{ "item_title" : "Bitwise", "item_author" : [" David Auerbach "], "item_description" : "An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and of who we areBitwise is a wondrous ode to the computer lan­guages and codes that captured technologist David Auerbach's imagination. With a philoso­pher's sense of inquiry, Auerbach recounts his childhood spent drawing ferns with the pro­gramming language Logo on the Apple IIe, his adventures in early text-based video games, his education as an engineer, and his contribu­tions to instant messaging technology devel­oped for Microsoft and the servers powering Google's data stores. A lifelong student of the systems that shape our lives--from the psy­chiatric taxonomy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to how Facebook tracks and profiles its users--Auerbach reflects on how he has experienced the algorithms that taxonomize human speech, knowledge, and behavior and that compel us to do the same. Into this exquisitely crafted, wide-ranging memoir of a life spent with code, Auerbach has woven an eye-opening and searing examina­tion of the inescapable ways in which algo­rithms have both standardized and coarsened our lives. As we engineer ever more intricate technology to translate our experiences and narrow the gap that divides us from the ma­chine, Auerbach argues, we willingly erase our nuances and our idiosyncrasies--precisely the things that make us human.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/10/197/214/1101972149_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "16.95", "online_price" : "16.95", "our_price" : "16.95", "club_price" : "16.95", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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