The Idea of Code

Abstract

Computers are entangled with our lives in a multitude of different, contradictory and complex ways, providing us with a social milieu that allows us to live in a society that increasingly depends on information and knowledge. More accurately, we might describe it as a society that is more dependent on the computation of information, a computational knowledge society. Today, people rarely use the raw data, but consume it in processed form, relying on computers to aggregate or simplify the results for them, whether in financial credit-management systems, fly-by-wire aeroplanes, or expert-systems in medical diagnosis and analysis (The Economist 2010f). If we were to turn off the computers that manage these networks, the complexity of the modern world would come crashing in some cases, quite literally, to an abrupt halt. And yet, this is not the whole story, for each of the computers and technologies is actually mediating its own relationship with the world through the panoply of software. These computers run software that is spun like webs, invisibly around us, organising, controlling, monitoring and processing. As Weiner (1994: xv) says the growing use of software represents a social experiment.