Book Review: The writers of code guide modern life

In the early 1990s, the young men and women who would become known as coders reveled in systems. They wrote notes to each other in binary, the language of yes/no or 1-0. They loved the Mandarin Chinese. They were on the edge of a social revolution.

And, today? The people who are fully immersed in the technical awakening are the largely obscure–but deeply influential–army tucked into tech lands like Silicon Valley.

Who are these coders?

In his new book, “Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World,” longtime Wired.com contributor Clive Thompson attempts to answer that question.
According to Goodreads.com, Thompson characterizes computer programmers as essentially a homogenous community that attracts people with a narrow range of personal experiences and personality types.

Thompson brings to light the traits of coders and programmers, their histories and cultural criteria, their lifestyles, what motivates them and their beliefs.

By breaking down the actual work of coding, according to a New York Times review, Thompson unravels the mystery of the process and presents it for debate.

Most people have heard of algorithms that govern things such as first results on Google, acceptable topics on Facebook, or forbidden political opinions on Twitter. But these algorithms do not write themselves. They are written by the people–the coders–whose consciences match that of their companies.

Clive Thompson both likes and dislikes the coders he profiles. His book comes to some common conclusions: Coders are too white, too male, too upper class, too introverted. For these reasons, he suggests, coders can’t understand how their code will be used by actual people–a conclusion that will no doubt be both hated and loved by the coders themselves.

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson.
Penguin Random House, March 2019.
448 pages.