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Preprogrammed

How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media
By Amy Skjerseth
Series: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media
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Brief Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How much of your life is preprogrammed? Presets, or default settings on technology, can be found everywhere from predictive text and Instagram... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$12700

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

How much of your life is preprogrammed? Presets, or default settings on technology, can be found everywhere from predictive text and Instagram filters to microwave popcorn buttons and morning alarms. But while presets facilitate the completion of tasks and the production of art, they also reinforce—and sometimes challenge—economic, political, and social norms.

In Preprogrammed, interdisciplinary scholar Amy Skjerseth turns to modern music and media to explore what presets allow and deny. Employing capitalist, queer, and feminist critique to reveal how audiovisual presets have reconfigured ways of seeing and hearing over the past century, Skjerseth shows how, from the popularization of the push-button car radio in the 1930s to the Auto-Tune era and the advent of AI, artists have co-opted preset technologies to develop new forms of artistic and cultural expression.

An urgent reconsideration of the cultural and political systems we often take for granted, this book is an elegantly theorized and paradigm-shifting invitation to rethink the profundity of the everyday.

Series: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media

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  • Preprogrammed
    A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How much of your life is preprogrammed? Presets, or default settings on technology, can be found everywhere from predictive text and Instagram filters to microwave popcorn buttons and morning alarms. But while presets facilitate the completion...
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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780520413498

Publisher: University of California Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 29 September 2026

Country: United States

Imprint: University of California Press

Illustration: 17 b-w figures

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 0g

Pages: 252

Collections

Amy Skjerseth Arts & Culture Computing & Technology Education & Reference Music & Musicians Non-Fiction Pop Culture: Best-Selling Books Science & Nature Series: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media

About the Author

Amy Skjerseth is Assistant Professor of Popular Music at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Voice and Identity.

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