Writings
Selected writings by the project and its members on ELIZA, Joseph Weizenbaum, and the reading of code as a cultural text.
By the project
Ciston, S., Berry, D. M., Hay, A. C., Marino, M. C., Millican, P., Schwarz, A. I., Shrager, J. and Weil, P. (2026) Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (Software Studies). Available at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262052481/inventing-eliza/
Marino, M. C., Weil, P., Shrager, J., Schwarz, A., Hay, A., Ciston, S., Berry, D. M. and Millican, P. (2026) ‘Conversations about Conversational Code: On the Collaborative Critical Code Studies Reading of ELIZA’, AI & Society. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-03086-7
Berry, D. M. and Marino, M. C. (2024) ‘Reading ELIZA: Critical Code Studies in Action’, Electronic Book Review. Available at: https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/reading-eliza-critical-code-studies-in-action/
Berry, D. M., Hay, A., Millican, P. and Shrager, J. (2023) ‘Finding ELIZA: Rediscovering Weizenbaum’s Source Code, Comments and Faksimiles’, in Baranovska, M. and Höltgen, S. (eds.) Hello, I’m Eliza. 50 Jahre Gespräche mit Computern (Computerarchäologie, Bd. 5), 2nd edn. Bochum: Projektverlag, pp. 247–248.
Lane, R., Hay, A., Schwarz, A., Berry, D. M. and Shrager, J. (2025) ‘ELIZA Reanimated: The world’s first chatbot restored on the world’s first time sharing system’, arXiv. Preprint, posted 12 January 2025, arXiv:2501.06707. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06707
Weizenbaum on ELIZA
Weizenbaum, J. (1966) ‘ELIZA: A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine’, Communications of the ACM, 9(1), pp. 36–45.
Weizenbaum, J. (1967) ‘Contextual Understanding by Computers’, Communications of the ACM, 10(8), pp. 474–480.
Weizenbaum, J. (1976) Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
On Weizenbaum and the ELIZA effect
Berry, D. M. (2023) ‘The Limits of Computation: Joseph Weizenbaum and the ELIZA Chatbot’, Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 3(3). Available at: https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WJDS/3.3.2
Berry, D. M. (2023) ‘The Explainability Turn’, Digital Humanities Quarterly, 17(2).
Dillon, S. (2020) ‘The Eliza Effect and its Dangers: From Demystification to Gender Critique’, Journal for Cultural Research, 24(1), pp. 1–15.
Marino, M. C. (2020) Critical Code Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Turkle, S. (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Touchstone.