While Philip Mirowski’s scholarship has been widely read across many of the different academic fields with which it engages, his impact on the direct study of digital media and digital technology has been relatively minimal. This is particularly unfortunate, given that his work touches on so many different parts of the digital world, from the metaphors and rhetoric that structure our thinking about computers to the specific functions of various technologies. In addition, Mirowski’s deep analysis of political economy is directly relevant to the study of the digital. This essay surveys material from several of Mirowski’s projects, drawing out some of the many ways in which his analyses of neoliberalism, of computational thinking in economics and the social sciences, and of the form and function of our notions of “information” have profound implications for how we understand digital technology and its cultural impacts.

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