Devil in the Stack

An immersive, alarming, sharp-eyed journey into the bizarre world of computer code, told through the author's attempt to become a coder himself. Computer code was supposed to make the world a better place. When Andrew Smith began to suspect the opposite was happening, he asked himself why. Was it the coders? Or was there something about code itself, about the very way we compute, that could be intensifying rather than relieving our problems? To find out he realized he would need to dive headfirst into the machine by becoming a coder himself - in middle age, with no prior experience.Devil in the Stack describes what quickly became the strangest and most astonishing assignment of the Moondust author's already colourful career, propelling him to the very heart of what it means to be human; to the cutting edge of philosophy, psychology, music, history and neuroscience, and ultimately the weird noir Neverland of Silicon Valley. By turns revelatory, funny, inspiring and unsettling, this is an essential book for our time, indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the moment we're in.