Thursday, September 21, 2006

More ideas about "code" from cyber-geographers

I've just posted two PDF articles on the main web site that folks might be interested in. Geographers Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin have moved from analyzing cyberspace to defining what they call “code/space”. They conceptualize code as “embedded in everyday objects, infrastructures, and processes,” such that “the relationship between human and technology is complex, contingent, relational, and productive.” Understanding code/space begins with everyday practice: “Code enables everyday acts to occur, such as watching television, using the Internet, traveling across a city, buying goods, making transnational phone calls, operating healthcare equipment, and withdrawing money from an ATM. While some of these practices were possible before the invention of code, code is now vital to their operation, and in some cases possible only through the work of code.” The epitome of code/space is thus a social situation in which “coded objects, infrastructures, and processes have entirely replaced older (wholly manual, electromechanical) systems, meaning that they can no longer be undertaken in an alternative way.” Might be useful to consider how their definition of "code as architecture" connects with and departs from Lessig's.

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