The Art of Interpretation in the Age of Computation

This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures—that is, the way computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. The book asks: what does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices; what difference does this make for those who engage in such practices; and what are the stakes? Reciprocally it questions how can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices; how can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices; and what lies in wait. In answering these questions, this book stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science as they emerged in the middle part of the twentieth century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology, or interface, it tries to account for processes that underlie each and every digital technology being deployed today. And rather than use the tools of conventional social theory to investigate such technologies, it leverages key ideas of American pragmatism—a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents and key texts in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.