From ASCII Art to Comic Sans
From ASCII Art to Comic Sans

Author: Karin Wagner

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0262546140

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A fresh and provocative take on typography, computing, and popular culture, viewed through four idiosyncratic typographical phenomena from the digital age. From ASCII Art to Comic Sans offers an original vision of the history of typography and computing in the digital age, viewed through the lens of offbeat typography. We often regard text as pure information and typography as a transparent art form without meaning of its own. In this richly illustrated book, however, Karin Wagner offers a fresh perspective that shows how text is always an image that conveys meaning, and how typography, far from being meaningless, has in fact shaped modern visual and material culture in significant ways. By juxtaposing four odd typographical phenomena—the pedantic practice of ASCII art, the curious-looking machine-readable typefaces, the blurry letters of dot matrix printers, and the much-maligned font Comic Sans—Wagner paints a vivid picture of how functional technologies influence popular culture when used in ways their original creators never intended. Design practitioners, as well as fans of media, graphic design, type history, and computer technology, will enjoy this breezily sophisticated perspective on visual and digital culture. Spanning the material and visual aspects of typography from the 1960s to the present, From ASCII Art to Comic Sans is a unique contribution to the study of popular and material culture that fills a gap in the history of typography and computing.

Print Punch. Artefacts from the Punch Card Computing Era
Print Punch. Artefacts from the Punch Card Computing Era

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781916412132

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Data used to be physical. In an era when 1s and 0s seem to hover above our heads, 'Print Punch' returns to the heyday of the punch card?to a time when you could touch (and punch) data. The aesthetics of this early move towards automation represent a unique moment in our history, when we designed for machines instead of human beings. Rigorous constraints, inherent in punch card technology, unwittingly birthed a coherent design language: rhythm in grids, punched absences and presences, and the patterns in them dancing to their own machine logic. Now obsolete, punch cards were the primary method of data storage and processing from the 1890s until the late 1970s; spanning almost a century of ubiquitous utility, the artefacts of that era sit between these pages to be examined anew.0Featuring over 200 punch cards, 150 archival images and essays by Steven E Jones, Sandra Rendgen and John L Walters.

The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

Author: Martin Gurri

Publisher: Stripe Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1953953344

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How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

Multimedia
Multimedia

Author: Richard Wise

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-15

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1134808119

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Multimedia: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive guide to the new media form which has resulted from the application of computer technology to existing techniques of broadcasting and telecommunications transmission. The rapid growth of multimedia technologies such as the internet, e-mail and digital television holds the promise of a new 'information age' in which individual tastes are catered for, citizens become better informed, and new wealth is created. But are new media technologies really designed to achieve these utopian aims? Multimedia: a critical introduction provides a historical, cultural and political context to the development of multimedia, as both a technology and a concept. Individual chapters address: * the origins of multimedia in the unlikely interaction between the military and 1960s counter-culture: how the phenomenal US budgets allocated to US military research resulted in the microchip, and why the efforts of counter-culture computer hobbyists evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. *the wider democratic and cultural implications of multimedia in the wake of the deregulation of the media industries by 'new right' governments in the 1980s, which has led to the domination of the media by transnational conglomerates. * issues of privacy and censorship in relation to new media, including discussion of cryptography, electronic surveillance, and attempts to regulate material such as pornography on the internet. * the use of digital technology to create special effects in feature films.

Also Innovators
Also Innovators

Author: Christopher B. Yardley

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1760462993

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‘Thank you for your order, Mr Mainframe Customer. The cost is £5 million and the lead-time for manufacture will be two years. In the meantime you will have to build a special computer centre to our specification. For our part, our project team will help you recruit and train potential programmers and we shall advise on how you might use the system.’ How different from today when the customer will want to see a specific application running before he puts a hand in his/her pocket. Chris Yardley lived the changes as a computer salesman and tells his story of a career living and working in five countries. Warts and all. The ecstasies, the heartbreaks and idiocies of major corporations. His career was not a planned one. In a growing industry, opportunities presented themselves and Chris believes he grasped every one presented. Having written his story, he has had every chapter verified by at least one person who features in that narrative. His respondents have universally endorsed the facts with comments such as ‘Wow, I’d forgotten most of that’. ‘You have a fantastic memory.’ ‘I never knew before the full facts of what happened.’ ‘How have you remembered all the circumstances?’ ‘It really is a people business.’ This is the only book that has followed a computer sales career over almost 50 years.

Ready Player One
Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2011-08-16

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0307887456

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

No Logo
No Logo

Author: Naomi Klein

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2000-01-15

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9780312203436

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"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

Post-Digital Print
Post-Digital Print

Author: Alessandro Ludovico

Publisher:

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9789491677946

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Digital technology is now a normal part of everyday life. The mutation of music and film into bits and bytes, downloads and streams is now taken for granted. For the world of book and magazine publishing however, this transformation has only just begun. Still, the vision of this transformation is far from new. For more than a century now, avant-garde artists, activists and technologists have been anticipating the development of networked and electronic publishing. Although in hindsight the reports of the death of paper were greatly exaggerated, electronic publishing has now certainly become a reality. How will the analog and the digital coexist in the post-digital age of publishing? How will they transition, mix and cross over? In this book, Alessandro Ludovico rereads the history of the avant-garde arts as a prehistory of cutting through the so-called dichotomy between paper and electronics. Ludovico is the editor and publisher of Neural, a magazine for critical digital culture and media arts. For more than 20 years now, he has been working at the cutting edge (and the outer fringes) of both print publishing and politically engaged digital art.

Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary
Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume One: Summary

Author: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Publisher: James Lorimer & Company

Published: 2015-07-22

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 1459410696

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This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

Research Methods in Human Development
Research Methods in Human Development

Author: Paul C. Cozby

Publisher: WCB/McGraw-Hill

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

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For undergradute social science majors. A textbook on the interpretation and use of research. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.