THE LATE AGE OF PRINT

Beyond the Book

Browsing Posts tagged cultural authority

My latest interview on the topic of algorithmic culture is now available on the 40kBooks blog.  It’s an Italian website, although you can find the interview in both the original English and in Italian translation. The interview provides something like a summary of my latest thinking on algorithmic culture, a good deal of which was born out of the [...]

Share

Lest there be any confusion, yes, indeed, you’re reading The Late Age of Print blog, still authored by me, Ted Striphas.  The last time you visited, the site was probably red, white, black, and gray.  Now it’s not.  I imagine you’re wondering what prompted the change. The short answer is: a hack.  The longer answer [...]

Share

I’ve spent the last few weeks here auditioning ideas for my next book, on the topic of  “algorithmic culture.”  By this I mean the use of computers and complex mathematical routines to sort, classify, and create hierarchies for our many forms of human expression and association. I’ve been amazed by the reception of these posts, [...]

Share

Last week I was interviewed on probably the best talk radio program about culture and technology, the CBC’s Spark. The interview grew out of my recent series of blog posts on the topic of algorithmic culture.  You can listen to the complete interview, which lasts about fifteen minutes, by following the link on the Spark [...]

Share

In my previous post I addressed the question, who speaks for culture in an algorithmic age?  My claim was that humanities scholars once held significant sway over what ended up on our cultural radar screens but that, today, their authority is diminishing in importance.  The work of sorting, classifying, hierarchizing, and curating culture now falls [...]

Share

I’ve blogged off and on over the past 15 months about “algorithmic culture.”  The subject first came to my attention when I learned about the Amazon Kindle’s “popular highlights” feature, which aggregates data about the passages Kindle owners have deemed important enough to underline. Since then I’ve been doing a fair amount of algorithmic culture [...]

Share

Back in June I blogged here about “Algorithmic Culture,” or the sorting, classifying, and hierarchizing of people, places, objects, and ideas using computational processes.  (Think Google search, Amazon’s product recommendations, who gets featured in your Facebook news feed, etc.)  Well, for the past several months I’ve been developing an essay on the theme, and it’s [...]

Share

The subtitle of this post ought to be “apparently,” since I have developing doubts about substituting digital surveillance systems and complex computer programs for the considered — humane — work of culture. Case in point: about six weeks ago, Galley Cat reported on a new Kindle-related initiative called “popular highlights,”which Amazon.com had just rolled out [...]

Share

This week the blog In Medias Res, which is hosted by the Institute for the Future of the Book, has gathered together a bunch of great contributions around the theme, “Books as Screens.”  Definitely, definitely check them out. On Monday Hollis Griffin of Northwestern University contributed a post called “Talking Heads: Books, Authors, and Television [...]

Share

Will book publishers be able to maintain their cultural authority into the future?  Should they? These seem to be the questions implicit in a recent article in the New York Times, “Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies.” The focus of the piece is a new file sharing site called Scribd.  In a nutshell, Scribd allows [...]

Share