Honorable Mention, 2024 Ángel David Nieves Book Award, American Studies Association, Digital Humanities Caucus

Today, algorithms exercise outsize influence on cultural decision-making, shaping and even reshaping the concept of culture. How were automated, computational processes empowered to perform this work? What forces prompted the emergence of algorithmic culture?

Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet is a history of how culture and computation came to be entangled. From Cambridge, England, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, by way of medieval Baghdad, this book pinpoints the critical junctures at which algorithmic culture began to coalesce in language long before it materialized in the technological wizardry of Silicon Valley. Revising and extending the methodology of “keywords,” Ted Striphas examines changing concepts and definitions of culture, including the development of the field of cultural studies, and stresses the importance of language in the history of technology.

Offering historical and interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship of culture and computation, this book provides urgently needed context for the algorithmic injustices that beset the world today.

Agnieszka Romanowska teaches history of English literature and culture at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her main field of research is literary and theatrical reception of Shakespeare in Poland and literary translation.

Agnieszka Orszulak studies English literature at the Institute of English Studies and translation at the Chair for Translation Studies and Intercultural Communication at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her academic interests include early modern English literature, contemporary historical fiction, and literary translation.