Introduction

The other major unusual feature of this book is that, although the book is mostly written in a single voice, it is written collaboratively by ten authors. This method of authorship shares some features with that used to write Wikipedia, although it differs from the writing of that encyclopedia in some significant ways, too. Our book was not written in public and was not open to anyone's edits; we gathered as a group after expressing interest in this program specifically during an online Critical Code Studies Workshop and, in a few cases, after being invited due to our interest in and publications on the study of code. While Wikipedia eschews "original research" for writing about facts which can be cited, our book is composed of scholarship, critical arguments, and original ideas about this program. We have included only those arguments and ideas that we find to some extent compelling and that we all essentially agree with.

To produce a book-length discussion of 10 PRINT that situated the program in all of its relevant contexts and explained those contexts, it was clear that we would need to bring a rich variety of perspectives to bear. This book deals deeply with art history, the development of programming languages, the working of computation in general, the technical specifics of the Commodore 64 and related platforms, the material history of texts and the transmission of program in print, and many other topics. Given this range of related areas, it was sensible for us to share the background and fluency that we collectively have in these areas.

Instead of isolating ourselves and writing ten articles, which surely would have produced significant overlaps and left significant gaps, we chose to attempt a new type of writing and to write what should appear, to the reader, as a book by a single author. Where it was necessary to write individually about personal experiences or perspectives that other authors do not share, we have included short singed notes that appear alongside the main text.