Engines of Order A Mechanology of Algorithmic Techniques / Bernhard Rieder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rieder, Bernhard, author.

Series:

Recursions: theories of media, materiality, and cultural techniques.

Recursions: theories of media, materiality, and cultural techniques

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer software.

Algorithms.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (351 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Maryland : Project Muse, 2020

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Software has become a key component of contemporary life and algorithmic techniques that rank, classify, or recommend anything that fits into digital form are everywhere. This book approaches the field of information ordering conceptually as well as historically. Building on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon and the cultural techniques tradition, it first examines the constructive and cumulative character of software and shows how software-making constantly draws on large reservoirs of existing knowledge and techniques. It then reconstructs the historical trajectories of a series of algorithmic techniques that have indeed become the building blocks for contemporary practices of ordering. Developed in opposition to centuries of library tradition, coordinate indexing, text processing, machine learning, and network algorithms instantiate dynamic, perspectivist, and interested forms of arranging information, ideas, or people. Embedded in technical infrastructures and economic logics, these techniques have become engines of order that transform the spaces they act upon.

Contents:

Engines of order

Rethinking software

Software-making and algorithmic techniques

From universal classification to a postcoordinated universe

From frequencies to vectors

Interested learning

Calculating networks : from sociometry to PageRank

Conclusion : toward technical culture.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0https://www.aup.nl/en/publish/open-access

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9789048537419

904853741X

OCLC:

1178543320