Inventing ELIZA

REVIEWS

“In Inventing ELIZA, a group of eight scholars (“Team ELIZA”) lovingly and painstakingly reconstruct, explain, reanimate, and place into historical context the program itself, the many surviving transcripts of the program’s use in the 1960s, and the development of subsequent chatbots… The book is a masterful contribution to the emerging discipline of software studies.”
—Science


ENDORSEMENTS

“The innovative collaboration Inventing ELIZA doesn’t just shed light on the famous first chatbot from the 1960s. It aims an array of thoughtful approaches at a software system of ever-increasing importance, incandescently illuminating ELIZA and connecting it to current developments. This book proves the importance of critical code studies and is an essential resource for understanding the past, present, and future of AI.”
—Nick Montfort, author of Output

“An extraordinary accomplishment in the history of computing. Inventing ELIZA couples important archival discoveries with careful materialist rigor. A crucial history of the present and essential reading for students and critics of AI.”
—Scott Richmond, author of Cinema’s Bodily Illusions

“Part software archaeology, part improv, Inventing ELIZA opens a backstage chat in which the recovered MAD-SLIP source code acts as a lively conversational partner, transforming a technological artifact fundamental to the history of AI into a compelling dialogue about conversations themselves.”
—Rita Raley, Professor of English, UC Santa Barbara

Sarah Ciston

Professor of Computational Thinking and Aesthetic Doing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Winner of the 2025 Ars Electronica STARTS Grand Prize, they are also the author of A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets.

David M. Berry

Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Critical Theory and the Digital, The Philosophy of Software, and Digital Humanities.

Anthony C. Hay

Has a degree in Computer Science from Imperial College, London.

Mark C. Marino

Professor (Teaching) of Writing at the University of Southern California, where he is Director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab. He is also a 2023-2024 Generative AI Fellow. His previous books include 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 (MIT Press) with Nick Montfort et al., Reading Project with Jessica Pressman and Jeremy Douglass, and Critical Code Studies (MIT Press).

Peter Millican

Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, University of Oxford. He is also Professor in Philosophy at the National University of Singapore and Visiting Professor in Computing and Data Science at Nanyang Technological University.

Jeff Shrager

A cognitive scientist and entrepreneur with deep technical experience in both modern and classic AI. In the early 1970s he wrote a BASIC version of ELIZA that was published in Creative Computing, introducing the entire PC generation to conversational AI.

Arthur I. Schwarz

Develops and supports software algorithms and language design and development of products for public use, and is the former Chair of the Orange County IEEE CyberSecurity SIG.

Peggy Weil

A multidisciplinary artist working in Los Angeles. She teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

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