The Cultures Of Computing

This is one of the first collections exploring the range of cultural practices associated with the design and use of computing. Against the background of the "information revolution", the volume shows how people come to computers as learners, artists, teachers, designers, gatekeepers, or scientists. The contributors cover a range of topics, from the military to gender in cyberspace, from education to multi-national corporate IT use.

This exciting new book explores the relationship between cultural traditions and computers, looking at how people from very different cultures and backgrounds communicate and how the use of information technologies can support and enhance these dialogues. Historically we developed our understanding of other cultures through traditional means (museums, printed literature, etc.) but the advent of information technologies has allowed us access to a plethora of material. Tosa asks the question “Can we understand other cultures using computers as media to supplement thinking and memorization?” Starting with a survey of art and technology, moving into the area of culture and technology, the book culminates with a vision of a new world based on an understanding of these relationships, allowing cultural creators and viewers the opportunity to reach a better and more profound understanding of the role information technology will play going forward.

Advocates of computers make sweeping claims for their inherently transformative power: new and different from previous technologies, they are sure to resolve many of our existing social problems, and perhaps even to cause a positive political revolution. In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, confronts this orthodoxy, arguing instead that computers are cultural “all the way down”—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics. From the perspective of transnational corporations and governments, computers benefit existing power much more fully than they provide means to distribute or contest it. Despite this, our thinking about computers has developed into a nearly invisible ideology Golumbia dubs “computationalism”—an ideology that informs our thinking not just about computers, but about economic and social trends as sweeping as globalization. Driven by a programmer’s knowledge of computers as well as by a deep engagement with contemporary literary and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory, The Cultural Logic of Computation provides a needed corrective to the uncritical enthusiasm for computers common today in many parts of our culture.

This book explores how digital culture is transforming museums in the 21st century. Offering a corpus of new evidence for readers to explore, the authors trace the digital evolution of the museum and that of their audiences, now fully immersed in digital life, from the Internet to home and work. In a world where life in code and digits has redefined human information behavior and dominates daily activity and communication, ubiquitous use of digital tools and technology is radically changing the social contexts and purposes of museum exhibitions and collections, the work of museum professionals and the expectations of visitors, real and virtual. Moving beyond their walls, with local and global communities, museums are evolving into highly dynamic, socially aware and relevant institutions as their connections to the global digital ecosystem are strengthened. As they adopt a visitor-centered model and design visitor experiences, their priorities shift to engage audiences, convey digital collections, and tell stories through exhibitions. This is all part of crafting a dynamic and innovative museum identity of the future, made whole by seamless integration with digital culture, digital thinking, aesthetics, seeing and hearing, where visitors are welcomed participants. The international and interdisciplinary chapter contributors include digital artists, academics, and museum professionals. In themed parts the chapters present varied evidence-based research and case studies on museum theory, philosophy, collections, exhibitions, libraries, digital art and digital future, to bring new insights and perspectives, designed to inspire readers. Enjoy the journey!

This volume contains articles on the Net and Cyberspace. It examines the arrival of E-mail and online discussion groups, and considers the prospects for an "online world" - a playground for virtual bodies in which identities are flexible and disconnected from real-world bodies.

In the light of upcoming global issues, concerning population, energy, the environment, and food, information and communication technologies are required to overcome difficulties in communication among cultures. In this context, the First International Conference on Culture and Computing, which was held in Kyoto, Japan, in February 2010, was conceived as a collection of symposia, panels, workshops, exhibitions, and guided tours intended to share issues, activities, and research results regarding culture and computing. This volume includes 17 invited and selected papers dealing with state-of-the-art topics in culturally situated agents, intercultural collaboration and support systems, culture and computing for art and heritage, as well as culture and computing within regional communities.

Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage’s “difference engine” in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems. Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title In this highly original book, anthropologist F. Allan Hanson reveals an entirely unanticipated but vital link between two of the most widely discussed features of contemporary American society: the computer revolution and the culture wars. Hanson argues that the culture wars stem from a divergence in the evolutionary paths of society and culture. Societies have evolved significantly over the last few millennia from small bands of farmers or hunter-gatherers into huge, internally diverse nation-states, while cultures—the closed systems of meanings and symbols that kept small, face-to-face societies together—have failed to keep pace. If cultures became more open, Hanson contends, then the maladaptive rupture between society and culture would be healed and the clashes that currently beset us would be greatly diminished. Interweaving lucid analysis with concrete case studies of common law, education, and other areas of contemporary life, Hanson demonstrates how the widespread use of computers is, in fact, encouraging more originality and open-mindedness, with the potential to ease polarization and calm the culture wars.

Leading media scholars consider the social and cultural changes that come with the contemporary development of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing and our cultural life promise to become completely interwoven: technical currents feed into our screen culture of digital television, video, home computers, movies, and high-resolution advertising displays. Technology has become at once larger and smaller, mobile and ambient. In Throughout, leading writers on new media--including Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Lev Manovich--take on the crucial challenges that ubiquitous and pervasive computing pose for cultural theory and criticism. The thirty-four contributing researchers consider the visual sense and sensations of living with a ubicomp culture; electronic sounds from the uncanny to the unremarkable; the effects of ubicomp on communication, including mobility, transmateriality, and infinite availability; general trends and concrete specificities of interaction designs; the affectivity in ubicomp experiences, including performances; context awareness; and claims on the "real" in the use of such terms as "augmented reality" and "mixed reality."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Culture and Computing, C&C 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference, HCI International 2023, which was held virtually in Copenhagen, Denmark in July 2023. The total of 1578 papers and 396 posters included in the HCII 2023 proceedings was carefully reviewed and selected from 7472 submissions. The C&C 2023 proceeding focuses on preserving, disseminating, and creating cultural heritages via ICT (e.g., digital archives), to empower humanities research via ICT (i.e., digital humanities), to create art and expressions via ICT (i.e., media art), to support interactive cultural heritage experiences (e.g., rituals), and to understand new cultures born on the Internet (e.g., net culture, social media, games).