CRDM 701

Week 12 - Nick

Code, code, code, we are surrounded by code!  Or rather, code is the most recent metaphor for how we conceive of our lives which is, as usual, based in the technology of the times as Hayles points out.  These metaphors are part of the endless feedback loops that lead to socially constructed reality.  Once we collectively have a technological metaphor for the way something in life works, it seems we begin to apply it far and wide and the new technologies that result are created within that system and thus bear its markings.  I am reminded of the 'kid with a hammer' analogy I have heard in relation to new scholars with a favorite theory; all the world becomes a nail.  At what point does such a metaphor become hegemony, I wonder?  Certainly, such a worldview empowers some while disempowering others; when a metaphor is based on a technology then it must inheret the issues and weaknesses involved in that technology.  We have witnessed the technological divide and discussed this problem, but this has been a divide which has existed since there has been technology.  Thus, every technology of communication, from speech to print to code, has caused some kind of divide.  Can those who do not have access to the technology still be affected by the metaphor?

Something I found interesting, regarding metaphor, was when Hayle's pointed out that Derrida could be an underlying theoretical 'code' every bit as restricted to a priestly class of the few who understand it as computer code.  That really resonated with me, as someone who has struggled with Derrida every time I have encountered him.  To 'get' Derrida, I usually require a friendly 'interface' in the form of a mediating article that uses Derrida and explains his work as it relates to something I do understand.  Hayle's second chapter was one such mediating form, but even this was fairly dense and theory laden.  The real 'user friendly interface' that mediated this week's readings for me was her 'Trauma's of Code' piece.  Through that article and her examples of current literary/cinematic works, I came to grasp the concepts she was speaking of all along in a much better way.  And, ironically, I read all of this week's readings by Hayle's on my laptop.  That makes me, what, at least four steps removed in mediation from the 'real' language I was staring at? (Her text to Adobe's software to the alphanumeric coding that composes it all the way to the base binary 1's and 0's that compose that code) 

This work relates to my work on Google bombs in an interesting way.  Google bombers are utilizing and abusing the code of the organizing algorithm.  This is an method of organization that is entirely new and unique to the coded internet environment.  In days of old, the organizing method was in print (Library of Congress, Dewey Decimal system) and in days of ancient it was organized through rhyme and meter in people's heads.  People intrinsically trust the code behind the software to find the most relevant links to information that they request; bombers manipulate that code (again, through interfaces where they don't even see the code) and shove what they want to see up to the top of the heap.  They do this all without truly understanding the code they are manipulating due to their addiction to the interface. (How can they understand it when the designers don't even fully grasp it???)    We have moved into a world where the priests of the guarded language no longer understand the whole of the language but instead only grasp parts of it.  Has code brought us (again?) to a semblance of collective knowledge?

Posted at 04:06PM Nov 14, 2007 by nmtemple in General  |  Comments[0]