue in very different ways: G. W. Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator; a universal algebra scheme Nicolas de Condorcet designed during the French Revolution; George Boole's nineteenth-century logic system; and the early programming language ALGOL, whose name is short for algorithmic language. These episodes show that symbolic computation has repeatedly become entangled in debates about the nature of communication. To what extent can meaning be controlled by individuals, like the values of a and b in algebra, and to what extent is meaning inevitably social? By attending to this long-neglected question, we come to see that the modern idea of the algorithm is implicated in a long history of attempts to maintain a disciplinary boundary separating technical knowledge from the languages people speak day to day. Machine learning, in its increasing dependence on words, now places this boundary in jeopardy, making its stakes all the more urgent to understand. The idea of the algorithm is a levee holding back the social complexity of language, and it is about to break. This book is about the flood that inspired its construction.

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms

Author : Amy B. Zegart
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691147132
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by : Amy B. Zegart

Download or read book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms written by Amy B. Zegart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence challenges in the digital age : Cloaks, daggers, and tweets -- The education crisis : How fictional spies are shaping public opinion and intelligence policy -- American intelligence history at a glance-from fake bakeries to armed drones -- Intelligence basics : Knowns and unknowns -- Why analysis is so hard : The seven deadly biases -- Counterintelligence : To catch a spy -- Covert action - "a hard business of agonizing choices" -- Congressional oversight : Eyes on spies -- Intelligence isn't just for governments anymore : Nuclear sleuthing in a Google earth world -- Decoding cyber threats.

Love in the Time of Algorithms

Author : Dan Slater
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101608250
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Love in the Time of Algorithms by : Dan Slater

Download or read book Love in the Time of Algorithms written by Dan Slater and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If online dating can blunt the emotional pain of separation, if adults can afford to be increasingly demanding about what they want from a relationship, the effect of online dating seems positive. But what if it’s also the case that the prospect of finding an ever more compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, a paradox of choice that keeps us chasing the illusive bunny around the dating track?” It’s the mother of all search problems: how to find a spouse, a mate, a date. The escalating marriage age and declining marriage rate mean we’re spending a greater portion of our lives unattached, searching for love well into our thirties and forties. It’s no wonder that a third of America’s 90 million singles are turning to dating Web sites. Once considered the realm of the lonely and desperate, sites like eHarmony, Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish have been embraced by pretty much every demographic. Thanks to the increasingly efficient algorithms that power these sites, dating has been transformed from a daunting transaction based on scarcity to one in which the possibilities are almost endless. Now anyone—young, old, straight, gay, and even married—can search for exactly what they want, connect with more people, and get more information about those people than ever before. As journalist Dan Slater shows, online dating is changing society in more profound ways than we imagine. He explores how these new technologies, by altering our perception of what’s possible, are reconditioning our feelings about commitment and challenging the traditional paradigm of adult life. Like the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, the digital revolution is forcing us to ask new questions about what constitutes “normal”: Why should we settle for someone who falls short of our expectations if there are thousands of other options just a click away? Can commitment thrive in a world of unlimited choice? Can chemistry really be quantified by math geeks? As one of Slater’s subjects wonders, “What’s the etiquette here?” Blending history, psychology, and interviews with site creators and users, Slater takes readers behind the scenes of a fascinating business. Dating sites capitalize on our quest for love, but how do their creators’ ideas about profits, morality, and the nature of desire shape the virtual worlds they’ve created for us? Should we trust an industry whose revenue model benefits from our avoiding monogamy? Documenting the untold story of the online-dating industry’s rise from ignominy to ubiquity—beginning with its early days as “computer dating” at Harvard in 1965—Slater offers a lively, entertaining, and thought provoking account of how we have, for better and worse, embraced technology in the most intimate aspect of our lives.

Algorithmic Life

Author : Louise Amoore
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317527372
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Algorithmic Life by : Louise Amoore

Download or read book Algorithmic Life written by Louise Amoore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically explores forms and techniques of calculation that emerge with digital computation, and their implications. The contributors demonstrate that digital calculative devices matter beyond their specific functions as they progressively shape, transform and govern all areas of our life. In particular, it addresses such questions as: How does the drive to make sense of, and productively use, large amounts of diverse data, inform the development of new calculative devices, logics and techniques? How do these devices, logics and techniques affect our capacity to decide and to act? How do mundane elements of our physical and virtual existence become data to be analysed and rearranged in complex ensembles of people and things? In what ways are conventional notions of public and private, individual and population, certainty and probability, rule and exception transformed and what are the consequences? How does the search for ‘hidden’ connections and patterns change our understanding of social relations and associative life? Do contemporary modes of calculation produce new thresholds of calculability and computability, allowing for the improbable or the merely possible to be embraced and acted upon? As contemporary approaches to governing uncertain futures seek to anticipate future events, how are calculation and decision engaged anew? Drawing together different strands of cutting-edge research that is both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this book makes an important contribution to several areas of scholarship, including the emerging social science field of software studies, and will be a vital resource for students and scholars alike.

The Economy of Algorithms

Author : Marek Kowalkiewicz
Publisher : Policy Press
ISBN 13 : 1529242479
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Economy of Algorithms by : Marek Kowalkiewicz

Download or read book The Economy of Algorithms written by Marek Kowalkiewicz and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the economy of algorithms. It’s here and it’s growing. In the past few years, we have been flooded with examples of impressive technology. Algorithms have been around for hundreds of years, but they have only recently begun to ‘escape’ our understanding. When algorithms perform certain tasks, they’re not just as good as us, they’re becoming infinitely better, and, at the same time, massively more surprising. We are so impressed by what they can do that we give them a lot of agency. But because they are so hard to comprehend, this leads to all kinds of unintended consequences. In the 20th century, things were simple: we had the economy of corporations. In the first two decades of the 21st century, we saw the emergence of the economy of people, otherwise known as the digital economy, enabled by the internet. Now we’re seeing a new economy take shape: the economy of algorithms.

A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence

Author : Kartik Hosanagar
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0525560904
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence by : Kartik Hosanagar

Download or read book A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence written by Kartik Hosanagar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wharton professor and tech entrepreneur examines how algorithms and artificial intelligence are starting to run every aspect of our lives, and how we can shape the way they impact us Through the technology embedded in almost every major tech platform and every web-enabled device, algorithms and the artificial intelligence that underlies them make a staggering number of everyday decisions for us, from what products we buy, to where we decide to eat, to how we consume our news, to whom we date, and how we find a job. We've even delegated life-and-death decisions to algorithms--decisions once made by doctors, pilots, and judges. In his new book, Kartik Hosanagar surveys the brave new world of algorithmic decision-making and reveals the potentially dangerous biases they can give rise to as they increasingly run our lives. He makes the compelling case that we need to arm ourselves with a better, deeper, more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of algorithmic thinking. And he gives us a route in, pointing out that algorithms often think a lot like their creators--that is, like you and me. Hosanagar draws on his experiences designing algorithms professionally--as well as on history, computer science, and psychology--to explore how algorithms work and why they occasionally go rogue, what drives our trust in them, and the many ramifications of algorithmic decision-making. He examines episodes like Microsoft's chatbot Tay, which was designed to converse on social media like a teenage girl, but instead turned sexist and racist; the fatal accidents of self-driving cars; and even our own common, and often frustrating, experiences on services like Netflix and Amazon. A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence is an entertaining and provocative look at one of the most important developments of our time and a practical user's guide to this first wave of practical artificial intelligence.

Rage Inside the Machine

Author : Robert Elliott Smith
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 147296389X
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (729 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Rage Inside the Machine by : Robert Elliott Smith

Download or read book Rage Inside the Machine written by Robert Elliott Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2020 Business Book Awards We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology as we do by laws and regulations. Frighteningly often, the influence of technology in and on our lives goes completely unchallenged by citizens and governments. We comfort ourselves with the soothing refrain that technology has no morals and can display no prejudice, and it's only the users of technology who distort certain aspects of it. But is this statement actually true? Dr Robert Smith thinks it is dangerously untrue in the modern era. Having worked in the field of artificial intelligence for over 30 years, Smith reveals the mounting evidence that the mechanical actors in our lives do indeed have, or at least express, morals: they're just not the morals of the progressive modern society that we imagined we were moving towards. Instead, as we are just beginning to see – in the US elections and Brexit to name but a few – there are increasing incidences of machine bigotry, greed and the crass manipulation of our basest instincts. It is easy to assume that these are the result of programmer prejudices or the product of dark forces manipulating the masses through the network of the Internet. But what if there is something more fundamental and explicitly mechanical at play, something inherent within technology itself? This book demonstrates how non-scientific ideas have been encoded deep into our technological infrastructure. Offering a rigorous, fresh perspective on how technology has brought us to this place, Rage Inside the Machine challenges the long-held assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Shedding light on little-known historical stories and investigating the complex connections between scientific philosophy, institutional prejudice and new technology, this book offers a new, honest and more truly scientific vision of ourselves.

Algorithms

Author : Panos Louridas
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262358670
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Algorithms by : Panos Louridas

Download or read book Algorithms written by Panos Louridas and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Real World Algorithms: A Beginner's Guide, Panos Louridas is back to introduce algorithms in an accessible manner, utilizing various examples to explain not just what algorithms are but how they work. Digital technology runs on algorithms, sets of instructions that describe how to do something efficiently. Application areas range from search engines to tournament scheduling, DNA sequencing, and machine learning. Arguing that every educated person today needs to have some understanding of algorithms and what they do, in this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Panos Louridas offers an introduction to algorithms that is accessible to the nonspecialist reader. Louridas explains not just what algorithms are but also how they work, offering a wide range of examples and keeping mathematics to a minimum.

A Human Algorithm

Author : Flynn Coleman
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640094288
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Human Algorithm by : Flynn Coleman

Download or read book A Human Algorithm written by Flynn Coleman and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking narrative on the urgency of ethically designed AI and a guidebook to reimagining life in the era of intelligent technology. The Age of Intelligent Machines is upon us, and we are at a reflection point. The proliferation of fast–moving technologies, including forms of artificial intelligence akin to a new species, will cause us to confront profound questions about ourselves. The era of human intellectual superiority is ending, and we need to plan for this monumental shift. A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are examines the immense impact intelligent technology will have on humanity. These machines, while challenging our personal beliefs and our socioeconomic world order, also have the potential to transform our health and well–being, alleviate poverty and suffering, and reveal the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. International human rights attorney Flynn Coleman deftly argues that it is critical that we instill values, ethics, and morals into our robots, algorithms, and other forms of AI. Equally important, we need to develop and implement laws, policies, and oversight mechanisms to protect us from tech’s insidious threats. To realize AI’s transcendent potential, Coleman advocates for inviting a diverse group of voices to participate in designing our intelligent machines and using our moral imagination to ensure that human rights, empathy, and equity are core principles of emerging technologies. Ultimately, A Human Algorithm is a clarion call for building a more humane future and moving conscientiously into a new frontier of our own design. “[Coleman] argues that the algorithms of machine learning––if they are instilled with human ethics and values––could bring about a new era of enlightenment.” —San Francisco Chronicle

The Rise of Big Data Policing

Author : Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 147986997X
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Rise of Big Data Policing by : Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Download or read book The Rise of Big Data Policing written by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2018 Law & Legal Studies PROSE Award The consequences of big data and algorithm-driven policing and its impact on law enforcement In a high-tech command center in downtown Los Angeles, a digital map lights up with 911 calls, television monitors track breaking news stories, surveillance cameras sweep the streets, and rows of networked computers link analysts and police officers to a wealth of law enforcement intelligence. This is just a glimpse into a future where software predicts future crimes, algorithms generate virtual “most-wanted” lists, and databanks collect personal and biometric information. The Rise of Big Data Policing introduces the cutting-edge technology that is changing how the police do their jobs and shows why it is more important than ever that citizens understand the far-reaching consequences of big data surveillance as a law enforcement tool. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reveals how these new technologies —viewed as race-neutral and objective—have been eagerly adopted by police departments hoping to distance themselves from claims of racial bias and unconstitutional practices. After a series of high-profile police shootings and federal investigations into systemic police misconduct, and in an era of law enforcement budget cutbacks, data-driven policing has been billed as a way to “turn the page” on racial bias. But behind the data are real people, and difficult questions remain about racial discrimination and the potential to distort constitutional protections. In this first book on big data policing, Ferguson offers an examination of how new technologies will alter the who, where, when and how we police. These new technologies also offer data-driven methods to improve police accountability and to remedy the underlying socio-economic risk factors that encourage crime. The Rise of Big Data Policing is a must read for anyone concerned with how technology will revolutionize law enforcement and its potential threat to the security, privacy, and constitutional rights of citizens. Read an excerpt and interview with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson in The Economist.

Life by Algorithms

Author : Catherine Besteman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022662773X
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Life by Algorithms by : Catherine Besteman

Download or read book Life by Algorithms written by Catherine Besteman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the downsides, dysfunctions, and dangers of automated decision-making: “An excellent survey of the algorithmically managed life.” —Choice The phone systems that businesses use to screen calls. The link between student standardized test scores and public schools’ access to resources. The algorithms that regulate patient diagnoses and reimbursements to doctors. The impenetrable corporate bureaucracy that can drive customers in need of help up the wall—or drive them to suicide. The storage, sorting, and analysis of massive amounts of information have enabled the automation of decision-making at an unprecedented level. Meanwhile, computers have offered a model of cognition that increasingly shapes our approach to the world. The proliferation of “roboprocesses” is the result, as editors Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson observe in this rich and wide-ranging volume, which features contributions from a distinguished cast of scholars in anthropology, communications, international studies, and political science. Though automatic processes are designed to be engines of rational systems, the stories in Life by Algorithms reveal how they can in fact produce absurd, inflexible, or even dangerous outcomes. Joining the call for “algorithmic transparency,” the contributors bring exceptional sensitivity to everyday sociality into their critique to better understand how the perils of modern technology affect finance, medicine, education, housing, the workplace, food production, public space, and emotions—not as separate problems but as linked manifestations of a deeper defect in the fundamental ordering of our society. “‘The Machine Stops,’ E. M. Forster’s 1909 science fiction story, tells the tale of a human society collapsing when the technology upon which it has become dependent fails. Think of [this] volume as ‘The Machine Starts,’ a collection of unsettling ethnographic accounts of the rise of algorithmic governance . . . A necessary and sobering call to arms.” —Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Contributors include: Catherine Besteman * Alex Blanchette * Robert W. Gehl * Hugh Gusterson * Catherine Lutz * Ann Lutz Fernandez * Joseph Masco * Sally Engle Merry * Keesha M. Middlemass * Noelle Stout * Susan J. Terrio