When I think about digital or computational cultures in some near-distant futures, I can't figure out what that could or *should* look like. Does the extension of digitality drive a more commonly widespread software/coding literacy in our society? If so, what does that achieve? You could say that with literacy and numeracy, themselves not widespread until relatively recently in history (yep, looking at things on that slightly larger scale), that as these qualities are now more commonplace and widespread, they enrich aspects of our society, and of ourselves, in many regards. While in others, many others, they function merely as an extension of the structural imperatives of our social organisation; an extension of Capital and its reflections in the language of the state in everyday politics - the widespread everyday application of literacy and numeracy in the workplace, and in what we produce with these skills and their functions through our labour, or how these aspects function to reflect/extend prevalent ideologies (that is: how literacy enables/bolsters politics and ideology when executed in certain ways).
Software literacy potentially seems a little bit closer to numeracy, though I'd say it sits somewhere in between: it's both technical and cultural/artistic. Although we require computational machines to process software, and as such software in itself at the deepest level requires a logical form that a computer can operate (rather than, say, the metaphorical form in natural languages that humans engage with; or a joke, or subtlety, emphasis, etc), it's also the case that the manifestations of software (what we do with it) are cultural, and in this sense reflect our more human qualities than purely formal logic or mathematics. Software literacy is becoming increasingly widespread, mostly reflecting the commercial dominance of the digital domain as a domain of work (producing software), but also reflecting other interests as well - our other interests and attention towards trying to engage with and interact, and stretch and pull apart this amorphous stuff that seeps through fibre-optic cables and entangles the planet.
If coding literacy extends, broadens, becomes more commonplace - does this open up new possibilities, or merely function to reflect and bolster our existing society and social forms?
These thoughts jumped into my head earlier this evening when I spent some time just lightly studying some new coding I hadn't looked into before (django). It struck me at how much my looking into the thing was both opening up my own sense of possibilities (what I/we could achieve with software in general) whilst at the same time constricting around it's very likely/probable applications within the prominent cultural forms of software that we're familiar with. That is: that there is a consumer, with a client device (mobile/laptop), that there is a server, with some services to offer, that there is authentication (because the user is a 'private' and 'known' individual; a constituent subject-identity; an individual; a consumer), that there is a 'user' identity, that this user is served; that a transaction occurs. While much of this architectural form I've just described has potential in many ways, in many others it reflects to me, quite strongly, consumer and consumer-surveillance society. This is an inherently capitalist infrastructure. So while literacy is one thing, literacy *of what* is maybe a key consideration here.
And of course there's all this other stuff that has a different architecture (P2P and all the blockchains etc...) that I'm sure have many proponents regarding aspirations of the potential of these different forms towards a technologically *different* digitality; technology to support different social forms. And maybe that is the case...
..in fact, blockchains aside, if there are any interesting writings on alternative software ecologies and their socio-political potential out there that you know of, do drop me a line. I've taken the hint from Acidus[1] to add a security.txt to my gemini capsule (thx for the tip) and this does also open me up to other exchanges as well. You can also find me idling on irc.tilde.chat as @flow (registered) so do feel free to drop me a DM there anytime also.
~ flow
Why you should add security.txt to your capsule
Tags: #digitality #computationalculture