Bug

New Books in Technology · Dec 7, 2024 · 16m

In this episode of High Theory, Marcello Vitali-Rosati tells us about bugs! A bug can be a small insect, an illness, a spy device, or a digital malfunction. The computer bug, the ghost in the machine, derives from an older engineering use of bug as mechanical failure, and the insect, in turn, derives from an earlier sense of bug as specter, an invisible and frightening ghost. Like philosophy itself, the computer bug stops our ordinary workflow and causes us to think, to question the very task we had set out to undertake.Marcello’s new book, Éloge du bug: être libre à l’époque du numérique…