Kindred Code
From Maze
(Difference between revisions)
(Transitioning into Hammurabi) | |||
| Line 14: | Line 14: | ||
However, this last example makes clear an oversights of the basic assumption, namely that interactivity is framed as an activity that occurs between the user and the system at the level of the interface. Nick Montfort (2004) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2008) have identified this tendency among scholars as a sign of “screen essentialism,” in which, as Kirschenbaum puts it, the “digital event on the screen” becomes the sole object of study, at the expense of the underlying code, the hardware, the storage devices, and even the non-digital inputs and outputs that make the digital object possible in the first place. | However, this last example makes clear an oversights of the basic assumption, namely that interactivity is framed as an activity that occurs between the user and the system at the level of the interface. Nick Montfort (2004) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2008) have identified this tendency among scholars as a sign of “screen essentialism,” in which, as Kirschenbaum puts it, the “digital event on the screen” becomes the sole object of study, at the expense of the underlying code, the hardware, the storage devices, and even the non-digital inputs and outputs that make the digital object possible in the first place. | ||
| − | As the BASIC and Commodore 64 chapters make clear, 10 PRINT circulated in a cultural moment that instead privileged interaction at the level of the program, the lines of code. 10 PRINT epitomizes a relationship between human and computer where the software is not the application that is executed but the means by which the human will come to better understand the operations of the computer. Nor is a program a completed system loaded from stored memory, but a fragment, an always-partial set of processes subject to change, expansion, revision, and reimagining. To type in that code is to commence an adventure, to put the bike on the road, the surf board in the water, and much like the "Hello, World" moment to begin to move in and with the language of the system. All of the cultural theories about being initiated into the laws of a system through language resonate with this moment, albeit only hypothetical. | + | As the BASIC and Commodore 64 chapters make clear, 10 PRINT circulated in a cultural moment that instead privileged interaction at the level of the program, the lines of code. 10 PRINT epitomizes a relationship between human and computer where the software is not the application that is executed but the means by which the human will come to better understand the operations of the computer. Nor is a program a completed system loaded from stored memory, but a fragment, an always-partial set of processes subject to change, expansion, revision, and reimagining. To type in that code is to commence an adventure, to put the bike on the road, the surf board in the water, and much like the "Hello, World" moment to begin to move in and with the language of the system. All of the cultural theories about being initiated into the laws of a system through language resonate with this moment, albeit only hypothetical. |
The Code as Text | The Code as Text | ||
