Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation

Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at 12:00 pm Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University  

We are pleased to welcome back Berkman Klein Fellow alumnus, Dennis Tenen, who joins us to discuss his new book, Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation (Stanford UP, 2017).

This book challenges the ways we read, write, store, and retrieve information in the digital age. Computers—from electronic books to smart phones—play an active role in our social lives. Our technological choices thus entail theoretical and political commitments. Dennis Tenen takes up today's strange enmeshing of humans, texts, and machines to argue that our most ingrained intuitions about texts are profoundly alienated from the physical contexts of their intellectual production. Drawing on a range of primary sources from both literary theory and software engineering, he makes a case for a more transparent practice of human–computer interaction. Plain Text is thus a rallying call, a frame of mind as much as a file format. It reminds us, ultimately, that our devices also encode specific modes of governance and control that must remain available to interpretation.

Dennis's Biography:

Dennis Tenen's research happens at the intersection of people, texts, and technology.

His recent work appears on the pages of Amodern, boundary 2, Computational Culture, Modernism/modernity, New Literary History, Public Books, and LA Review of Books on topics that range from book piracy to algorithmic composition, unintelligent design, and history of data visualization.

He teaches a variety of classes in fields of literary theory, new media studies, and critical computing in the humanities.

Tenen is a co-founder of Columbia's Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities and author of Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation (Stanford UP, 2017).

For an updated list of projects, talks, and publications please visit dennistenen.com.