From the publisher: “Everything from law enforcement to space exploration relies on code written by people who, at the time, made choices and assumptions that would have long-lasting, profound implications for society. Torie Bosch brings together many of today’s leading technology experts to provide new perspectives on the codes that shape our lives. Contributors discuss a host of topics, such as how university databases were programmed long ago to accept only two genders, what the person who programmed the very first pop-up ad was thinking at the time, the first computer worm, the Bitcoin white paper, and perhaps the most famous seven words in Unix history: ‘You are not expected to understand this.’
This compelling book tells the human stories behind programming, enabling those of us who don’t think much about code to recognize its importance, and those who work with it every day to better understand the long-term effects of the decisions they make.”
Torie Bosch is the editor of Future Tense (a collaborative project of Slate magazine, New America, and Arizona State University) that explores the implications of new technologies for our current and future world. She is the editor of “You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World” and co-editor of “Future Tense Fiction and What Future: The Year’s Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate & Reinvent Our Future” (2017). She is also an editor in residence and lecturer at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and recently launched a new Slate-ASU project called State of Mind devoted to covering mental health.
Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician exploring technology, ecology, and culture. She is the singer and coauthor of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT, the author of “Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet” (Penguin Random House), and the co-editor of the speculative fiction anthology “Terraform: Watch Worlds Burn” (MCD Books). She is the former futures editor of Motherboard, and a contributor to VICE, Rhizome, The Guardian, WIRED, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Eye on Design, and The Verge. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is an advisor to graduate design students at Art Center College of Design.
Joy Lisi Rankin stitches together STEM and the humanities. She is a professor in the Department of Technology, Culture, and Society at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Responsible AI. Prior to becoming a professor, Rankin taught herself to code and to knit, double-majored in Math and History, and worked at the intersection of tech start-ups and education for over a decade. Her writing emphasizes public scholarship, with bylines ranging from Slate and Spike Art Magazine to Science News and Smithsonian’s “What It Means to Be American” series (plus various academic journals). Rankin’s first book, “A People’s History of Computing in the United States” (Harvard University Press, 2018), was inspired by her work with K–12 students. Her multimedia work includes advising film and TV, as well as playwriting and public speaking, and her website is http://www.joyrankin.com.
This event was recorded on November 2, 2022.