[Commlist] New book: The Birth of Computer Vision

We would like to announce a new publication from the University of 
Minnesota Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*The Birth of Computer Vision***

*James E. Dobson***

*_https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517914219/the-birth-of-computer-vision/ 
<https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517914219/the-birth-of-computer-vision/> 
_*

*__*

*Receive a 20% discount online*:*

*LLS23*

*Valid until 11:59 GMT, 31^st December 2023. Discount only applies to 
the CAP website.

"A key technology of our time, computer vision is embedded in both our 
professional and everyday lives in numerous ways—from helping doctors 
diagnose diseases to enabling organizations to obtain accurate 
information about remote natural disaster zones and refugee camps to 
allowing billions of people to capture better images with their phone 
cameras. Focusing on the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s, 
James E. Dobson offers the first book tracing the development of 
computer vision. Combining historical research and theoretical analysis, 
/The Birth of Computer Vision/is an invaluable contribution to the 
fields of media theory, software studies, and algorithm studies."*—Dr. 
Lev Manovich, author of **/Cultural Analytics/*

"In this timely and eye-opening book, James E. Dobson provides a 
penetrating analysis of the opportunities and challenges of facial 
recognition and other computer vision technology by excavating its 
formation from the sediment of history, tracing its connections to the 
military industrial complex of the Cold War, and critically examining 
the notable successes and failures of embryonic research efforts and 
prototypes."*—David J. Gunkel, author of **/Deconstruction/*//

A revealing genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies.

Today’s most advanced neural networks and sophisticated image-analysis 
methods come from 1950s and ’60s Cold War culture—and many biases and 
ways of understanding the world from that era persist along with them. 
Aerial surveillance and reconnaissance shaped all of the technologies 
that we now refer to as computer vision, including facial recognition. 
/The Birth of Computer Vision/uncovers these histories and finds 
connections between the algorithms, people, and politics at the core of 
automating perception today.

James E. Dobson reveals how new forms of computerized surveillance 
systems, high-tech policing, and automated decision-making systems have 
become entangled, functioning together as a new technological apparatus 
of social control. Tracing the development of a series of important 
computer-vision algorithms, he uncovers the ideas, worrisome military 
origins, and lingering goals reproduced within the code and the products 
based on it, examining how they became linked to one another and 
repurposed for domestic and commercial uses. Dobson includes analysis of 
the Shakey Project, which produced the first semi-autonomous robot, and 
the impact of student protest in the early 1970s at Stanford University, 
as well as recovering the computer vision–related aspects of Frank 
Rosenblatt’s Perceptron as the crucial link between machine learning and 
computer vision.

Motivated by the ongoing use of these major algorithms and methods, /The 
Birth of Computer Vision/chronicles the foundations of computer vision 
and artificial intelligence, its major transformations, and the 
questionable legacy of its origins.

Cover alt text: Two overlapping circles in cream and violet, with black 
background. Top is a printed circuit with camera eye; below a person at 
a 1977 computer.

*James E. Dobson*is assistant professor of English and creative writing 
and director of the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric at Dartmouth 
College. His most recent books are /Critical Digital Humanities: The 
Search for a Methodology and Moonbit/.


*University of Minnesota Press**| April 2023 | 224pp | 9781517914219 | 
PB | £22.99**

*Price subject to change.

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