PDF | no footnotes
DOC | includes footnotes
Draft version: November 20, 2008.
Please note that this draft version has not been proofread yet, so it contains lots of grammatical mistakes. It is also missing illustrations.
Length: 82,071 Words (including footnotes).
To see the book structure (parts, chapters, sections), open .doc file in Word and switch to outline view.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License
Please notify me if you want to reprint any parts of the book draft.
PRINT PUBLICATION:
I am currently revising and expanding the book manuscript. The book will be published by The MIT Press in 2012.
TRANSLATIONS:
Italian translation - published in 2010 by Edizioni Olivares (Milan). TitlCulture.
SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS:
send to manovich@ucsd.edu with the word “softbook” in the email header.
POSSIBLE BOOK COVERS:
Left: cover by Manovich. Background: Zaha Hadid's floor at Hotel Puerto America, Madrid. | Right: cover by Manovich. Photo of Shanghai model by Adrien Hochet (Flickr)
Left: cover by Cicero Silva, Software Studies Brazil: "São Paulo after Frank Gehry algorithm." | Right: cover by Rosa Menkman: "The starting point was a still from my glitch-based music video Radio Dada. The still has been vectorized and rescaled so I am not sure if i would still call it a 'clean' glitch. But it still stems from a moment that I let Software Take Control, and then me taking it back afterwards."
VISUALIZATIONS OF BOOK CONTENT ON manyeyes
I have uploaded Software Takes Command book manuscript (88000 words; released online 11/2008 under CC license ) to manyeyes, and used Phrase Net to create a network graph connecting the key concepts in the text.
Using [space] between the words:
interactive version
Using ["and"] between the words:
interactive version
The links above will take you to interactive versions on manyeyes - you can change how many top terms are shown, the type of connection between them, etc.
I find that this mapping is very useful - you can check if your text is actually what you think its about (are the most frequently appearing words the ones you want?). (For instance, I did not realized that "animation" and "3D" were that prominent).
The maps also are really good at summarizing the "semantic space" of your text (more objective than the writer or the critics.) I think that Phrase Net should be every writer's essential tool.
DOWNLOAD STATS:
11/23/2008, 21:00pm (PST): book files uploaded on the server.
Downloads (both .pdf + .doc files combined) during the first month (11/23/2008 - 12/23/2008):
Source: Google Analytics.
visitors by city: data (only first 500 cities.)
Google Analytics: report 11/19/2008-1/31/2009:
visitors by city: click on the image to see the full graph (only first 500 cities)
Google Analytics: report 11/19/2008-1/31/2009:
visitors by country: click on the image to see the full graph (all 98 countries) - using log scale
Google Analytics: report 11/19/2008-1/31/2009:
visitors by city: map
