Devil in the Stack: Searching for the Soul of the New Machine

From internationally-bestselling author and journalist
Andrew Smith, an immersive, alarming, sharp-eyed journey into the bizarre world
of computer code, told through his sometimes painful, often amusing attempt to
become a coder himself

Throughout history, technological revolutions have been
driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the
technology transforming our world lies in an intangible and impenetrable cosmos
of software: algorithmic code. So symbiotic has our relationship with this code
become that we barely notice it anymore. We can't see it, are not even sure how
to think about it, and yet we do almost nothing that doesn't depend on it. In a
world increasingly governed by technologies that so few can comprehend,
who--or what--controls the future?

Devil in the Stack follows Andrew Smith on his
immersive trip into the world of coding, passing through the stories of logic,
machine-learning and early computing, from Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing, and up
to the present moment, behind the scenes into the lives--and minds--of the new
frontierspeople of the 21st century: those who write code. Smith embarks on a
quest to understand this sect in what he believes to be the only way
possible: by learning to code himself.

Expansive and effervescent, Devil in the Stack delivers
a portrait of code as both a vivid culture and an impending threat. How do we
control a technology that most people can't understand? And are we programming
ourselves out of existence? Perhaps most terrifying of all: Is there
something about the way we compute - the way code works - that is innately at
odds with the way humans have evolved? By turns revelatory, unsettling, and
joyously funny, Devil in the Stack is an essential book for
our times, of vital interest to anyone hoping to participate in the
future-defining technological debates to come.