Lev Manovich’s Software Takes Command is an analytical map intended to help both scholars and designers understand the current technological application culture. An earlier version was available much earlier online and is now published in printed form in Bloomsbury’s International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics series. As a nod toward material and media history, the book borrows its name from the famous Siegfried Giedion title Mechanization Takes Command ([1948] 1969). Hence, Manovich has big boots to fill, although he admits that his is a more modest take. Giedion’s massive research on the “anonymous history” of mechanization covered food, industry, art, and much more. Despite his announced modesty, Manovich also aims to offer a broad perspective into the role software plays across cultural domains, but he mostly focuses on “media” software. After the fame of Manovich’s The Language of New Media, readers have high expectations for this book and, in...
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