Critical code studies 2011

From Driscollwiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Critical Code Studies, 2011

August 3, 2011

Intro

Opening comments from Marino

2nd conf
1st sponsored by HaCCS Lab

Tired of conferences where people only gave paper presentatinos

Married to someone who teaches CS

Trying to bridge the gap

Platforms: "authoring environment for scholars to talk about code in a way that makes sense"

Threshold concepts

Framework, paradigm that you need to learn in a discipline that once you learn, it changes the way you understand a discipline
e.g. deconstruction:literary studies

Are there threshold concepts in CS and Humanities that are "diametrically opposed"?

Marino suspicion
e.g. "Interpretation" as word and act

"To make code work, it helps to emulate the processes with your mind"

Maybe that makes it difficult to view the code as anything other than a material reality - "an actuality that has to operate"

Dennis Jerz, Seton Hall University, http://jerz.setonhill.edu

Exploring Will Crowthers code for Colossal Cave Adventure
Mostly known through Don Woods revision
But difficult to access the original source code
Eventually found in a tape backup of WC's email archives! (He'd emailed the code to DW)
Interviewed people about the code -- but never actually saw the code
Epilogue to Doctorow's Little Brother, "everyone should be a coder, even if for one day" - doesn't have to be new mysticism, priestly
1996 solution to Programming/Computer Anxiety: "you're not programming, you're just learning to use a tool"
Students are frustrated by the high barriers, ease of totally going fubar

Recurring problem:

Young people are told that they are "digital natives" but in reality, many of them are deeply alienated from their tools
Re: Why johnny can't code
Some geeks like that the computer gives very clear feedback

Virginia Kuhn

Doctorate work in Rhetoric, Faculty apptmnt Cinema
Programmer since high school
Tradition of simplicity, refactoring contradicts playful, exploration in humanities
Tradition of simplicity, refactoring contradicts playful, exploration in humanities
Found that NSF won't fund anything with "archive" because it sounds like "dead data"
- Find-replace archive/database and it worked
- Power of metaphors
Scaling "small in-house projects"
- Limits to IP addresses, Twitter, HTML

Liz Losh

Bridging the humanities and the computer sciences
Institutional perspective: what about a "digital literacy requirement" at UCSD?
Challenge to make sure they aren't just doing Intro to CS
- Assumption is that it is a remedial course or a filter rather than something valuable on its own
- We need it to not be just "dumbed down CS"
Recurring challenge: lowering the anxiety threshold

Fear, trauma, anxiety re: programming, code

Code, tech in play here: Processing, Scratch, Arduino

Programming is not wizardry

But it's also not easy, non-trivial

At UCSD, it takes 3 quarters to get from fear to some autonomy

Jeremy Douglass

"Adobe Creative Suite type people"
Can keep 100s of menus straight in their minds
But it's not like scripting, writing code

Fear of troubleshooting

Learning to work backwards

Micha Cardenas, ICAM

CCS serving a "translation" function
Imagine other relationships to technology outside of "mastery"
- From cyber-feminism
"Imaginary computational systems"
Zack, "queer technologies", "transcoder" programming language
Ricardo Dominguez - Mayan technology, "little boy with a magic stick that you can point at a helicopter"
- Flood Net, virtual sit-ins, as an example of a Mayan technology
"Affective computing"

Zach Blas - first year of UCLA tech classes

Few things to get you going, learn what you need to know
Mis-reading code

Scott Dexter

Teaching ethics in CS context
Research of how CS is taught to CS students
"C by dissection"

Tara McPherson

SF as a bridge between these cultures?

Adrian Yannick

Only woman in a room of ppl talking about "shaping the future"

How are comp scientists moving toward humanities/social scientists?

Which elements of humanities/social sciences are prioritized by CSers working in online spaces?

Liz Losh, Gender + programming

Social analysis of computerization was a required course to UCI
Found examples of "gross sexism"
- Women were primary computer operators and they were pushed out
Remembering "computer" as a person and a position for humans

Leila Sakr

All the code, tags, comments are in English
What would it be like for Arabic programmers to "think in Arabic"?

Examples, methodologies

Language as a system of power

Threshold concept
Programming languages as systems of power

"Programs are for humans to communicate with one another"

Jeremy Douglass

Goal is to go through many techniques used over the years

Micropolis, precursor to SimCity

No populous, low income neighborhood with low crime

"Look at captology as example of how little power is conceptualised or understood"

Code

Decompiled code
Code they've written
Code that others have written

Tachistoscope

Finding unexpected details in someone else's code
Story is a sub-process of the "Spam generator"
Going through decompiled code and annotating it

10 PRINT

Nickm book analyzing one line of code in many different ways

Natural language - textual readings

Conceptual frameworks

Relationship between inside + outside format

New historicism

Close reading

XYZZY, magic word in Colossal Cave Adventure

In an interview, Jerz found out that Crowther invented it
But do you take the author's statement as they end? Or does it have a life of its own worth studying?

Feminist/queer/critical/race reading

Platform-based readings

Pseudocode

What can sloppy reading offer? "Distance reading"

Interviews with programmers, etc

Not necessarily about "what inspired them" but learning about their process, what choices did they face? Paths not taken?
(It's not the "biographical turn" in literary studies...)
Tara: "Culture speaks through writers in ways that writers don't know"

Re-writing code as a way of understanding it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variorum
Also, extending, adding functionality

Porting might be itself a helpful comparative mode

Metacriticism

Code that doesn't work

Bugs
Commented-out
Discussed but not implemented
e.g. Legendary bug in Mars lander/rover

Challenging the use of snippets in CCS

Tiny fragment of its entirety
How many lines of code does this belong to?

Scalar

Craig Deitrich driving

First scalar publication:

http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/kuhn/index
MIT Press imprint

Moving from relational to semantic web DB

Visualizations to help readers/authors to see arbitrary design/architecture choices

Arc2 (php)

https://github.com/semsol/arc2/wiki

Border Codes

Mark Marino + Max Feinstein

Transborder Immigrant Tool project

Tech

J2ME
Motorola i455
http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=790

Boilerplate,cut n paste

Tough to know what is cut n pasted directly

"Dousing"

Function of the phone
Referring to the practice

Code reading and commenting in Scalar

Commenting, adding media

What would a CCS tool look like?

Modified IDE?

Eclipse plug-in

Can't write a play for a theater technology

Until the tech exists?

Next steps

Plans

Spring: online forum
Summer: in person event

Fall mixer at HaCCSLab

CS/ Humanities at USC
Possibly expand beyond USC?

Important to listen to the research problems, interests of computer scientists

Context detection large video databases
What are the exciting questions for CS researchers?
Where do our concerns overlap?

"Concept translation"

Humanities scholars explaining a problem, computer scientists trying to express it in code, working back

Carolyn Levander

http://carolinelevander.rice.edu/
Emphasis on method identifies where some of the "real work" and "real opportunity" lies
Us/them "so last century"
Institutional hunger for interdisciplinary work
- But they also don't know exactly how to deal with it
Is there a deep suspicion among humanists? Selling out? Neoliberal, big money, corporate univ?
- Collaboration can involve social risk