Lecture by Vikram Chandra, author of The Geek Sublime, Thursday, October 26

Vikram Chandra  (UC Berkeley English Department) and author of “The Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty”  will lecture Thursday October 26th followed by a round table discussion with Lilly Irani, (Communication Dept), Shayan Mookherjea (Electrical & Computer Engineering Department), and Sanjay Nigam (School of Medicine).  This is co-sponsored with Science Studies, the Warren College Writing Program, and the Marshall College Dimensions of Culture Program, with support of the Indira Foundation.   Join us in the Seuss Room, Geisel Library, from 4-6 pm.
From the description of his book:
Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary book he returns to his early days as a writer, when he was beginning Red Earth and Pouring Rain, and looks at the connections between these two worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style just as writers are but do the words mean the same thing to both? And is it a coincidence that Chandra is drawn to two seemingly opposing ways of thinking? To answer his questions, Chandra delves into the writings of Abhinavagupta, the tenth- and eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker, and creates an idiosyncratic history of coding.