Devil In The Stack: A Coding Odyssey

Description:

Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the technology transforming our world lies in an intangible and impenetrable cosmos of software: algorithmic code. In a world increasingly governed by technologies that so few can comprehend, who-or what-controls the future?

Devil in the Stack follows Andrew Smith on his immersive trip into the world of coding, passing through the stories of logic, machine-learning and early computing, from Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing, and up to the present moment, behind the scenes into the lives - and minds - of the pioneers of the 21st century: those who write code. Smith embarks on a quest to understand this sect in what he believes to be the only way possible: by learning to code himself.

Expansive and effervescent, Devil in the Stack delivers a portrait of code as both a vivid culture and an impending threat. By turns revelatory, unsettling and joyously funny, this is an essential book for our times, of vital interest to anyone hoping to participate in the future-defining technological debates to come.

Contents: Prologue 0: If Prologue 1: Then 1: Revenge of the SpaghettiOs 2: Holy Grail 3: PyLadies and Code Freaks 4: Minutely Organized Particulars 5: The Real Moriarty 6: The New Mind Readers 7: Theories of Memory 8: Hilarity Ensues 9: Catch 32 10: A Kind of Gentleness 11: The Gun on the Mantelpiece 12: Code Rush 13: Enter the Frankenalgorithm 14: Algorave? 15: A Codemy of Errors 16: Do Algos Dream of Numeric Sheep?: An AI Suite 17: Apologies to Richard Feynman 18: A Cloud Lifts 19: Strange Loops and Abstractions - The Devil in the Stack


Author Biography: Andrew Smith has worked as a critic and feature writer for the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer and The Face, and has penned documentaries for the BBC. He is the author of the internationally bestselling book Moondust, about the nine remaining men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972, and Totally Wired. He was raised in the UK and currently lives in California.