Mar 17, 2026
It’s episode 228 and time for us to talk about Computers and Computer Science books! We discuss technology, digital humanities, coding, and more!
You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.
In this episode
Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards
Things We Read (or tried to…)
- Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (2016)
- Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious
Afterlives of a Flexible Medium (2022)
- I could not find a free version of this online
- Your Computer Is on Fire edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, and Kavita Philip (2021)
- The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games Paperback by Elliot Lichtman (2025)
- Must Know High School Computer Programming by Julie Sway (2020)
- In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson (1999)
- A Prehistory of the Cloud by Tung-Hui Hu (2016)
- Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson (2012)
Other Media We Mentioned
- The Soul of the New Machine by Tracy Kidder
- Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents San Francisco by Ellen Ullman
- Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman
- ClickArt 65,000
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999)
- Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing by Neal Stephenson
Links, Articles, and Things
- Separating the data from the CHAFF by Matthew Murray 🦇, Fernando Rios, and Seth Erickson
- 9-track tape
- Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright
- Media Archaeology Lab
- Alice Averlong (formerly Foone)
- README
- Institute for Advanced Study
15 Computer Science Books by BIPOC Authors:
Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcast chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.
- Job Ready Java by Haythem Balti and Alan Galloway
- Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
- Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People by Aditya Y. Bhargava
- More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech by Meredith Broussard
- Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous on Social Media by Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer
- Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao
- Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age by Joseph Migga Kizza
- Code for What? Computer Science for Storytelling and Social Justice by Clifford Lee & Elisabeth Soep
- AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
- Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
- The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
- Creative Coding in Python: 30+ Programming Projects in Art, Games, and More by Sheena Vaidyanathan
- A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online by Jennifer Wemigwans
- System Design Interview: An Insider's Guide by Alex Xu
- Number Theory for Computing by Song Y. Yan
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Join us again on Tuesday, April 7th we’ll be talking about Media Criticism (as suggested by daftkifty)
Then on Tuesday, April 21st it’s time for our Spring Media Update!