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This course proposes a study of the culture of algorithms for students of the literate space. True (deep) literacy is the ability to interpret a text or an object in its cultural, historical, conceptual, material or political contexts. With the evolution of digital cultures, literate practices have changed to incorporate the emerging cultural paradigms born out of the encounter of algorithms and computability with social practices embedded in the earlier literate traditions. Indeed, modern computation environments invite a new algorithmic hermeneutics grounded in both literate and scientific traditions. We will consider, among others, texts such as Bernard Chazelle’s inaugural lesson at the Collège de France, “L’algorithmique et les sciences”; Leibniz on ordered problem solving; Condorcet on “social arithmetic”; Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc.; Herbert Simon, “Bounded Rationality…”; Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"; Steven Wolfram: Computation and the Future of the Human Condition; Leslie Valiant, Probably, Approximately Correct; Ed Finn, What Algorithms Want. Imagination in the Age of Computing; Daniel Cardon, À Quoi rêvent les algorithmes?; and of course Donald Knuth’s classics, Literate Programming and “Computing Science and its Relation to Mathematics”. Various modern novels also attempt to engage with the algorithmic, and these can form a counterpoint to the more technical or philosophical texts. For more information and a provisional syllabus, please go to http://www.wilda.org/Courses/CourseVault/Grad/Algorithms/Syllabus.html. This course will be taught in English. A few (short) texts are in French, so the ability to read French will be useful although not required.