ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

Some interesting agit-prop

I'm hoping agit-prop is not out of order for this class. Below you'll find a link to an anti-CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) site. I mostly post it because it's interesting to see political grassroots groups embracing the kind of technology (in this case, Flash animation) we've been talking about all semester in class.

Close reading anyone?

http://www.quixote.org/calf/

Oh, and in a spirit of full-disclosure, I used to work at the Quixote Center (Quest for Peace, sponsor/creator of the ad, is a project of the QC).

Post-Cat? & Post-PacMan?

Via the Ellen Degeneres show and Fark today, here's a story about a very lucky black cat living as a post-cat in a post-human world:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/170194_turkey22.html

The cat, named Cheyenne, was lost in Florida seven years ago and wound up found in San Francisco. The cat was found on April Fool's Day no less (black cat, seven years, april 1...too good to be true). The cat and owner were reunited because of a subdermal microchip "in" the kitty. The panopticon is not only watching us but watching our pets, too. Of course, there's already technology to track our children and convicts.

I wonder what Hayles would say?
ED

P.S. Here's something else I've run across: Pac-Manhattan. From the website: http://pacmanhattan.com/index.php

"Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. This analog version of Pac-man is being developed in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, in order to explore what happens when games are removed from their "little world" of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger "real world" of street corners, and cities.

A player dressed as Pac-man will run around the Washington square park area of Manhattan while attempting to collect all of the virtual "dots" that run the length of the streets. Four players dressed as the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde will attempt to catch Pac-man before all of the dots are collected.

Using cell-phone contact, Wi-Fi internet connections, and custom software designed by the Pac-Manhattan team, Pac-man and the ghosts will be tracked from a central location and their progress will be broadcast over the internet for viewers from around the world."

Again, what would Hayles say?

Supplemental Readings

A couple of additional readings for next week's class. Please consider them optional.

John Unsworth, "The Next Wave: Liberation Technology."

Ed Ayers and Charles M. Grisham, "Why IT Has Not Paid Off As We Hoped (Yet)."

Ambient Devices

Curiouser and curiouser...

analog aesthetics meets digital information

These are pretty interesting gizmos. Take a look at the company's philosophy and concept of "ambient information." More signs of the post-human? Could the post-human be spreading (not that it already hasn't) to spaces? Beyond the body? Somehow a glowing orb that "knows" things shifting and changing all of the time seems a little creepy (in a good way).

Enjoy.
ED

DigiHumanAssignment: Real Versus Unreal

Since the class's visit to MITH and our introduction to Paley's TextArc, I was and currently am struck by the "neat" factor of the site's/software's/viewer's visualization of a text and Dr. Susan Schreibman's description of TextArc as a tool that "deforms the text to understand it in a different way."

Building on Schreibman's presentation of MITH's work, our class this scratched the surface of what it means to work in the digital humanities, to interface with the digital humanities, and perhaps most importantly to do digital humanities. I am interested in the intersection of the problems and limitations of studying/producing analog humanities and the problems and limitations of studying/producing digital humanities. I think Schreibman (cum McGann cum Unsworth) is right that a big bump in the information superhighway is the retrieval of data, of information, and by extension the front end, user end of retrieval.

Considering the five Blake sites, I've picked two poles on the continuum of digital texts: Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection's Songs of Innocence and of Experience and TextArc's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

On the one hand, the Rosenwald's digitization of Blake's Songs is extremely simple offering two possible versions (1794 and 1826), simple to navigate (a quick jump to page button or very clear PREV IMAGE or NEXT IMAGE clickable links), and a simple no frills, single window layout. The strength of the Rosenwald digitization is its photorealism. Each page, each plate (including the outer cover and end papers) is a high-quality, high-definition color scan of the book itself. The text offers both JPEG and TIFF resolutions. The advantage of the photographic plate is the preservation of the richness of the illustrations, the subtleties of hue, and the materiality of the artifact (e.g. you can see the grain of the paper, signs of wear, brush strokes). It is in photorealism that composition is preserved, that the interconnectivity between writing and illustration is preserved, and that the Blake as "author and printer" is preserved.

The Rosenwald digitization assumes the stance that the most important data to fore and preserve is the Songs as book, as codex, as object. The scans are like specimen photos. Each scan preserves the bookness of the text. Each scan is of facing verso and recto pages. The image is not cropped. You can still see the edges of the cover, the separate pages, the central binding. The digital book is meant to be flipped through like a paper book. Here the digitization is literal and conservative rather than interpretive or transformational. Though the reader can see what the book looks like that is the extent of the depth of the digital text. Here retrieval is flat. You cannot search the text (or the images). There is no additional annotation, added material, or useful hypertextuality.

On the other hand, TextArc's digitization of the Songs offers a stratling different presentation of the text. By the site's own admission, TextArc "is a visual represention of a text—the entire text (twice!) on a single page. A funny combination of an index, concordance, and summary; it uses the viewer's eye to help uncover meaning." The codex as physical artifact is completely dispensed with. The text is stripped, miniaturized, flung into a visually satisfying swash while individual words are arranged like a nebula of importance and iterations. The usual text is gone and what is left is a visualization that gives the reader a new perspective, an artificial entrance into the text. It is in the unnatural way TextArc presents and manipulates the text that is its strength allowing the reader to notice how different words are used, how they are spread through the text, how they are connected, and how important they are to the overall text. It takes the trusty concordance to a new level.

However, TextArc treats texts as just that -- raw, unformatted, pageless text. If a text contains images, they are rendered unimportant. Composition of the page becomes meaningless. Changes and inflections in typography (or handwriting) becomes flattened. In this case, Blake's Songs lose half or perhaps more of its impact as a written text and a visual one. And though TextArc deforms the text, gives the reader a unusual interface, the text can still be read very traditionally (from beginning to end, sequentially, linearly). There is little searchability. Furthermore, the interface is not wholly intuitive, navigation is menu-driven, and the reader is left with a "what do I do with this now?" feeling after the novelty of the text wears off. TextArc serves as a different lens to see and close-read a text with but does not function well if the readers needs are more codex-bound.

Finally, both the Rosenwald Collection and TextArc have minimum computer hardware and software requirements. The Rosenwald site contains large image files (particularly the TIFFs or the PDFs). TextArc requires a Java enabled browser, a fast connection, and a speedy computer otherwise the application is slow to load and slow to respond. Technological limitations on both the server and user sides continue to be a material issue affecting what can be digitized, what can be collected and "housed" online, and ultimately what can be distributed, seen, and manipulated.

In the end, digital texts must take the best of both worlds and offer a blending of the photoreal and the eye-opening unreal. I suppose sites like the William Blake Archive fall somewhere in between Rosenwald and TextArc. Or perhaps each variant, each push and pull on the digitized text needs to be embraced as part of the diversity online. Each has something to offer. I suppose then the ultimate digital text would be a metatext allowing a viewer/reader/user to see and manipulate all of these versions simultaneously (at least more effectively and efficiently than we do now). To reiterate McGann, "an edition is 'hyper' exactly because its structure is such that it seeks to preserve the authority of all the units that comprise its documentary arrays. In this respect a hyperedition resembles that fabulous circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

Important academic stuff: Drinking

So, having fully weighed all relevant factors (the fact that it's Bad Poetry Night at College Perk, the fact that Matt lives in Silver Spring, seating, ease of access, availability of alcohol and pool) we have decided that probably the best thing is to be lazy and predictable and go to Town Hall next week. It's a fun environment if you like dives, there's some self-determination as far as the soundscape (translation: good jukebox), and unlike Cornerstone or the Fe it's relatively free of undergraduates. Seating won't be any more of a problem than at other places... there are three booths that are regularly empty, and most of the time in a bar people end up standing to chat anyway. Most importantly, perhaps, it's really just a hop skip and jump up Rte. 1. I've been to Mayorga, and I like it fine, but it's not the easiest place to give directions to from College Park.

By contrast, here are the directions to Town Hall: Go out to Rte. 1. Turn left. After you pass Paint Branch Parkway (the road that essentially marks the edge of campus), you'll see the fire station on the right. Town Hall is just past that on the right, with an analog clockface on the sign (across Rte. 1 from the Jerry's, if you need additional triangulation coordinates). Correction: The clockface is not on the Town Hall sign. It's on the sign for Campus Village Shopping Center, just PAST Town Hall. My bad. It doesn't look like a bar, it looks like a liquor store. This is camouflage. Do not be fooled. Go in under the sign that says "lounge."

We will want to carpool, as parking is limited. We can work that out next week.

Also, if anyone has a smoke allergy, please post to say so, and we can reconsider.

Unsworth at Georgetown

John Unsworth gave a lecture yesterday at Georgetown entitled "Do the Humanities need a Cyberinfrastructure: A Conversation with John Unsworth." He kicked off the lecture by explaining the function of the new Comission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is an arm of The American Council of Learned Societies. Unsworth is the chair of the comission and Jerry McGann is a member, as well as 8 others. The comission has been charged to describe and analyze the current state of humanities and social science infrastructure; articulate the roles of humanities and social sciences in developing a cyberinfrastructure for information, teaching,and research; and to make recommendations regarding areas of coordination for agencies that contribute to the development of the interdisciplinary infrastructure.
Unsworth specifically discussed the challenges presented in developing and funding these infrastructures. Here are some highlights in somewhat random order and by no means comprehensive of the lecture...just stuff I thought was notable--
Funding: Governmental funding for humanities is much lower than for math and science b/c society is more willing to spend $ on knowledge w/practical consequences. While science and math provide solutions, the humanities are perceived as asking questions but not necessarily solving problems. B/c of lack of funding, prior investments in humanities cyberinfrastructures have not provided a solid foundation.
The two biggest challenges facing humanties computing are intellectual property rights and privacy issues. We are in dire need of a technical solution for distinguishing between originals and reproductions. In addition, genres of the digital object have not been identified or are even identifiable, which presents a hurdle in establishing consistency.
Along those same lines, one significant problem with the cyberinfrasructure today is that there is no single digital resource, created by one person, published by one publisher, and archived by one service. Consistency in "publishing" standards/procedures is practically nonexistent.
He also made the point that the Humanities require multidisciplinary expertise and that mathematics needs to be reasserted in humanities education.
The URL for the web site is http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm . Once there, you can get on a mailing list and receive minutes of their meetings. If anyone is interested in the handout from yesterday, I can make copies--just let me know in class.

Google goes to Wall Street

i realize that it may seem that i have a bit of a google fetish. perhaps it is an inevitable side effect of my chosen profession... i can't count the number of times someone has said to me (jokingly, i hope!) that no one needs librarians these days when they have Google!

i think this column raises some important issues about google's pervasiveness and cultural power.

i'm especially interested in the concept of Google as "library" , and the grey market of links that is being perpetuated by google's search mechanism.

here's a blurb that seemed especially thought provoking to me:

"Like Microsoft, Google makes what is essentially a software utility. But whereas Microsoft's Windows operating system is more or less confined to the box on your desk, Google is everywhere.

Google is a library and a marketplace, an instrument of democracy and commerce, the long-sought primary portal. Windows is a toaster.

Google is the de facto editor of the World Wide Web, with the power to boost, bury or block anything on it. True, you don't have to use Google. But you do. To the tune of 200 million searches a day.

Google is a time machine, able to summon Web pages according to date. With its 100,000 computer servers, Google is a spy and a mind reader, bringing eerily relevant ads to go with your searches and now even your e-mail. Google is the Alexandrian library of the 600s, the CBS Evening News of the 1960s and the Wal-Mart of the 2000s"

here's a link to the full article:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.hancock28apr28,0,7802267.column?coll=bal-business-indepth

Things of Interest

Look out, Dig 101! Blogs may be the next thing U.S. Intelligence starts tracking:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1471&ncid=1471&e=4&u=/ibd/20040427/bs_ibd_ibd/2004427tech

Not surprising, really--and the whole Baghdad blogger phenomenawas neat. This next...well...I'll just leave you to process it.
How a hologram and a multiplayer game might bring about the apocalpyse and be used to bring peace to the Holy Land:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/holyland_pr.html

Don't ask. I just find 'em.

Kell

e-tapestry

Given our class's shift to a look at digital humanities, I thought this site would be a fun way of imagining how old and new schools can mingle. The Bayeux Tapestry came up earlier in the semester when we were talking about writing, about codexes, about linear narratives. A goodly chunk of the digital humanities seems to be (at the moment though certainly not limited to) at its simplest digitizing material and getting it online, into the database. But questions raised at our last meeting points up how such materials should be presented, organized, interfaced, curated, preserved. Here's a little e-tapestry in honor of our class:

I wonder where such a "text" fits into our discussion of cybertexts, of ergodic texts, of narrative/database, of game, of writing, of printing, of e-publishing?

Have fun with making a little e-tapestry of your own: http://www.adgame-wonderland.de/type/bayeux.php

Enjoy!
ED

As if free pizza wasn't enough...

Irvin Kershner, the director of The Empire Strikes Back, will be sitting in on Wednesday's Digital Dialogue at MITH. Kersh has taken a particular interest in MITH since its inception and will be on campus all week. OK, no more postings regarding this event, I promise...just thought many of you would be enticed by the prospect of meeting him and hearing his input.

Digital Humanities Assignment

Some of you will have noticed the final assignment on the syllabus, due the last day of class (May 5). Here it is (PDF).

I realize it's the end of the semester--this is a modest assignment, intended to be completed in a single sitting (though you're welcome to take as much time as you need). I'm happy to answer questions about it in class week after this one.

Reminder: This Week's Class

A reminder that you should go directly to the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) for this week's class. The class will be taught by Dr. Susan Schreibman (Assistant Director of MITH and Affiliate Assistant Professor of English).

MITH is located on the basement level of McKeldin Library, room 0131. It's well marked with signs, and you can also ask for directions at the information desk. PLEASE MAKE AN EXTRA EFFORT TO BE ON TIME (6:30). If you find you do come late, go down the hall to the left of the main entrance to MITH and knock on the door of the seminar room (room 0135).

To prepare, please browse the MITH Web site, paying particular attention to "projects" and "products," and come with questions about MITH's work and mission.

See you all the following week!

In the News

Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages was Slashdotted.

"Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally" in the New York Times (non subscription copy here).

Digital Emblems

I ran across this site and the corresponding interview. So much of what we talked about last night, both in class and afterward is discussed in the interview.

http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_maps/42b.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/poundstone/poundstone.htm#

Fun! Excitement! Games!

Ok everybody, here's a link to the presentation Marc and I will be doing tomorrow, if you wish to take a look at it before class and see where the discussion will be going.

www.wam.umd.edu/~mruppel/emerge/tictactoe.htm

Be sure to have the sound up. :)

Enjoy and see you in class!

Kell

Moving ever closer to the Posthuman?

An interesting article i ran across on NYTimes.com. About implanting chips in the brain to allow paralyzed people to operate computers by thought alone

The lead:
"Can a machine read a person's mind? A medical device company is about to find out."

http://nytimes.com/2004/04/13/health/13BRAI.html

MITH Digital Dialogue Schedule Change

Just found out today that the digital dialogue has been rescheduled for Wed. the 21st. Matt, hopefully now you can make it. And again, here's the link to the article that we will be discussing:

Why IT Has Not Paid Off as We Had Hoped

Do chickens make good cybertexts?

Given our foray into hypertexts, cyberfiction, and other electronic literature... I thought I'd share this link that was passed along to me and seems to be generating a bit of a stir:

http://www.subservientchicken.com/

Much like our friends, the badgers, I'm not sure what to do with this ... er... text. I do wonder about its situation in the realm of texts, cyber or otherwise, of cultural (poultry?) studies, and of the intersection between the internet and commercialization (how does this site help sell Burger King?). I also find it rather queer in many senses: the fact that it's a rooster (a male chicken not a female chicken), the fact that it's a person dressed up as a rooster, its subservience (which brings up all sorts of notions about power, sex, performance), and webcamminess of it all (do you cam?). And after you've told the chicken to do all sorts of things -- some of which he does to the letter, some of which seems more like interpretative dance, and some of which he simply misinterprets or gets wrong or ignores -- what do you have? entertainment? story? advertisement? fetish video?

Enjoy,
ED

MITH Digital Dialogue

Wanted to remind everyone about the MITH Digtal Dialogue this Wed. from 12-1. There will be pizza, but I'd advise you to also brown bag it. Here's the link to the article that we'll be discussing:

http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm03/erm0361.asp

Hope to see you there.

Frame Theory and (on a completely unrelated note) Electronic Voting

Was anybody listening to NPR today? They did a segment about electronic voting that was interesting on a number of levels. First, the speakers talked about the need to have a “paper trail”—like paper receipts that reproduced what the voter saw on the computer screen--to counter people’s mistrust of the computer’s ability to “get it right.” People were saying that, at least initially, electronic voting systems are going to have to incorporate some form of paper-based element for voters to have confidence in their validity. Secondly, toward the end of the program, one of the callers made the comment that one of the dangers inherent in switching to computer-based voting was that—BECAUSE IT WAS SO DIFFICULT TO READ AND UNDERSTAND THE CODE THAT THESE PROGRAMS WERE WRITTEN IN—it would be very difficult to spot tampering. Even if someone tweeked the program to change two out of every thousand or so votes, it would have an enormous impact on the way the election turned out. Even so, the caller was saying, the change would be virtually undetectable as it would remain hidden in layers upon layers of unintelligible code. I think the program is going to be repeated tonight for anybody interested.

Now to get to what I really wanted to blog about. As I was reading the hypertexts and hypertext theory for this week, I was thinking that narrative frame theory might be brought to bear on works of hypertext. In this class, we’ve been talking a lot about frames—the frame of the codex, the frame of the computer screen, the cinematic frame, frames of production, etc.—and the way that these frames alter/control our readings of texts. (I give up—I can’t think of a better word). I’ve just been sort of toying with the idea that in hypertext fictions (and by this I mean those that are on the computer and opposed to paper ones—I don’t know what terms differentiate these two things) while you still have a horizontal frame, the screen, the packaging, etc., you have no sense of a vertical frame. Unlike something like Joyce’s Ulysses where you can hold the book in your hand and have a sense of how much information/text is there in the first place, in a computer-based hypertext document there is really no way to know how “deep” the text goes. This goes beyond what John Frow calls the “ near invisibility” of the frame in traditional codex books—in Hypertext the frame really is invisible in a sense—only the program and the programmer know what it is. I can hear possible objections—hypertexts may include a map so that you get a sense of the world of the story (Aarseth talks about this I
think) and how deep it goes, but I think there is something to make of this difference. I’m really interested in exploring this idea and would look forward to reading anyone’s comments.

See you in class. Jenny

My sincerest apologies

Looks like i've either encountered or *created* (?) a bug of my own on the blog. everytime i tried to post the previous message (one sentence dammit!)
i got an internal server error message. looks like it wasn't as big an error as i thought, because the message was posted 11 TIMES!!!!!

as a result, Ed and I were discussing how interesting this particular problem seems in light of the content of our class....

ED, stop laughing!!!!!!

Email by Google!?!?!?

I am electronically jinxed. third try follows:

I thought this tidbit was interesting esp. in light of some of the discussions we've had in class about archiving everything/privileging nothing.

http://www.gmail.com

But the Graphics Rock....

Spread the love.

Video Game Museum

On a related note, Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and other classics) will be appearing at the Smithsonian on Sunday May 16th in the Games People Play series of afternoon seminars:

Doug Church, chief technology director, Eidos North America, is the game designer of Ultima Underworld (I & II), System Shock, and Thief: The Dark Project, three games in the top 20 of PC Gamers’ recent list.

Moderator Bernard Yee has managed product development of computer games in Asia and the United States, most notably at Sony Online Entertainment, developers and publishers of EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. He also served as Director of Product Development at Disney Interactive and Director of Creative Development at Disney Online. Bernard has been a journalist, analyst and consultant for the computer games industry, and is currently teaching a class in Game Design and Development at Columbia University.

And just to whet your appetite a bit, here's an interesting quote from Miyamoto on reality, er, gaming, er... you decide...:

"What if, on a crowded street, you look up and see something appear that should not, given what we know, be there. You either shake your head and dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than we think. Perhaps it really is a doorway to another place. If you choose to go inside you may find many unexpected things."-Shigeru Miyamoto

Digital Paper, Electronic Ink

Extra, extra, read all about it.

Code as Writing as Code

10 REM Is code writing, writing code?
20 PRINT "I wanted to take up the question: Is code writing?"
30 INPUT ANSWER$
40 IF ANSWER$="No" THEN PRINT "Why not?"
50 IF ANSWER$="Yes" THEN PRINT "Is it narrative?"
60 REM Can code tell a story?
70 ?
80 PRINT "Some would argue that code can tell a story."
90 PRINT "In Ullman, the story is definitely about code."
100 PRINT "Is the code in the story story?"
110 ?
120 PRINT "Is this code a story?"
130 END

Try this textual program:

Rockwell: "...I therefore propose that we use a definititon of code from a Web authority -- dictionary.com -- which reads: Code is 'A system of symbols and rules used to represent instructions to a computer; a computer program" (5).

I really think that code is writing, code is story, code is narrative (I think much in the same way that I want to see all things as Texts like Andrew and Altheusser (sp?)). Again, I think we're troubled by the difficulty of trying to find code as "satisfying" in the same way my explanation I'm writing is satisfying or that a suspense novel is satisfying. However, in the way that we learned to read narrative in the form of a codex, I believe we'll learn to read narrative in the form of a cybertext. And for those who learn to read code, they do see narrative in the code.

Ramsay: "No one writes programs that way precisely because the code needs to be understandable not only by the computer, but by the person writing the code and others who need to verify its logics and extend, modify, port, and replace them....Harold Abelson...has even gone as far to say that 'programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute" (6).

Rockwell: "...code has to be unambiguous in a way that wee do not expect text to be" (6).

"It's not a joke, Herring. You should not be calling these routines. I've documented it thoroughly--"
"Who has time for fucking documentation?"
"You can read, can't you?"
"There's reading, then there's programming."
"There's intelligence, and then there's--" (Ullman, 102)

"At the thought of the task ahead of him, a red stain spread across his cheeks. He felt humiliated at the stupid mistake he'd made. Harry was right: he should have named the routines more clearly. He could have avoided trouble if the function names clearly told the other programmers which routines they could use and which were private to his device-interface libraries" (Ullman, 104-5).

Here is part of the rub. Code is closer to the human than it is to the computer. We already said that code may seem like gobbledegook to most people, but it is really for humans to read and understand. It is no accident that code is called a language (literally or metaporically) and most code borrows from English (is there code in French? Chinese? Sanskrit?).

In fact, Ethan in The Bug treats his programs like a book or more accurately a manuscript-in-progress that he picks up and puts down. He leaves himself a bookmark: "Here you are Ethan." He read through passages before and after and decides what needs to added, deleted, or rewritten. Whenever he opens his life program he must recall the story of the program, the story of the output, the story of his little Os and Xs in order to figure out how to engage the problem and the code.

Ramsay: "...a program is a kind of narrative, in part because te accomplishment of a specified task is only one of several purposes for a set of coded instructions. We therefore describe coded instructions...as the story of the machine's operation" (7).

Rockwell: "We can say that code is in the imperative voice -- commanding the interpreter who follows the code to do certain things and not other things" (8).

Ramsay: "...for most programs, that language is recognizably some form of natural language (usually English). Why wouldn't code inherit some of the same rhetorical valences which natural language possess?" (9).

I think code has to be rhetorical. It is a persuasion. It must persuade the reader that it does what it is suppose to do and it must, in a way, persuade the compiler that it is legal and executable. I am reminded of the Rhetoric of Science seminar I took last semester; the class basically unpacked the very false idea that science writing was not persuasive, rhetorical. But every lab report or journal article or study is persuasive: look at my data, look at my hypothesis, look at my conclusions, look at my new work, look at my reputation. It's all rhetorical.

In the case of code, code is persuasive. Is it clear? Does it have purpose? Is it the best way to perform a task? Is it the most comprehensive? Is it well formatted? Is it r0x0r l33t?

"This bit of code here. What's it doing?"
"Well, you can read it."
"Yeah, I can read it. But three levels of indirection. Why? What's it doing? What the hell does it mean?"
Thorne stared at him irritably and said nothing.
"Narrate the code to me," Ethan said. "You know, there's all this indirection because...I assign winarray to object_array because..." (Ullman, 248)

For me, this passage in The Bug really points up the writingness, the narrative quality of code. Ethan while debugging, Berta while trying to imagine how the machine reads the code is a kind of close reading. In the above passage, Ethan is asking Thorne what the story of his code is, what the argument of the code is, why is it important to the functioning of the program and for the narrative of the program.

Perhaps the shift from Writing to Code is another Horseman in the apocalypse (for good or not or indifference) we call post-humanity.

END

P.S. Thanks for listening, ED.

Thoughts on the Coder

Beth and I batted around a few thoughts on the way home from the bar, and I thought I'd try to articulate some of my impression of what makes a "Coder"--with all the mythologizing that implies.

I agree with Jess's statements that one can know how to code and still not be a "Coder". The mythology--and the reality, I think--of what forms this identity is certainly a talent for coding, for thinking and writing the programming language that serves a purpose--to solve a problem--with the machine. (One has something one wants to do, there are limitations--solve the problem. Find a way to do it.) And sure, lots of people have that talent to write code to do anything they want, solve their problems, but they are only given the authority, granted the status of "Coder" when they are in the corporate/capitalist setting.

Otherwise, what you have is a hacker, essentially. I am trying to think of instances someone would be called a Coder that do not involve an exchange of goods/services, being contracted for hire, etc., but I keep coming back to a Coder as bearing the authority of being a professional identity. On the other hand, I also know folks who coded games, worked out bugs in their linux system or home networks, but the information culture seems to draw a distinction between folks on the inside and outside of the corporate culture. Those basement programmers (to break out another mythological stereotype to deal with) bear titles such as hacker, or just a general programmer (though I think there is more legitimacy given to "programmer", nearly equal with a Coder, if not interchangeable). It's only when you are in the biz as it were, that you get that validation. Coders are paid to do it. Hackers are more external and subversive to the system. Sure, players grant recognition in MUD culture with "So-and-so is the coder of X/Coded X"--but, even though not expressly paid monetarily, the coder of a game is looked at as someone who provides a service to users, and has the authority/responsibility of maintaining that game or area of the game. These folks still fall under that corporate pressure to perform, to maintain their service. If I am simply ignorant or other instances, tell me, please.

Thoughts? Am I making sense here?

Kell--up too late