User:Andre Castro/WritingResearch/draft01

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ABSTRACT

In this essay I would like to investigate the performativity of code. Firs of all I will try to clarify what does it mean to say that code is performative. In order to do so I will take as a refer to performative speech-acts and attempt to gain an understanding of the differences between these and code performance upon reality. Further on I will attempt to define the conditions which allow code to become performative. The writings of Katherine Hayles, Florian Cramer and Jon McKenzie will constitute the main references for this short investigation. To conclude the essay I will look upon Douglas Roushkoff's vision of the near-by future, where code will become an instrument of power that we must understood and employ, or else we will be perform on us, if it does not already do it.

ESSAY

• Code as Language

Can the code from which software is build be considered as a language? Common-sense tell us that code and language cannot be that far apart, since programming languages, such as C, Pyhton, Ruby, Perl, HTML, among many others, are the constitutive element behind software [REWRITE]. Being comprehensible to both machines and humans, computer programming languages become the intermediate layer which allow the two to establish a dialog. Florian Cramer in his essay Language states that "computer control languages are a formal (and as such rather primitive) subset of common human languages"(p.168). Cramer bases his position on the fact the so called natural languages are as culturally and therefore artificial constructions, such as machine languages. Never-the-less the fact that computer programming languages are only formal does not seem to help to distinguish the two, since a language such as English can also be formal and capable of describing the actions of a computer programming routine.[GIVE 1 MORE EG] In order to make the terminology less prone to confusions I will refer to computer control languages as code and common languages as English as written and spoken language.

• Code performativity exceeding language

According to Katherine Hayles, in her book My Mother Was a Computer, code exceeds both written and spoken language. "[C]ode that runs on a machine is performative in a much stronger sense than that attributed to language" (p.50 2005). By performative Hayles means the capacity which language possesses to act upon the world, or in other words to produce performative speech acts. Common example of speech-acts would be a judge convicting a person guilty of a crime, or a priest pronouncing a couple husband and wife, which in both cases result in radical changes in their actors' lives. However, Hayles argues, that speech-acts such as these, although producing change, are mediated [++ ON MEDIATION]. Computer code, on-the-other-hand, apart from altering the behavior of the machine in which it runs, has a much direct impact upon the world (Hayles 2005 pp.50) [CONFIRM]. As Galloway puts it: "The imperative voice ... attempts to affect through persuasion but has little real material effect. So code is the first language that actually does what it says" (Galloway pp: 165-166). However Cramer argues that computer codes does not have real and material effects only by itself, in other words it need us to place it a position in which it can act upon the world: "Computer languages become performative only through the social impact of the processes they trigger, specially when their outputs aren't critically checked ... as in the 1987 New York Stock Exchange crash that involved a chain traction of "sell" recommendations by day trading software" (2008 pp. 170-171) [FURTHER READ on the 1987 New York Stock Exchange crash]

• Why do we allow code to have such a determinant role?

I cannot help to find it unsettling the fact that a machine's easily bypass human mediation and become capable of acting upon reality. Why do we allow code to perform upon reality without questioning it? Why was the software output that led to the 1987 Stock Exchange crash not been checked? Why do we assume that GPS is not susceptible to errors and allow it to navigate us a blindly, and therefore not always leading us to our desired destinations? Or why do most of us do not question Google-search mechanism, which determines what information arrives to us at each search? Florian Cramer's seems to open up a way for a possible answer in his description of the computer as "a symbolic machine that computes syntactical language and processes alphanumeric symbols; it treats all data including images and sounds - as textual" (p.171, Language). Reality in order to be stored on a computer's hard-disk needs to be broken-down into measurable discreet values. Processes such as the digitization and storage of sound, divide a continuous event, such as fluctuating current coming from an electric guitar, into a series of discrete time intervals, who's amplitude can be measured and store as series of values. The reverse process will need to take place in order to generate an analog reproduction of the discrete stored data, which rely on algorithms that smooth the discrete intervals back into a single continuous event. If we then look at broader contextual view of performance proposed by Jon McKenzie, according to whom performance shapes the postmodern condition, under which knowledge has become measurable in terms of operational efficiency, which "demands that all knowledge must be translatable by and accountable in the "1"s and "0"s of digital matrices" (McKenzi, p.14). [WHAT DOES IT MEAN IN PRACTICAL TERMS? examples]. It is if almost if something, or the effort put into one activity is only real if this can be quantified and stored digitally. Given this digital computation hegemony is not surprising performative acts that have their origin in the digital world have very good chances of not being questioned before having an expression on the real-world. It is as if code becomes the possessed with magic powers that can easily act upon the world.

• CRAMER: code=Magical words
• (the wider the knowledge, the wilder the imagination

[computational pervasive scenario [HAYLES++] in which we have immersed ourselves, we have opened up the ways for code to perform upon reality. ]

....

* Rushkoff ethical position * Aknowledgement of the scenario * Call

Douglass Rushkoff in his book Program or Be Programmed envision a near-future when computing is even more engrained in our society, which according to him will only leave use with two choices: either to write code or allow code to write our-yourselves. According to Rushkoff computers gave us the possibility to write and make public what we write, either through websites, blogs, social-networks, wikis and tweets. Never-the-less "the underlying capability of the computer era is actually programming"(p.13). Such possibility is not at all being explored by most of us. Such delegation will results in only a few of us being able to shape the inner-workings of our world, or as Rushkoff puts it: "Only by understanding the biases of the media through which we engage with the world can we differentiate between what we intend, and what the machines we are using intend of us - whether they or their programmers even know it"(p.21).

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Bibliography

Bibliography:

Hayles, Katherine (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. London:The University of Chicago

Hayle, Katherine (2005). My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. London: The University of Chicago

Cramer, Florian (2005). Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination. Piet Zwart Institute

Cramer, Florian (2008). Language. In: Fuller, M. Software Studies: a lexicon. London: The MIT Press. 168-174.

Rushkoff, D, (2010). Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. New York: OR Books.

Galloway ++++