Archeology of the Present

Last week near the end of seminar, Scott mentioned, if I remember correctly, that we might take stock of the kinds of knowledge we are sedimenting as we learn to code. I’ll revisit this throughout the semester, and I thought I’d time this week to begin.

Reading Manovich alongside this reflective post is helpful as I’m thinking about how, in learning to code, I’m learning a style of thinking that is modular (Manovich’s third principle) in nature. So, for instance, in our refactoring exercises, some of the benefit of the work there pointed toward creating objects that could be taken out of their initial context and inserted elsewhere. Modularity also allows me to effect large-scale changes efficiently.

It’s interesting to me that this sense of modularity, in Manovich’s framework, follows numerical representation, yet I have a stronger sense of sedimenting modularity than I do with binary computing. Partly this could be that I have already sedimented the knowledge of binary computation through my loose understanding of computer science 101. We all know computers operate on binary code, even if we don’t have direct experience seeing and constructing with it as we do with the code of, say, javascript. Or it could be that my math skills are so embarrassingly poor that I really haven’t yet sedimented this knowledge. I’ve kind of skipped a step, perhaps.

What does it mean to me to sediment this knowledge of modularity as an aspect of computing? I suppose I’ll be returning to that question throughout the semester. For now, part of an answer could be to contextualize my struggles with coding. I’m learning a new system of human/machine (cyborg) language, and part of that learning entails learning the purpose of the language, and not just the syntax. Modularity in coding is perhaps less about getting it done right and more about getting it done well. It’s the doing it well, in addition to doing it right, that I’m struggling with.

Shifting to the concrete exercise of coding this week, though, I, like David, have experienced a bit of blank-screen staring on the fifth daily. Part of it is trying to figure out how to actually do it, but added to that is what I want to create. Not that I’m trying to tie everything back to Manovich here, but some of my blank-screen staring may have something to do with the “moral anxiety” involved in the shift from constants to variables Manovich discusses in his principle of variability (44).