{"product_id":"divination-engines-xiaochang-li-9780226837017","title":"Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture","description":"\u003cb\u003eA revealing and surprising origin story, showing how attempts to render human speech and language computable led from the era of big data to today's AI.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In this eye-opening book, technology expert Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today's generative AI. With original research and clear explanations, Li elucidates the origins of what's known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and communication engineers that shaped today's technology. Starting with early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human speech, she demonstrates how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually abandoned systems that sought to \u003ci\u003eunderstand\u003c\/i\u003e human language, opting instead for workarounds that simply \u003ci\u003epredicted\u003c\/i\u003e patterns in speech and text data. That solution became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Li reveals, transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access, circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and ever-growing amounts of new data. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e At its core, \u003ci\u003eDivination Engines\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates how the artifacts of human communication--speech, text, and images--have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This connection, between communication and computation, Li shows, has given rise to data-driven analytics, machine learning, and today's algorithmic culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Xiaochang Li\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0226837017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226837017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/09\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 304\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs","brand":"Xiaochang Li","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48154179797247,"sku":"9780226837017","price":27.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_9346d9cf-cb61-4fc9-9b39-9e1271906ba9.jpg?v=1770788429","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/divination-engines-xiaochang-li-9780226837017","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}