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Cover Quote: August 2019
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Sometimes it seems that the software we use just sort of sprang into existence, like grass growing on the lawn. But it didn’t. It was created by someone who wrote out — in code — a long, painstaking set of instructions telling the computer precisely what to do, step-by-step, to get a job done. There’s a sort of priestly class mystery cultivated around the word algorithm, but all they consist of are instructions: Do this, then do this, then do this. News Feed is now an extraordinary complicated algorithm involving some trained machine learning; but it’s ultimately still just a list of rules. So the rule makers have power. Indeed, these days, the founders of high-tech companies — the ones who determine what products get created, what problems get solved, and what constitutes a ‘problem’ in the first place — are increasingly technologists, the folks who cut their teeth writing endless lines of code and cobbled together the prototype for their new firm themselves. Programmers are thus among the most quietly influential people on the planet.
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- Clive Thompson
Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, 2019
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