Programmed Visions: Software and Memory

by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

A theoretical examination of the surprising emergence of software as a guiding metaphor for our neoliberal world.

New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability.

Chun argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Technology, Essays

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 29, 2011

About the author

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University's Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016), and co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota + Meson Press 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and she has held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She has been a Visiting Professor at AI Now at NYU, the Velux Visiting Professor of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School; the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon, Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Luneburg, Germany), and a Visiting Associate Professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard, of which she is an Associate.

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

an interesting foray into an undertheorized area, building primarily on foucault, deleuze, and derrida to advance a theory on the materiality of software. she disrupts a fantasy of software that insists on its ephemerality, showing how its structure shapes forms of subjectivity and governance. i typically am generally skeptical of science and technology studies but thought it was rlly interesting & cool how chun reanimates poststructuralist critique within a contemporary technological context. also liked how she positions the instabilities of software as a site of critical possibility instead of completely disparaging it.

[Grace Link · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As someone in the biomedical sciences, I found the sections linking software to biological systems captivating. Chun did a great job describing and analyzing how software fits into our society, shapes it, and represents it while pointing out how we can learn to be better as a populous based on how software has taken a hold on many aspects of life. While some parts read a little fragmented, I thought this book provided original thought that made my brain gears turn.

[P.]

Read intro + conclusion skimmed the rest for ideas I wanted explicated.

[Zhoel13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

although it is a difficult book to read given its various technical expositions, i like how wendy chun poses critical questions on and explains the historical antecedents of our "sudden" reliance on everything digital. her arguments of code as logos, user as sovereign, interfaces as "enlightening" maps, computer as metaphor for metaphor, and the enduring ephemerality of digital media are compelling.

[William Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intelligent book that hits on good topics in regards to interaction, code (and encoding) parts talking about organic data transmitted through RNA are particularly fascinating, as well as historical insights on interface and codes/programmings relation to older tech such as radar.

The overall tone of voice howeve, rmakes it difficult to read and frankly a bit boring.

[Lette Hass · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitivamente, siempre que hablemos de 'nuevos medios' (y la ambigüedad filológica en la que están inmersos), el problema de la MEMORIA salta al pensamiento.
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun es alguien que lo tiene muy claro.

[Jeff]

I just can't. Why professor, why?

[Lnakamur · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most brilliant books I've ever read.