Reading the Machine: Digital Reading Practices and the Contemporary U.S. Novel

“Reading the Machine: Digital Reading Practices and the Contemporary U.S. Novel,” investigates how emerging information technologies—networked devices, software programs, and algorithmic protocols—redefine cultural forms of textual production and reception. Focusing on the longstanding literary form of the novel as a point of entry, “Reading the Machine” develops a new account of the social, material, and aesthetic processes that constitute reading in concert with smart machines and social networks. At stake is an examination of how reading in the digital age has evolved within the larger political and technological systems of digital society. The project thus attends to pressing issues ranging from democratic participation to the racialized and unequal structure of cyberculture itself. “Reading the Machine” demonstrates how contemporary fictions build pathways for creative, dynamic digital reading on the part of human and nonhuman readers, even as the economic and political infrastructures of digital technologies seek to limit that potential. The four body chapters of the dissertation juxtapose fictional narratives with case studies on hardware engineering, social networks, digital campaign analytics, and artificial intelligence. Central to the argument are novels and short stories about these technologies by prominent U.S. writers: among them, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) and “Black Box” (2012), Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013), Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (2010), and Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne (2017)