Bitwise

A Life in Code

By: David Auerbach

Narrated by: David Marantz

Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and of who we are.

Bitwise is a wondrous ode to the computer languages and codes that captured technologist David Auerbach's imagination. With a philosopher's sense of inquiry, Auerbach recounts his childhood spent drawing ferns with the programming language Logo on the Apple IIe, his adventures in early text-based video games, his education as an engineer, and his contributions to instant messaging technology developed for Microsoft and the servers powering Google's data stores. 

A lifelong student of the systems that shape our lives - from the psychiatric taxonomy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to how Facebook tracks and profiles its users - Auerbach reflects on how he has experienced the algorithms that taxonomize human speech, knowledge, and behavior and that compel us to do the same. 

Into this exquisitely crafted, wide-ranging memoir of a life spent with code, Auerbach has woven an eye-opening and searing examination of the inescapable ways in which algorithms have both standardized and coarsened our lives. As we engineer ever more intricate technology to translate our experiences and narrow the gap that divides us from the machine, Auerbach argues, we willingly erase our nuances and our idiosyncrasies - precisely the things that make us human.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2018 David Auerbach (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Who’s the audience?

I’m a few chapters in, and there’s not enough computer history for me. The author is focused on how programming principles apply to his relationship and daily life, and I just don’t care. This type of “oh programming is a metaphor for real life” philosophizing can be found in a million Medium posts. At the same time, people looking for relationship advice or life stories, would be bored with the author’s grounding in computer science. So who is this book for?

Stay away from the audiobook

It's an interesting book full of diagrams and code snippets. These are included in a PDF but are best experienced in context. Also the narration is pretty bad. One of those where you can tell they are just saying the words in a monotone because they aren't following the content.

Awesome

David Auerbach has worked for Microsoft and Google, considering himself among their top 10% programmers. He is a smart guy who has some unusual thinking patterns. He is also a student of the humanities and this book combines the fields in interesting and unusual ways. It's subtle and profound, sometimes funny, I've never read anything quite like it. A book of substance that makes you feel smarter about people and computers for having read it, a real find.

the title doesn't reflect the contents

nor the description, which was expected from reviews - it's more of an essay compilation enriched with interesting references, for those searching for disclosure of algorithmically efficient approach to life - Brian Christian's "Algorithms to live by" provide just that. I subtracted a star for politically correct trivia of the couple of last chapters

Mixed - valuable and vapourware

Author spends a nauseating amount of time on “relationship” while incorporating analogies to programming.
Nauseating.

Rare and valuable insight

Easy to to understand and easy to understand the thesis. Thanks for assisting me!much appreciated

Very informative and thought provoking

Being a programmer myself, this book is very informative on topics about programming languages, different software companies, and various aspects related to software. It is very interesting to hear so many analogies between code/computer and our life. It helped me a great deal to understand the social networking technologies and their impact on our thought processes. I am glad to hear that author’s view on technology to be positive but cautious. Thank you for the great stories and production!

book for the want a be geek

I. like the book. It try to explain how to define the world by only using bits. this leave many holes to our understanding of this information.

Random assortment of thoughts

If I could take back the time spent listening to this book, I would. There's no point or direction to it. It's completely random. There are interesting parts, but they don't outweigh the boring parts. If I didn't feel a need to finish things that I start, I would have quit long before the end.

Supremely pretentious

Uh yeah this guy just comes across as very pretentious. How many times have we heard this story? “I’m a genius Google guy, I always saw the world differently, I’m a special snowflake” like many people like code, science, and math, this is not new or interesting in any way. The insights in it are not novel in any way. Honestly, this book put me to sleep.

Narrator performance is good though.