Programmed visions

Programmed visions: software and memory

by Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong

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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 als…

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Title Statements

  • Full title :Programmed visions : software and memory / Wendy Hui Kyong Chun.

Summary

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 substitutability. Chun approaches the concept of programmability through the surprising materialization of software as a "thing" in its own right, tracing the hardening of programming into software and of memory into storage. She 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 less we know, the more we are shown. This paradox, Chun argues, doe snot diminish new media's power but rather grounds computing's appeal. Its 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.

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Edition Statements

  • Publication Date:©2011.

Publication Statements

  • Publisher(s):MIT Press
  • Place of Publication:Cambridge, Mass
  • Language:eng
  • Publication Date:©2011.

Notes

Paperback published 2013.

The Physical Object

  • Description:xiii, 239 pages : : illustrations ; : 24 cm

Edition Identifiers

  • ISBN:9780262015424, 0262015420, 9780262518512, 0262518511
  • oclc:ocn664450686
  • LC Classification:QA76.76.D47
  • Dewey Decimal:005.1

Table of Contents

Invisibly visible, visibly invisible -- On sourcery and source codes -- Computers that Roar -- Daemonic interfaces, empowering obfuscations -- Regenerating archives -- Order from order, or life according to software -- The undead of information -- Always already there, or software as memory.

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Subjects

Architecture logicielle -- Aspect social Computer software -- Development Computer software -- Human factors Entwicklung Logiciels -- Facteurs humains Smith, Glen software Software architecture -- Social aspects Softwarearchitektur Softwareentwicklung Techniksoziologie

Writers

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong

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