The Poetics of Computer Code: Tracing Digital Inscription in Ada Lovelace’s England

Abstract

In this essay, I investigate the development of algorithms from a digital paradigm in Victorian England, specifically through the work of Ada Lovelace and the influences of the Jacquard loom. I consider Lovelace’s algorithms through the framework of poetics, that is, how meaning is made and materialized through symbolic inscription. Within the discursive contexts of industrial manufacturing and Romanticism, I find that an algorithmic mode of production emerges from the consideration and inscription of memory. Since the ramifications of inscription and memory echo throughout contemporary computing and the Digital Humanities, examining the logics and paradigms that computational inscriptions reproduce are increasingly vital today. Thus I ultimately argue for the poetic analyses of algorithms and computer code.