Programmed Visions

Programmed Visions is an entirely fresh and original piece of scholarship—lyrically written, uncompromisingly rigorous, and full of surprising and provocative insights. Chun demonstrates convincingly that programmability is an 'ideological belief,' and in so doing challenges received ideas about digital media's supposedly objective relation to truth, noncontingency, and operability. This book is of tremendous importance to gender studies, digital media studies, history, and science and technology studies.

Lisa Nakamura, Asian American Studies Program and Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In a move of stunning originality, Wendy Chun argues that belief in 'programmability' fuels the current organization of the modern liberal state. Computer code, she tells us, is fetish—a magical entity thanks to which individuals believe themselves agents of causality and sovereignty. In truth, though, power lies elsewhere—most importantly in the social, political, and economic relations embedded within and materialized in the software and hardware that render us desiring subjects. Essential for students of science and media studies.

Timothy W. Lenoir, Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies and Society, Duke University

Once again, Wendy Chun proves herself to be the indispensable critic of Internet and computer cultures. We learn how the computer thinks us and the implications of that thought in terms of race, gender, and visuality. Chun creates a new and flexible terminology that displaces our sense of the computer as a transparent WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) servant into a twinned relationship of causality and ignorance. From here, neither the computer nor visual culture will look the same again.

Nicholas Mirzoeff, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University