Plain text : the poetics of computation / Dennis Tenen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tenen, Dennis, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and technology.

Digital media--Philosophy.

Digital media.

Electronic publications.

Electronic publishing.

Physical Description:

x, 268 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2017]

Summary:

This book challenges the ways we read, write, store, and retrieve information in the digital age. Computers-from electronic books to smart phones-play an active role in our social lives. Our technological choices thus entail theoretical and political commitments. Dennis Tenen takes up today's strange enmeshing of humans, texts, and machines to argue that our most ingrained intuitions about texts are profoundly alienated from the physical contexts of their intellectual production. Drawing on a range of primary sources from both literary theory and software engineering, he makes a case for a more transparent practice of human-computer interaction. Plain Text is thus a rallying call, a frame of mind as much as a file format. It reminds us, ultimately, that our devices also encode specific modes of governance and control that must remain available to interpretation.

Contents:

Computational poetics : an introduction

Metaphor machines

Laying bare the device : the modernist roots of computation

Form, formula, format

Recondite surfaces

Literature down to a pixel

Conclusion : human grounds for computation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Tenen, Dennis. Plain text.

ISBN:

9781503601802

1503601803

9781503602281

1503602281

OCLC:

964352878