Introduction 3
Part I
1. Logo and Love 9
The Turtle 9
The Assembly 17
The Split 26
The Join 33
The Work 42
2. Chat Wars 44
Interop 44
Microsoft Agonistes 48
Code Work 53
The Buffer Overflow 56
3. Binaries 63
Praxis and Theory 63
Truthtellers and Liars 65
Is and Os 68
On and Off 71
True and False 74
Interlude: Foreign Tongues 80
Part II
4. Naming of Parts 89
Labels 89
Male and Female 93
Masterminds and Crackpots 99
Bitwise and Byte Foolish 109
5. Self-Approximations 113
The Big Five (or Six) 113
Diagnostics and Statistics 117
Machine Psychiatry 130
6. Games Computers Play 136
Dungeons and Dice 136
Deterrence and Detente 148
The Quantified Dwarf 151
Interlude: Adventures with Text 160
Part III
7. Big Data 177
From the Client to the Cloud 177
Hangman 184
The Library of Babylon 186
Descent from the Sky 192
8. Programming My Child 199
Initial Conditions 199
Received Ignorance 206
The Child as Network 209
Machine and Child Learning 214
9. Big Human 223
The Vacuum Cleaner 223
Profiles 229
Bad Labels 236
The Social Graph 243
The Presentation of Self in Internet Life 247
Epilogue: The Reduction of Language, the Flattening of Life 257
Acknowledgments 261
Notes 263
Further Reading 269
Works Cited 271
Index 279