Reading · Summer 2026 Reading from MIT
Technology & society
The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence
By Benjamin Mangrum, associate professor of literature
Stanford University Press · 2025
We often deal with our doubts and fears about computing through humor, whether reconciling ourselves to machines or critiquing them. In fact, this dynamic turns up throughout modern culture, in movies, television, fiction, and the theater. Mangrum analyzes this phenomenon in "The Comedy of Computation," digging into several facets of modern culture and technology.
View at Stanford University Press →
From Summer 2026 recommended reading from MIT (MIT News).
More in Technology & society
- Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India's Lost Technological Revolution · Dwaipayan Banerjee, 2026
- Auditing AI · Karrie G. Karahalios, 2026
- Shape Computation: Fifty Years, 1972-2022 · Sotirios Kotsopoulos SM '00, 2025
- The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft · Erik Lin-Greenberg, 2025
- Rubrique Technologie / Tech Section · Nick Montfort, 2026
- Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI · Alex "Sandy" Pentland, 2025
- Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared Prosperity · Elisabeth B. Reynolds, 2026