imagined…code… cultural enigma machine
ok! In benedict anderson’s work imagined communities - nations or nationalisms - became collective sentiments via print literature associated with print capitalism that disseminated the same ideas to many people in many places at different times in a language that people understood. The language and the story in print were static but not the interpretation and the context. Latin was the language of the elite; luther’s bible was religion for the masses which bypassed the power of the clergy and the power brokers of the day. Radicalism, usurpation of power structures and popularization of religion among other things was possible across time and space. Interesting that the recitation of the koran is performed everywhere in its original language and coles notes are not necessarily welcome as this is interpretation not the texte!
but that is not what i want to talk about.
i want to talk about the imagined communities - the collective sentiments created between and among those who speak specific computer languages. What are the collective imaginings, cultures, values, solidarities between and among those that read, write, translate and compile code? What are the different modes of thinking and paradigms associated with these. The most obvious ideological differences are between open and proprietary code writers. Are their pearl, php, java, mms, mapobj, GRASS etc. subcultures? What are their values? Which ones give you cred? Who else speaks what you speak and what do you have in common with them ideologically if anything? What standards and specifications do you follow, avoid and promote? Why? And what cultures and subcultures emerge as a result and what are their degree of social and technical influence?
latin and greek were the written language of high ranking members of the clergy, monarchies, and their scribes. Computer languages are those of engineers, self taught geeks, mostly men, primarily western and white but not all. They are a minority of the world’s population that are actively engaged in and influence most of what we do in the world today. Almost everything! The power that this group brokers is unbelievable! One could argue that their power is diffused and distributed and mediated and moderated by those who pay them to write code or the groups for whom these groups write for and the modularity of code writing itself. Yet, these multiple projects are written in languages which enact all sorts of performativities in social space that non engineers cannot decipher, study, critically examine, explore and/or compare. We perform in what the code enacts! These languages and their associated constructs construct much or our contemporary world! They are the infrastructure, their ubiquity, dependencies, invisibility and complexity are indicators of infrastructureness (michael’s word) yet we do not have a social, public, cultural enigma machine to decrypt their messages!
i dunno what more to say right now except that i just realized, probably naively, that the ubiquity of the invisible code in our lives is something we need to collectively reflect upon and i would love for the code writers to be a part of that reflexive process! i would like a public discussion about something we are mostly oblivious to but which affects us all!
Wholly schmokes! I am never going to get any sleep now!
This is the paper that got me going - The Performativity of Code: Software and Cultures of Circulation by Adrien Mackenzie in Theory, Culture and Society. 2005, 22, 71. Let me know if you want a copy!
aren’t you supposed to be cut off?
Comment by hugh — March 26, 2007 @ 10:07 am
busted! well i am not reading rss feeds! that is progress ain’t it! and i went to your great city this weekend to participate in an isf workshop of wireless community groups in quebec! Next time i pop by we should go out for a drink, did not have a moment to do that during this visit!
Comment by Administrator — March 26, 2007 @ 11:00 am
just wait till you start reading Snowcrash.
Comment by mtl3p — March 26, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
you know what! my eldest sprout found it beside my bed and has pilfered right from under my pillow! He was commenting about how weird it is! The rascal! The deal now is that i get it before sleepy time and he gets it the rest of the time! I just have to make sure he does not eat any chicken while readin…urgh! the price you pay for having bookwormish children!
Comment by Administrator — March 26, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
great that you’re back to the real world. Didn’t knew you liked snowcrash, one of my favorites. … and, finished yesterday: River of Gods, from Ian McDonald, great stuff.
Comment by rene — March 26, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
hey Rene! I dunno if i like the book yet, my rascally son took it! It was lent to me yesterday by my pal Michael right in Hugo’s apartment! Michael says that to understand you cyberpunks i need to read these books! I trust him as he is the one who got me going about wireless, blogging and how to hone my layer 8 skills! But since those new things sent my life in a whole new direction, i am a little afraid to read this book now! oh oh! Hey! this book has not pictures in it! what kind of book is that?
Comment by Administrator — March 26, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
What kind of mother you are - let your son taken your book? Dont you have any authority? And does your son has no TV, why he takes a book?
Anyway, no pictures, right, these are not printed on the paper but you will end up with a lot of them in your mind. One of these is an image of the atlas of the future - which is a partially historical description by now.
Comment by rene — March 27, 2007 @ 4:13 am
Please send me a copy. I am working on myself on coding as a cultural process. On the notion of “performativity”, this paper, refered by Lucy Suchman, is interesting:
http://nchsr.arts.unsw.edu.au/TwoCultures/Barad.pdf
Suchman’s paper:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/suchman-agenciestechnodesign.pdf
Comment by Stéphane Couture — March 27, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
Rene! You are hilarious! But now i must swipe the book back with all that atlas stuff in it! You know how to get me back on track!
Stephane, je t’envois sa tous de suite! Et merci pour les liens!
Comment by Administrator — March 27, 2007 @ 5:39 pm