Compression Mode: The Edge of Sensibility

This book examines how compression can be understood not only as a digital process enacted through computing, but as a wider economic and political phenomenon that impacts on the ecology of waste, diversity and social inclusivity.

Setting out from the linguistic underpinning of visual space it proceeds to the development of the MP3 algorithm and an examination of the 'waste' it creates. As it does so it challenges the received wisdom, prevalent in western thought, that human reason and logi...