Digital Turn

On the Uncertain Status of Text in the Digital Age: A Comparative Approach

By Marco Deseriis

N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman, Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 331 pp.

While comparative research is by no means new to the humanities and the social sciences, the field of media studies has been relatively untouched by explicitly comparative approaches. To be sure, influential strands of media studies such as the Toronto school of communication and the emerging field of media archeology are comparative in character.
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Architecture’s Struggle with Authorship

By Matthew Allen

Mario Carpo. The Alphabet and the Algorithm. MIT Press, 2011. 169pp.

Mario Carpo’s The Alphabet and the Algorithm presents a concise and compelling account of the rise and fall of what he calls the “modern paradigm” of architectural practice from its emergence in the authorial obsession of Alberti to its obsolescence following the “digital turn” of the 1990s.
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