Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction 1
2 The Second Digital Turn 9
2.1 Data-Compression Technologies We Don't Need Anymore 19
2.2 Don't Sort: Search 23
2.3 The End of Modern Science 33
2.4 The New Science of Form-Searching 40
2.5 Spline Making, or the Conquest of Free Form 55
2.6 From Calculus to Computation: The Rise and Fall of the Curve 65
2.7 Excessive Resolution 70
2.8 The New Frontier of Alienation, and Beyond 79
3 The End of the Projected Image 99
3.1 Verbal to Visual 102
3.2 Visual to Spatial 104
3.3 The Technical and Cognitive Primacy of Flatness in Early Modern Art and Science 111
3.4 The Underdogs: Early Alternatives to Perspectival Projections 115
3.5 The Digital Renaissance of the Third Dimension 120
4 The Participatory Turn that Never Was 131
4.1 The New Digital Science of the Many 132
4.2 The Style of Many Hands 135
4.3 Building: Digital Agencies and Their Styles 140
5 Economies Without Scale: Toward a Nonstandard Society 145
5.1 Mass Production, Economies of Scale, Standardization 147
5.2 The Rise and Fall of Standard Prices 149
5.3 The Digital Mass-Customization of Social Practices 153
6 Postface: 2016 159
Notes 165
Index 217