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Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital Age
A journey through the uncomputable remains of computer history
Narrating some lesser known episodes from the deep history of digital machines, Alexander Galloway explains the technology that drives the world today, and the fascinating people who brought these machines to life. With an eye to both the computable and the uncomputable, Galloway shows how computation emerges or fails to emerge, how the digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fray and fall apart. By re-building obsolete technology using today’s software, the past comes to light in new ways, from intricate algebraic patterns woven on a hand loom, to striking artificial-life simulations, to war games and back boxes. A description of the past, this book is also an assessment of all that remains uncomputable as we continue to live in the aftermath of the long digital age.
Narrating some lesser known episodes from the deep history of digital machines, Alexander Galloway explains the technology that drives the world today, and the fascinating people who brought these machines to life. With an eye to both the computable and the uncomputable, Galloway shows how computation emerges or fails to emerge, how the digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fray and fall apart. By re-building obsolete technology using today’s software, the past comes to light in new ways, from intricate algebraic patterns woven on a hand loom, to striking artificial-life simulations, to war games and back boxes. A description of the past, this book is also an assessment of all that remains uncomputable as we continue to live in the aftermath of the long digital age.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published November 2, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 16, 2022
If you liked this you'll also like my mother was a computer by Katherine Hayles and On the mode of existence of technical objects by gilbert Simondon.
The book does a good job of explaining uncomputable problems and factors in society (such as numbers with infinite complexity) as well as situating the trends historically.
The book does a good job of explaining uncomputable problems and factors in society (such as numbers with infinite complexity) as well as situating the trends historically.
March 9, 2022
Not Bored
May 17, 2022
The introduction and the end of the book are the most insightful - there are numerous quotable moments in just the first few pages. The chapters in between however are pretty descriptive, maybe not to a fault - they were probably meant to be anecdotal accounts of neglected / forgotten history. But I guess I was slightly disappointed only because the introduction had set me up for a different set of expectations. This book is not the kind of heavy deconstruction that you'd come to expect if you'd read some of Galloway's other books. I still thoroughly enjoyed it though, and I actually think that the introduction alone is worth the price of the book.
November 29, 2025
The single thing I liked best about this book was an essayistic quality, an atmosphere roughly the opposite of mastery or finality. Galloway seems to be sharing his own persistent hunches about the edges of digital communication, its weaknesses, boundaries, or blind spots. The book proposes that they're worth thinking about.
They are. Readers who, like me, sense the force and speed with which digital culture infiltrates every aspect of our minds and memories, and who suspect, without knowing, that there will be both positive and negative consequences, will surely be eager to consider potential edges to the process, however tentative or fragmentary the evidence may be. It's a complex project. It seems to move between inside and outside, sharing both the programming challenges as they presented themselves to the remarkable historical figures he discusses, and some reflections on the implications as they might appear to one of us, now. He does not treat the history of computing thoroughly, perhaps not even quite fairly, but rather with purpose, selecting evidence to make a point. He tells good stories, featuring odd people with singular obsessions and unique gifts, tales of triumphs and failure, neatly unsettling our -- or at least my -- assumption that the development of computing had had a comparatively smooth historical trajectory. We learn of a room with dozens of cameras in the ceiling focussing on one individual, an sort of inverted panopticon; we follow the fortunes of various weavers thinking -- or playing -- with the possibilities of automating the process of making complex designs in fabric; we examine the Game of War, designed by Guy Debord (1931-1994), who is more likely to be known to most of us as a founding member of the Situationist International and author of Society of the Spectacle, rather than as a designer of gaming algorithms.
Particularly in his discussion of Debord, Galloway speaks from the "inside," as a programmer able to sense the scale of a given mathematical conundrum, and even to "take the reins," in some cases, to translate the "leftovers" or wreckage of an incomplete programming effort, adapt it into contemporary conventions, and keep working on it. The result is in some sense a resolution, but inevitably also a revelation about then and now, or between us - and them, readers who are not programmers and others who are.
The "uncomputable" of the title has no one crisp definition. At the beginning, Galloway runs through a series of possible synonyms for the "excluded term", a mode of being in which discrete symbols do not take hold, or at least do not hold sway..." (1) "intuition," aesthetic experience" "flesh," or "affect...a certain poetry, mysticism or romanticism. Or it might simply be life, mundane and unexceptional". I found myself drawn to "aesthetic," defined as an embodied, person-shaped perception, specific to one human body -- each to his own. The final paragraph champions scholars and students in the humanities and liberal arts, "outgunned and outclassed by capital," calling them -- meaning us, surely -- a "weak force" (term from François Lauelle). Weak as the force may be, however, it "grants us access to the generic commonality of history and society and the various aesthetic and cultural phenomena that not only populate this history but, as its flesh and blood, are history itself." (258)
They are. Readers who, like me, sense the force and speed with which digital culture infiltrates every aspect of our minds and memories, and who suspect, without knowing, that there will be both positive and negative consequences, will surely be eager to consider potential edges to the process, however tentative or fragmentary the evidence may be. It's a complex project. It seems to move between inside and outside, sharing both the programming challenges as they presented themselves to the remarkable historical figures he discusses, and some reflections on the implications as they might appear to one of us, now. He does not treat the history of computing thoroughly, perhaps not even quite fairly, but rather with purpose, selecting evidence to make a point. He tells good stories, featuring odd people with singular obsessions and unique gifts, tales of triumphs and failure, neatly unsettling our -- or at least my -- assumption that the development of computing had had a comparatively smooth historical trajectory. We learn of a room with dozens of cameras in the ceiling focussing on one individual, an sort of inverted panopticon; we follow the fortunes of various weavers thinking -- or playing -- with the possibilities of automating the process of making complex designs in fabric; we examine the Game of War, designed by Guy Debord (1931-1994), who is more likely to be known to most of us as a founding member of the Situationist International and author of Society of the Spectacle, rather than as a designer of gaming algorithms.
Particularly in his discussion of Debord, Galloway speaks from the "inside," as a programmer able to sense the scale of a given mathematical conundrum, and even to "take the reins," in some cases, to translate the "leftovers" or wreckage of an incomplete programming effort, adapt it into contemporary conventions, and keep working on it. The result is in some sense a resolution, but inevitably also a revelation about then and now, or between us - and them, readers who are not programmers and others who are.
The "uncomputable" of the title has no one crisp definition. At the beginning, Galloway runs through a series of possible synonyms for the "excluded term", a mode of being in which discrete symbols do not take hold, or at least do not hold sway..." (1) "intuition," aesthetic experience" "flesh," or "affect...a certain poetry, mysticism or romanticism. Or it might simply be life, mundane and unexceptional". I found myself drawn to "aesthetic," defined as an embodied, person-shaped perception, specific to one human body -- each to his own. The final paragraph champions scholars and students in the humanities and liberal arts, "outgunned and outclassed by capital," calling them -- meaning us, surely -- a "weak force" (term from François Lauelle). Weak as the force may be, however, it "grants us access to the generic commonality of history and society and the various aesthetic and cultural phenomena that not only populate this history but, as its flesh and blood, are history itself." (258)
May 10, 2025
Galloway is a great thinker and writer - moreso in this book than earlier efforts IMO. Both extremely readable and dense, and thoughtfully mapping themes across various different historical moments. You have to do a little bit of work to pick out the "uncomputable" in some of these sections (and the intro + conclusion are best for actually considering it). I love to think with/against Galloway, his writing feels like it is a toolbox - a set of approaches for understanding and critiquing our world. I particularly liked his approach to the analog/digital divide
November 23, 2021
> Narrating some lesser known episodes...
Or how they call it outside the leeches of Academia: cherry picking to fit the chosen narrative.
Or how they call it outside the leeches of Academia: cherry picking to fit the chosen narrative.
December 19, 2024
Having read Galloway's The Interface Effect previously, this book continues a similar kind of capital-T Theory with a more historical and descriptive approach. Galloway has a nice knack of theorizing *along with* the historical and anecdotal accounts that he very colourfully describes. But I think there's a limit as to how truly accurately obsolete/obscure technologies can be described in print form. There are some superb insights, though sometimes having to 'get there' by means of the technological descriptions can be a little tedious.
It's a book that demands a second or third reading, but at the same time isn't necessarily unified enough to keep someone's attention for a second or third read. A solid 3.5, but rounded up because the good parts are very good.
Note: In a stroke of serendipity, I read this book at the same time as The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut. There's a remarkable degree of overlap in terms of historical content (von Neumann and his associates take up two of Galloway's six chapters), and it really did further my understanding of both books. I can wholeheartedly recommend that as a 'companion' read of sorts.
It's a book that demands a second or third reading, but at the same time isn't necessarily unified enough to keep someone's attention for a second or third read. A solid 3.5, but rounded up because the good parts are very good.
Note: In a stroke of serendipity, I read this book at the same time as The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut. There's a remarkable degree of overlap in terms of historical content (von Neumann and his associates take up two of Galloway's six chapters), and it really did further my understanding of both books. I can wholeheartedly recommend that as a 'companion' read of sorts.
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