Critical approaches to the materiality of source code : between text and machine
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation is concerned with uncovering and describing the ways that source code written in computer programming languages works as expressive language rather than simply as a tool to give instructions to machines. By considering the relationship between word and action in a diverse range of digital contexts, I show how artifacts generally considered in the domain of computer science can be taken up within the humanities. Chapter 0 discusses the relationship between digital computing and earlier analog computing, highlighting how source code abstracts away from the digital in ways isomorphic to how digitality itself requires abstracting away from its analog substrate. This chapter also contains an extensive review of extant media-theoretical work on source code. Chapter 1 considers the development of the English-like business programming language COBOL, with an eye toward understanding the language's syntax as a canny rhetorical move to gain the trust of executives skeptical of computerizing business processes. Chapter 2 considers more recent attempts to change the relationship between the English language and computing. Chapter 3 consists of a close read of computer scientist Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust, " wherein Thompson describes a methodology of exploiting compilers to make undetectable and potentially hostile changes to software. Chapter 4 considers science fiction writer Ted Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters, " a novella that satirizes the ideology of code as action through placing it in a radically defamiliarized context, and thereby points out the dangers of understanding code as the source of action. Through analyzing these artifacts, I develop an argument for understanding the relationship between text and machines established via source code as being a political concern, rather than merely a technical one, and show how humanists can use critical theory to contribute to computing, through showing how the material textuality of source code marks works in digital media.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Allen, Ben Joseph |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Program in Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Primary advisor | Lunsford, Andrea A, 1942- |
| Primary advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Lunsford, Andrea A, 1942- |
| Thesis advisor | Mullaney, Thomas S. (Thomas Shawn) |
| Thesis advisor | Turner, Fred |
| Advisor | Turner, Fred |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Ben Joseph Allen. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Program in Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Ben Joseph Allen
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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