Uncomputable: Play and Politics In the Long Digital Age

“Uncomputable stages brilliant episodes from ‘the long digital age,’ from bold revisions of photography and weaving to lucid expositions of new media and software alike, bringing obscure engineers, scientists, artists, and philosophers into fascinating conversation with world-historical figures. What is at stake here is ‘the cybernetic hypothesis,’ or how the world came to be framed as a ‘system’ and subjects as ‘agents,’ and the many implications of this slow revolution in knowing and communicating, living and working. This is no less than a history of our informatic and algorithmic present, one that fully succeeds in its aim ‘to unify critical theory and digital media’ and to map the shifting boundaries between the computable and the uncomputable. If a code-illiterate like me can benefit massively from this book, anyone can—and must.”
—Hal Foster, Princeton University