Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic...

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Xiaochang Li

Divination Engines

Name: Divination Engines
Price: 45.95 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9780226837017

Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture...

Xiaochang Li

$45.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

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English

University of Chicago Press
09 July 2026

History of engineering & technology; Computing: general; Artificial intelligence; Natural language & machine translation

A 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. 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 understand human language, opting instead for work-arounds that simply predicted 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. At its core, Divination Engines 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.

By: Xiaochang Li
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780226837017
ISBN 10: 0226837017
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 09 July 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Xiaochang Li is assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University and an affiliate faculty member in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the Program in Modern Thought and Literature.

Reviews for Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture

“This brilliant book is a major contribution to the literature. Divination Engines pulls off the feat of explaining current and near-future events without being shallow or ephemeral—a revelation.” -- Finn Brunton, author of ""Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency""