The Humanistic Computation Project

Computing is not just a branch of engineering. It touches on language and philosophy, the nature of life and how we think. It is a liberal art. And as a result, we need a humanistic approach to computing.

This project is aimed at creating a living syllabus, a community, and a framework for these ideas, one informed by a deep “historical sense” that ensures computing does not remain a “pop culture.” We must make computers work for people, guided by history and the humanities.

The goal of this project is to cultivate a community of fellow travelers, educational resources, and potentially even gatherings to make this approach the default in how we relate to computing.

Please explore below a list of books, articles and essays, courses that take this approach, and even organizations operating in this space.

We need more humanistic computing. Let’s make it happen.

 

To get involved, please reach out here.


Created: January 2, 2025 | Modified: July 25, 2025

BooksArticles & EssaysCourses & LecturesOther OrganizationsPhilosophy

Humanistic Computation

Computing Culture

History of Computation

Computing Fundamentals

Computational Interdisciplinarity

Computational Fictions

Computational Supporting Materials

Articles and Essays

What Kind of Sorcery Is This? Why code is so often compared to magic.

An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal

On the cruelty of really teaching computing science.

Is hand coding becoming obsolete?

HAKMEM

Epigrams on programming

Processing: the Software that Shaped Creative Coding

Early Digital Computer Art at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated

How do we tell truths that might hurt?

How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language

The forgotten software that inspired our modern world

ChatGPT Made Me Cry and Other Adventures in AI Land

As We May Think

Why computer modeling should become a popular hobby

Semiotic physics - revamped

DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (or, If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail)

Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?

I should have loved biology

Lenia: Biology of Artificial Life

The case of the 500-mile email

How to Hack the Simulation?

A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft

What is Code?

Source Code

Courses and Lectures

Computer Utopias

Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus

Folktales from the history of computing

RETRO: How and Why the Past Comes Back

History of Computing: How the Computer Became Personal

Humanity and Technology Major

Other Organizations

Media Archaeology Lab

Computer History Museum

Antikythera

Cosmos Institute

Naive Weekly


Guiding Philosophy

Computation is a kind of universal solvent. In studying computation, you are not simply thinking about the nature of for-loops, or data structures, or databases. By taking the nature of computation seriously, you are able to interrogate the nature of language and how humans think, as well as the limits of mathematics. Insights into computation address profound aspects of biology or even philosophy. When we model the world in silico, simulation can help us think about the complex nature of how we build scientific models, or even reality itself. And dwelling on computation also draws in the humanities, whether it’s literary analysis and biblical studies, or code as magic, the history of ideas, or even Greek mythology.

Computation has the ability to provide a uniquely unifying framework, exerting a massive centripetal force on ideas and fields of knowledge. We must nurture its connective power. So what is the field that focuses on this power, one that is essentially a mashup of computer science, the humanities, and a sprinkling of the sciences both natural and social? It might be what I termed logismics. Or we could simply refer to it as humanistic computation, or even the liberal art of computing. But whatever we call it, this page is designed to act as a resource (and living syllabus) for exploring this burgeoning field.

(text adapted from my essay "Computation as Philology")


The Humanistic Computation Project is a continuing project. If you would like something to be included in it, please contact Samuel Arbesman.

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By Samuel Arbesman (see all lists). Page style adapted from Brendan Schlagel's canonize.