Software Takes Command


Book Description

Offers the first look at the aesthetics of contemporary design from the theoretical perspectives of media theory and 'software studies'.




Software Takes Command


Book Description




Software Studies


Book Description

This collection of short expository, critical and speculative texts offers a field guide to the cultural, political, social and aesthetic impact of software. Experts from a range of disciplines each take a key topic in software and the understanding of software, such as algorithms and logical structures.




The Language of New Media


Book Description

A stimulating, eclectic accountof new media that finds its origins in old media, particularly the cinema. In this book Lev Manovich offers the first systematic and rigorous theory of new media. He places new media within the histories of visual and media cultures of the last few centuries. He discusses new media's reliance on conventions of old media, such as the rectangular frame and mobile camera, and shows how new media works create the illusion of reality, address the viewer, and represent space. He also analyzes categories and forms unique to new media, such as interface and database. Manovich uses concepts from film theory, art history, literary theory, and computer science and also develops new theoretical constructs, such as cultural interface, spatial montage, and cinegratography. The theory and history of cinema play a particularly important role in the book. Among other topics, Manovich discusses parallels between the histories of cinema and of new media, digital cinema, screen and montage in cinema and in new media, and historical ties between avant-garde film and new media.




Your Wish is My Command


Book Description

Novice programming comes of age / David Canfield Smith, Allen Cypher, Larry Tesler -- Generalizing by removing detail : how any program can be created by working with examples / Ken Kahn -- Demonstrational interfaces : sometimes you need a little intelligence, sometimes you need a lot / Brad A. Myers, Richard McDaniel -- Web browsing by example / Atsushi Sugiura -- Trainable information agents for the Web / Mathias Bauer, Dietmar Dengler, Gabriele Paul -- End users and GIS : a demonstration is worth a thousand words / Carol Traynor, Marian G. Williams -- Bringing programming by demonstration to CAD users / Patrick Girard -- Demonstrating the hidden features that make an application work / Richard McDaniel -- A reporting tool using programming by example for format designation / Tetsuya Masuishi, Nobuo Takahashi -- Composition by example / Toshiyuki Masui -- Learning repetitive text-editing procedures with SMARTedit / Tessa Lau ... [et al.] -- Training agents to recognize text by exampl ...




Two Bits


Book Description

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty explains how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge. He also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public”—a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place. Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that bind together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also considers how it is possible to understand the new movements emerging from Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons.




Small, Sharp Software Tools


Book Description

The command-line interface is making a comeback. That's because developers know that all the best features of your operating system are hidden behind a user interface designed to help average people use the computer. But you're not the average user, and the CLI is the most efficient way to get work done fast. Turn tedious chores into quick tasks: read and write files, manage complex directory hierarchies, perform network diagnostics, download files, work with APIs, and combine individual programs to create your own workflows. Put down that mouse, open the CLI, and take control of your software development environment. No matter what language or platform you're using, you can use the CLI to create projects, run servers, and manage files. You can even create new tools that fit right in with grep, sed, awk, and xargs. You'll work with the Bash shell and the most common command-line utilities available on macOS, Windows 10, and many flavors of Linux. Create files without opening a text editor. Manage complex directory strutures and move around your entire file system without touching the mouse. Diagnose network issues and interact with APIs. Chain several commands together to transform data, and create your own scripts to automate repetitive tasks. Make things even faster by customizing your environment, creating shortcuts, and integrating other tools into your environment. Hands-on activities and exercises will cement your newfound knowledge and give you the confidence to use the CLI to its fullest potential. And if you're worried you'll wreck your system, this book walks you through creating an Ubuntu virtual machine so you can practice worry-free. Dive into the CLI and join the thousands of other devs who use it every day. What You Need: You'll need macOS, Windows 10, or a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, or Debian using the Bash shell.




Developer Hegemony


Book Description

It’s been said that software is eating the planet. The modern economy—the world itself—relies on technology. Demand for the people who can produce it far outweighs the supply. So why do developers occupy largely subordinate roles in the corporate structure? Developer Hegemony explores the past, present, and future of the corporation and what it means for developers. While it outlines problems with the modern corporate structure, it’s ultimately a play-by-play of how to leave the corporate carnival and control your own destiny. And it’s an emboldening, specific vision of what software development looks like in the world of developer hegemony—one where developers band together into partner firms of “efficiencers,” finally able to command the pay, respect, and freedom that’s earned by solving problems no one else can. Developers, if you grow tired of being treated like geeks who can only be trusted to take orders and churn out code, consider this your call to arms. Bring about the autonomous future that’s rightfully yours. It’s time for developer hegemony.




Version Control with Git


Book Description

Get up to speed on Git for tracking, branching, merging, and managing code revisions. Through a series of step-by-step tutorials, this practical guide takes you quickly from Git fundamentals to advanced techniques, and provides friendly yet rigorous advice for navigating the many functions of this open source version control system. This thoroughly revised edition also includes tips for manipulating trees, extended coverage of the reflog and stash, and a complete introduction to the GitHub repository. Git lets you manage code development in a virtually endless variety of ways, once you understand how to harness the system’s flexibility. This book shows you how. Learn how to use Git for several real-world development scenarios Gain insight into Git’s common-use cases, initial tasks, and basic functions Use the system for both centralized and distributed version control Learn how to manage merges, conflicts, patches, and diffs Apply advanced techniques such as rebasing, hooks, and ways to handle submodules Interact with Subversion (SVN) repositories—including SVN to Git conversions Navigate, use, and contribute to open source projects though GitHub




Cultural Analytics


Book Description

A book at the intersection of data science and media studies, presenting concepts and methods for computational analysis of cultural data. How can we see a billion images? What analytical methods can we bring to bear on the astonishing scale of digital culture--the billions of photographs shared on social media every day, the hundreds of millions of songs created by twenty million musicians on Soundcloud, the content of four billion Pinterest boards? In Cultural Analytics, Lev Manovich presents concepts and methods for computational analysis of cultural data. Drawing on more than a decade of research and projects from his own lab, Manovich offers a gentle, nontechnical introduction to the core ideas of data analytics and discusses the ways that our society uses data and algorithms.