Bitwise: A Life in Code - Paperback

by David Auerbach (Author)

An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and of who we are

Bitwise 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.

Author Biography

DAVID AUERBACH is a writer and software engineer who has worked for Google and Microsoft. His writing has ap­peared in The Times Literary Supplement, MIT Technology Review, The Nation, The Daily Beast, n+1, and Bookforum, among many other publications. He has lectured around the world on technology, literature, philosophy, and stupidity. He lives in New York City.