Algorithmic Modernity

Algorithmic Modernity PDF Author: Morgan G. Ames
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197502423
Category : Algorithms
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
"The rhetoric of algorithmic neutrality is more alive than ever-why? This volume explores key moments in the historical emergence of algorithmic practices and in the constitution of their credibility and authority since 1500. If algorithms are historical objects and their associated meanings and values are situated and contingent-and if we are to push back against rhetorical claims of otherwise-then the genealogical investigation this book offers is essential to understand the power of the algorithm. The fact that algorithms create the conditions for many of our encounters with social reality contrasts starkly with their relative invisibility. More than other artifacts, algorithms are easily black-boxed. Rather than contingent and modifiable, they are widely seen as obvious and unproblematic-without context and without history. As an antidote, this volume keeps a clear focus on the emergence and continuous reconstitution of algorithmic practices alongside the ascendance of modernity. Its essays highlight the trajectory of an algorithmic modernity, one characterized by attitudes and practices that are best emblematized by the modernist aesthetic and inhuman efficacy of the algorithm. The volume moves from early modern algorithmic practices, centered on heuristics for arithmetic operations, emphasizing ruptures, shifts, and variations across times and cultures. By the age of Enlightenment, the term algorithm had come to signify any process of systematic calculation that could be carried out mechanically, but its meaning and implications are still distant from those familiar to us . It's in the nineteenth and twentieth century that the meaning of algorithm is sharpened through a new discipline and by adding sets of specific conditions-such as the condition of finiteness-which acquire new and crucial significance in the age of digital computing. Throughout, the connection between algorithms and modernity is one of our central concerns. Through detailed historical reconstructions of specific moments, thinkers, and cultural phenomena over the last five hundred years, these essays lead us to the definitions of algorithm most legible today and to the pervasiveness of both algorithmic procedures and rhetoric. This volume contributes a multi-faceted exploration of the genealogies of algorithms, of algorithmic thinking, and of the distinctly modernist faith in algorithms as neutral tools that merely illuminate the natural and social world"--

Algorithmic Modernity

Algorithmic Modernity PDF Author: Morgan G. Ames
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197502423
Category : Algorithms
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The rhetoric of algorithmic neutrality is more alive than ever-why? This volume explores key moments in the historical emergence of algorithmic practices and in the constitution of their credibility and authority since 1500. If algorithms are historical objects and their associated meanings and values are situated and contingent-and if we are to push back against rhetorical claims of otherwise-then the genealogical investigation this book offers is essential to understand the power of the algorithm. The fact that algorithms create the conditions for many of our encounters with social reality contrasts starkly with their relative invisibility. More than other artifacts, algorithms are easily black-boxed. Rather than contingent and modifiable, they are widely seen as obvious and unproblematic-without context and without history. As an antidote, this volume keeps a clear focus on the emergence and continuous reconstitution of algorithmic practices alongside the ascendance of modernity. Its essays highlight the trajectory of an algorithmic modernity, one characterized by attitudes and practices that are best emblematized by the modernist aesthetic and inhuman efficacy of the algorithm. The volume moves from early modern algorithmic practices, centered on heuristics for arithmetic operations, emphasizing ruptures, shifts, and variations across times and cultures. By the age of Enlightenment, the term algorithm had come to signify any process of systematic calculation that could be carried out mechanically, but its meaning and implications are still distant from those familiar to us . It's in the nineteenth and twentieth century that the meaning of algorithm is sharpened through a new discipline and by adding sets of specific conditions-such as the condition of finiteness-which acquire new and crucial significance in the age of digital computing. Throughout, the connection between algorithms and modernity is one of our central concerns. Through detailed historical reconstructions of specific moments, thinkers, and cultural phenomena over the last five hundred years, these essays lead us to the definitions of algorithm most legible today and to the pervasiveness of both algorithmic procedures and rhetoric. This volume contributes a multi-faceted exploration of the genealogies of algorithms, of algorithmic thinking, and of the distinctly modernist faith in algorithms as neutral tools that merely illuminate the natural and social world"--

Algorithms of Anxiety

Algorithms of Anxiety PDF Author: Anthony Elliott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509555447
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Machine learning algorithms are widely presumed to herald a world in which the crippling burdens of anxiety can be left behind. The digital revolution promises a brave new world where individuals, communities and organizations can at last take control of the future – anticipating, designing and commanding the future, possibly even with mathematical exactitude. Yet, paradoxically, algorithms have unleashed widespread fears and forebodings about the impact of digital technologies. Whether it’s worries about unemployment, distress about social media’s harmful effects on teenagers, or the fear of intrusive digital surveillance, we live in an age of turbo-charged anxiety where the prophecies of algorithms are increasingly enmeshed with fundamental disruption and anxieties about the future. In this book, Anthony Elliott examines how machine learning algorithms are not only transforming global institutions but also rewriting our personal lives. He tells this story through a wide-ranging analysis which takes in ChatGPT, Amazon, the Metaverse, Martin Ford, Netflix, Uber, Bernard Stiegler, Squid Game, Kate Crawford, LaMDA, Byung-Chul Han, autonomous drones, Jean Baudrillard and the automation of warfare. Questioning why people often assume that they need to adopt new technologies in order to lead fulfilling lives, Elliott argues that people may be as much entranced as inspired by their outsourcing of personal decision-making to smart machines.

Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond

Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond PDF Author: Dariusz Brzeziński
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040257852
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This volume brings together eminent scholars from various parts of the world, representing different fields of knowledge in order to explore the social, cultural, political and economic effects of the development of new technologies. On the one hand, the book contextualises the discussion of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) within the broader framework of the digital revolution, on the other it also examines individual experiences and practices. Moreover, in light of the speed at which algorithms and AI are being incorporated into various aspects of life, contributors also question the ethical implications of their development. The widespread development of AI and algorithmic solutions is one of the most important contemporary phenomena. It has an overwhelming impact on the social and cultural life of the 21st century. In this context, one can point to both exciting examples of the application of algorithms and AI in business and popular culture, as well as the challenges of widening social inequality or the expanding scope of surveillance. The scope of the impact of algorithms and AI makes the formation of new theoretical frameworks vital. This is the aim of this book, which will be of interest to academics within the humanities and social sciences with an interest in technology and the impact of algorithms and AI on society and culture.

Osiris, Volume 38

Osiris, Volume 38 PDF Author: James Evans
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226827887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Perceptively explores the shifting intersections between algorithmic systems and human practices in the modern era. How have algorithmic systems and human practices developed in tandem since 1800? This volume of Osiris deftly addresses the question, dispelling along the way the traditional notion of algorithmic “code” and human “craft” as natural opposites. Instead, algorithms and humans have always acted in concert, depending on each other to advance new knowledge and produce social consequences. By shining light on alternative computational imaginaries, Beyond Craft and Code opens fresh space in which to understand algorithmic diversity, its governance, and even its conservation. The volume contains essays by experts in fields extending from early modern arithmetic to contemporary robotics. Traversing a range of cases and arguments that connect politics, historical epistemology, aesthetics, and artificial intelligence, the contributors collectively propose a novel vocabulary of concepts with which to think about how the history of science can contribute to understanding today’s world. Ultimately, Beyond Craft and Code reconfigures the historiography of science and technology to suggest a new way to approach the questions posed by an algorithmic culture—not only improving our understanding of algorithmic pasts and futures but also unlocking our ability to better govern our present.

D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity

D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity PDF Author: Indrek Männiste
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501340018
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
While the dehumanizing effects of technology, modernity, and industrialization have been widely recognized in D. H. Lawrence's works, no book-length study has been dedicated to this topic. This collection of newly commissioned essays by a cast of international scholars fills a genuine void and investigates Lawrence's peculiar relationship with modern technology and modernity in its many and varied aspects. Addressing themes such as pastoral vs. industrial, mining, war, robots, ecocriticism, technologies of the self, film, poetic devices of technology, entertainment, and many others, these essays help to reevaluate Lawrence's complicated standing within the modernist literary tradition and reveal the true theoretical wealth of a writer whose whole life and work, according to T.S. Eliot, "was an assertion of what the modern world has lost."

Making Sense of AI

Making Sense of AI PDF Author: Anthony Elliott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509548912
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Industrial robots, self-driving cars, customer-service chatbots and Google’s algorithmic predictions have brought the topic of artificial intelligence into public debate. Why is AI the source of such intense controversy and what are its economic, political, social and cultural consequences? Tracing the changing fortunes of artificial intelligence, Elliott develops a systematic account of how automated intelligent machines impact different spheres and aspects of public and private life. Among the issues discussed are the automation of workforces, surveillance capitalism, warfare and lethal autonomous weapons, the spread of racist robots and the automation of social inequalities. Elliott also considers the decisive role of AI in confronting global risks and social futures, including global pandemics such as COVID-19, and how smart algorithms are impacting the search for energy security and combating climate change. Making Sense of AI provides a judiciously comprehensive account of artificial intelligence for those with little or no previous knowledge of the topic. It will be an invaluable book both for students in the social sciences and humanities and for general readers.

Algorithmic Intimacy

Algorithmic Intimacy PDF Author: Anthony Elliott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150954982X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Artificial intelligence not only powers our cars, hospitals and courtrooms: predictive algorithms are becoming deeply lodged inside us too. Machine intelligence is learning our private preferences and discreetly shaping our personal behaviour, telling us how to live, who to befriend and who to date. In Algorithmic Intimacy, Anthony Elliott examines the power of predictive algorithms in reshaping personal relationships today. From Facebook friends and therapy chatbots to dating apps and quantified sex lives, Elliott explores how machine intelligence is working within us, amplifying our desires and steering our personal preferences. He argues that intimate relationships today are threatened not by the digital revolution as such, but by the orientation of various life strategies unthinkingly aligned with automated machine intelligence. Our reliance on algorithmic recommendations, he suggests, reflects a growing emergency in personal agency and human bonds. We need alternatives, innovation and experimentation for the interpersonal, intimate effort of ongoing translation back and forth between the discourses of human and machine intelligence. Accessible and compelling, this book sheds fresh light on the impact of artificial intelligence on the most intimate aspects of our lives. It will appeal to students in the social sciences and humanities and to a wide range of general readers.

Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice

Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice PDF Author: Bharath Sriraman
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031408462
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 3221

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Book Description


Foundations of Systematic Theology

Foundations of Systematic Theology PDF Author: Thomas G. Guarino
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567200329
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Guarino argues in this book that the doctrinal form of the Christian faith, in its essential characteristics, calls for certain theoretical exigencies. This is to say that the proportion and beauty of the form is not served or illuminated by simply any presuppositions. Rather, a determinate understanding of first philosophy, of the nature of truth, of hermeneutical theory, of the predication of language and mutual correlation is required if Christian faith and doctrine are to maintain a recognizable and suitably mediative form. Failing to adduce specific principles will lead either to a simple assertion of Christian truth, in which case the form of Christianity becomes less intelligible and attractive-or one will substitute a radically changed form, which is itself inappropriate for displaying the fundamental revelatory narrative of faith. The house of Christian faith possesses a certain proportion of structure; the form will sag badly if one removes an undergirding item, or if one beam is replaced with another of variable shape or size. The form's beauty will either be obscured, no longer clearly visible, or the form will become something quite different, no longer architectonically related to what was originally the case. The intention of this book is to discuss those doctrinal characteristics considered fundamental to the Christian faith, as protective of its revelatory form and, concomitantly, to examine the theoretical principles required if such form is to remain both intelligible and beautiful.

Writing Computer and Information History

Writing Computer and Information History PDF Author: William Aspray
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153818382X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history. The formal presentation of historical research in the form of a publication often hides the process by which the topic was selected, boundaries were drawn, evidence was selected, analytic approach was chosen and applied, results were presented, how this work fits into a larger body of scholarship, the implicit goals and biases of the author, and many other similar issues. This process of learning about the various ways to carry out computer history or information history can be enriched by this collection of reflective essays by experienced scholars, discussing the craft that they practice. This is a book that concerns both computer history and information history. The first scholarship in computer history by professionally trained scholars began to appear in the 1970s, so we are approaching a half century of research and publication in this area. The field has generated numerous pieces of exemplary scholarship from various perspectives such as intellectual history of individual technologies, business histories of firms, economic histories of market sectors, externalist histories of funding and professionalization, and so on. However, the field continues to evolve, especially as computing and communication technologies have drawn together in the form of the Internet and social media; and with them a new set of scholars is participating, drawn not only from the history of science and technology, but also from the communication and media studies fields. Powerful theories, approaches, and frameworks are being increasingly drawn more widely from both the humanities and the social sciences to inform the practice of computer history. The scholars in this volume look at what’s happened, what’s happening now, and where historical scholarship in these disciplines is headed.