Nick Montfort Piece
The piece written by Nick Montfort is out of touch with reality in one area. According to this piece, “code is not purely abstract and mathematical; it has significant social, political, and aesthetic dimensions” (3). One could argue for social and aesthetic, but political is a bit much of a reach. Not everything in life is political. However, people like Montfort want to make it that way for whatever reason. He also says, “The way in which code connects to culture, affecting it and being influenced by it, can be traced by examining the specifics of programs by reading the code itself attentively” (3). Well of course, code has some connection to culture because computer coding is a language created by modern terminology in relation to the culture of the time.
Culture forms the meaning of words and sentences and thus determines the identity that languages generate. The word ‘awful’ used to be synonymous with the word ‘awesome,’ but due to modern culture its definition changed to the word ‘terrible.’ Culture ultimately not only determines the meaning of words and sentences, but it can also be described as polluting their original purposes. The ultimate goal of any language is to transfer one idea into another person’s head, so when culture changes the meanings of words and sentences constantly, in a way it is undermining the purpose of language.
Humanity’s true strength is their ability to communicate, so when communication becomes an issue there is a problem. Computers can only think in terms of positives and negatives. One and zero, yes and no are the only things a computer can understand. Humans are entities that are filled with contradictions, so it is astonishing that we as a species created something that is binary. In that regard computers are antithetical to culture because culture is constantly perverting the nature of things, while computers are being improved and built upon their basic foundations. According to Montfort, “Yet in the emerging methodologies of critical code studies, software studies, and platform studies, computer code is approached as a cultural text reflecting the history and social context of its creation” (3). Yes, the modern code was founded on the language of the time which the language was largely impacted by the culture that created the code. However, the modern code is by no means impacted by culture as directly as language is and the reason is as stated before. A computer’s foundation never changes while the foundation of culture constantly changes. In this regard, there is no improvement for a foundation that constantly changes. Instead, everything remains the same and just adapts to the circumstance which as a result nothing improves, and in some cases becomes worse. The base for coding is language, but the base for that language never changes, so the idea that it is based on culture is actually false. If it was based on culture, then computers would have never improved and as a society we would not be able to utilize the advanced technologies we have developed based on their foundations.
