11.01.2010 

Introductions

• Mutual introductions

• Scheduling a potential, weekly, fourth hour and our missed Mondays

• An overview of the syllabus

• Where are the text books?  Where is the course reader?

• A lecture on Software Studies

• Pragmatics of programming: setting up Firefox and Firebug; accessing O’Reilly technical books through the Safari digital library

What are Software Studies?

• Abstract:
  • The field of software studies has been defined by a number of theorists and practioners.  Many of these definitions overlap insofar as they propose a way to study software from the perspectives of the arts and humanities, rather than the sciences and engineering.  These proposals are largely complementary to similar work in computer science that emphasizes its relationships to the arts and sciences, such as computer scientist Donald Knuth’s proposals for “literate programming” and his series of books on the “art of computer programming.”  However, there are also many differences in these definitions.  For example, some think software studies is a critical study of code, others think it is not.  During this week we will survey and debate these different definitions of software studies.
• Readings
  • Sack, Warren. The Software Arts. unpublished manuscript. (Introduction) [Course Reader]
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. (Series Forward) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262013436forw1.pdf
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. (Introduction) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262013436chap1.pdf
  • Fuller, Matthew. Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008 (Introduction) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262062747intro1.pdf
  • Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "Where Computer Science and Cultural Studies Collide." Chronicle of Higher Education. 55. 20 (2009). http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Computer-Science-and/14806
  • Manovich, Lev. Software Takes Command. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming. (Introduction) http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html
  • Marino, Mark C. “Critical Code Studies” Electronic Book Review. 12-04-2006. http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology
• Recommended
  • Videos (27) from the Software Studies Workshop, UC San Diego, June 2008: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=softwarestudies&view=videos
  • Agre, Philip. Computation and Human Experience. Learning in doing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (Conclusion)
  • Ceruzzi, Paul E. A History of Modern Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. (Chapter 3: The Early History of Software, 1952-1968)

Literacy

• Abstract:
  • Computer literacy seems prerequisite to any serious study of software, but what is literacy in the information age?  During this week we will examine various proposals for computer, programming, and/or procedural literacies and compare these contemporary proposals with previous understandings of literacy.
• Readings:
  • Abelson, Harold, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The MIT electrical engineering and computer science series. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985. (Forward & Preface to the First Edition) http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-3.html http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-5.html http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-7.html
  • Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. (Chapter 8: Procedural Literacy) [Course Reader]
  • Kay, Alan C. “The Real Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet: Remarks on being awarded an honorary degree from the University of Pisa in Italy (June 15, 2007).” VPRI Memo M-2007-007-a. Glendale, CA: Viewpoints Research Institute. http://www.viewpointsresearch.org/pdf/m2007007a_revolution.pdf
  • Mateas, Michael. "Procedural Literacy: Educating the New Media Practitioner." On The Horizon - The Strategic Planning Resource for Education Professionals. 13. 2 (2005): 101-111. http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~michaelm/publications/mateas-oth-2005.pdf
  • Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. A History of the Greek Mind, v. 1. Cambridge: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1963: pp. vii – 60. [Course Reader]
  • Papert, Seymour. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1980. (Introduction and Chapter 3) [Course Reader]
• Recommended:
  • DiSessa, Andrea A. Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. (Introduction)
  • Mark Guzdial’s Blog: http://computinged.wordpress.com/  (Selected entries)
  • Illich, Ivan, and Barry Sanders. ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988.
  • Knuth, Donald Ervin. Literate Programming. CSLI lecture notes, no. 27. [Stanford, Calif.]: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1992.
  • Reas, Casey, and Ben Fry. Processing A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007. (Introduction)
  • McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
  • Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982.

01.02.2010

Arithmetic

• Abstract:
  • In his 1979 diagnosis of the current state of knowledge for the government of Quebec, Jean-François Lyotard predicted an immediate future in which the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translated into computer language.  “The ‘producers’ and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to learn.”  Thus, the assertion is that the very definition of knowledge has changed just at the moment when we are said to live in conditions of a “knowledge economy.”  What does knowledge mean when it is tantamount to a piece of software? Starting this week we will begin to look at specific areas of knowledge and their transformation under the forces of software.  Our exploration of these areas will be loosely based on an understanding of the traditional liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, etc.  This re-examination of the traditional liberal arts, through the lenses of software studies, will proceed in two ways: one through a close reading of the cultural conditions of these forms of knowledge in their contemporary circumstances.  And, second, through the construction and experimentation with the algorithms and data structures of these new forms of knowledge and software.  Our practical, hands-on, programming efforts will be developed in the JavaScript programming language, the programming language now ubiquitous to web development and, increasingly, multimedia (e.g., Photoshop is scriptable using a version of JavaScript as is Flash that employs a variant called ActionScript; the Processing language has been ported to JavaScript; and, a 3D canvas (for 3D graphics) and JavaScript-based tools for digital video analysis and maipulation are in the works).
• Readings:
  • Sack, Warren. The Software Arts. unpublished manuscript. (Chapter 1: Artithmetic) [Course Reader]
  • Hayles, Katherine. My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. (Chapter 1: Intermediation: Textuality and the Regime of Computation) [Course Reader]
  • Wolfram, Stephen. A New Kind of Science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002. (Chapter 1: The Foundations for a New Kind of Science &  Chapter 2: The Crucial Experiment) http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html

08.02.2010

Logic

• Abstract:
  • Logic underwent a profound transformation when Aristotle’s definitions were transformed into algebraic expressions by George Boole and others in the 19th century and then, again in the 20th century, when Claude Shannon and others demonstrated how the operations of logic could be wired as circuits and then yet again, later, when lithographic techniques were employed to print those circuits in gold and silicon.  During this week we trace out some of the genealogies of the computerization of logic and experiment with some software that has emerged from these couplings and transformations. 
• Readings:
  • Petzold, Charles. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. Redmond, Wash: Microsoft Press, 1999 (Chapter 10: Logic and Switches). [Course Reader]
  • Davis, Martin. The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing.  New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. (Chapter 2: Boole Turns Logic into Algebra) [Course Reader]
  • Hillis, Daniel W.  The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work.  New York: Basic Books, 1998 (Chapter 1: Nuts and Bolts & Chapter 2: Universal Building Blocks) [Course Reader]
  • Abelson, Harold, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The MIT electrical engineering and computer science series. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985. (Section 4.4)http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-29.html#%_sec_4.4
• Recommended:
  • Latour, Bruno. “The Netz-Works of Greek Deductions: A review of Reviel Netz (2003) The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History.” Journal of Social Studies of Science. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/104-NETZ-SSofS.pdf

Tuesday
16.02.2010

Language

• Abstract:
  • What is a computer programming language?  Is -- to use the title of one of Lev Manovich’s books – the “Language of New Media” a programming language?  What is lost, what is gained, when prose is translated into a program?  
• Readings:
  • Hayles, Katherine. My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. (Chapter 2: Speech, Writing, Code: Three Worldviews) [Course Reader]
  • Hillis, Daniel W.  The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work.  New York: Basic Books, 1998 (Chapter 3: Programming) [Course Reader]
  • Fuller, Matthew. Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008. (Entire book: Concentrate especially on the entries that concern code, language, and program.)
• Recommended:
  • Abelson, Harold, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The MIT electrical engineering and computer science series. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985. (Entire book) http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
  • Crockford, Douglas.  JavaScript: The Good Parts, 1st Edition.  Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2008 (Entire book) http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/9780596517748 [Accessible on campus, or off campus via the oca.library.ucsc.edu URL.  Look for the Safari Technical Books collection.]
  • Petzold, Charles.  The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine.  New York: Wiley, 2008.  (Chapter 15: The Lambda Calculus)

02.22.2010 

Conversation

• Abstract:
  • The term “dialectic” originates from the Greek expression for the art of conversation.  Eric Havelock maintains that dialectic was invented in ancient Greece at the time when poetry was being replaced by prose: “…this separation of yourself from the remembered word may in turn lie behind the growing use in the fifth century of a device often accepted as peculiar to Socrates but which may well have been a general device for challenging the habit of poetic identification and getting people to break with it.  This was the method of dialectic, not necessarily that developed form of logical chain-reasoning found in Plato’s dialogues, but the original device in its simplest form, which consisted in asking a speaker to repeat himself and explain what he had meant.  In Greek, the words for explain, say, and mean could coincide.  That is, the original function of the dialectical question was simply to force the speaker to repeat a statement already made, with the underlying assumption that there was something unsatisfactory about the statement, and it had better be rephrased.” This week we will separate dialectics from its logical entanglements to understand it from the perspective of a history of media, compare its pre-Socratic form with methods of Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology and Rogerian psychotherapy and examine its first successful “rewrite” as a computer program, Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza program.
• Readings:
  • Weizenbaum, Joseph. “ELIZA: A computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine.” Communications of the ACM, Volume 9 ,  Issue 1  (January 1966) http://portal.acm.org.oca.ucsc.edu/citation.cfm?id=365153.365168&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=72032383&CFTOKEN=36058992 [If this URL is difficult to access log onto the library website, either on campus or via the oca.library.ucsc.edu link, then search for “ACM Digital Library” and, once in the library, search for “Weizenbaum.”]
  • Suchman, Lucy. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pages 64-67. [Course Reader]
  • Winograd, Terry. “Abstract: The ethics of machines which mimic people,” ACM Annual Conference/Annual Meeting, Proceedings of the 1984 annual conference of the ACM on The fifth generation challenge http://portal.acm.org.oca.ucsc.edu/citation.cfm?id=800171.809648&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=72032383&CFTOKEN=36058992 [If you are having problems accessing this, please follow the same instructions listed above for access to the Weizenbaum article.]
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. (Chapter 2: The Eliza Effect).
  • Dumit, Joseph. “Artificial Participation: An Interview with Warren Sack,” Zeroing in on the Year 2000: The Final Edition (Late Editions, 8) George E. Marcus, Editor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)http://danm.ucsc.edu/~wsack/Writings/wsack-jdumit-interview.pdf

01.03.2010 

Narrative

• Abstract:
  • This week we return to a recurrent question of the seminar: What is narrative in an age where prose has been displaced by program? In his book, The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard argued narratives were being replaced by computer programs as the foundation of scientific knowledge and cultural life.  We will discuss the last century of narrative theory – from Russian Formalism (e.g., Vladimir Propp) to French Structuralism (e.g., Algirdas Greimas) -- and then its subsequent reappropriations into contemporary theory (e.g., the central position Greimasian semiotics plays in the Actor-Network Theory of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law, and others).  One way to understand this transformation is by studying programs that attempt to code narrative in computational form. 
• Readings:
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. (Chapter 5: The Tale-Spin Effect & Chapter 6: Character and Author Intelligence & Chapter 7: Authoring Systems).
  • Schank, Roger C. and Riesbeck, Christopher K.  (eds.) Inside Computer Understanding: Five Programs Plus Miniatures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1981. (Chapter 9: Tale-Spin & Chapter 10: Micro Tale-Spin by James Meehan) [Course Reader]
  • Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology.  Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. (Entries on “narrative,” “narration,” and “function”) [Course Reader]
  • Sack, Warren.  Reimplementation of James Meehan’s Micro Tale-Spin http://eliterature.org/images/microtalespin.txt
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Introduction to Meehan’s and Sack’s Micro-Tale-Spin.  Electronic Literature Organization. January 2006. http://www.eliterature.org/2006/01/meehan-and-sacks-micro-talespin/
• Recommended:
  • Sack, Warren. "Actor-Role Analysis: Ideology, Point of View and the News," in New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective, Will Van Peer and Seymour Chatman, Editors. New York: SUNY Press, 2001. http://danm.ucsc.edu/~wsack/Writings/wsack-narrative-perspective.pdf
  • Sack, Warren and Marc Davis, "IDIC: Assembling Video Sequences from Story Plans and Content Annotations," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems, Boston, MA, May 14-19, 1994. http://danm.ucsc.edu/~wsack/Writings/wsack-mdavis-ieee94.pdf
  • Sack, Warren and with Abbe Don (for a course given by Henry Lieberman and Hal Abelson) “Splicer: An Intelligent Video Editor,” MIT Media Laboratory, Intelligent Interface Software Design Workshop (Spring 1993) http://danm.ucsc.edu/~wsack/Writings/wsack-adon-splicer.pdf

Rhetoric

• Abstract:
  • Classical rhetoric was most concerned with oral argumentation.  This understanding of rhetoric was extended to cover written and also visual rhetoric.  Can we now understand certain forms of serious or persuasive games to be forms of rhetoric?  How does one design a game to be persuasive?  Similarly, many decisions – political and personal – are made on the basis of computer simulations.  What makes a simulation so persuasive that it can change someone’s mind?  For example, does a simulation of climate change constitute an argument for the existence of global warming? 
• Readings:
  • Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. (Chapter 1: Procedural Rhetoric) http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262026147chap1.pdf
  • Mateas, Michael, Paul Vanouse and Steffi Domike. “Terminal Time: An ideologically-biased history machine.” AISB Quarterly, Special Issue on Creativity in the Arts and Sciences, number 102, 1999, pages 36-43. http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~michaelm/publications/mateas-aisb-1999.pdf
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. (Chapter 8: The SimCity Effect  & Chapter 9: Playable Language and Nonsimulative Processes)
  • Edwards, Paul N. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Inside technology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996. (Chapter 5: Interlude: Metaphor and the Politics of Subjectivity)[Course Reader]
• Recommended:
  • Aristotle.  Rhetoric. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html
  • “Aristotle's Rhetoric.”  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
  • Sack, Warren. "Agonistics: A Language Game," in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, Editors. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. http://danm.ucsc.edu/~wsack/Writings/wsack-agonistics.pdf
  • Mirowski, Philip. Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. (Chapter 1: Cyborg Agonistes)

15.03.2010 

Labor

• Abstract:

  • Traditionally, the liberal arts were distinguished from mechanical or manual arts.  In early modern Europe the liberal arts were comprised of the Trivium – grammar, rhetoric, and logic – and the Quadrivium – music, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic.  The liberal arts is an articulation of what the elite should know, as distinguished from what the lower classes need to know.  Or, more graphically, the Latin root for “liberal” is liber, denoting free, for freeman.  Thus, the liberal arts were the education for a free man as opposed to what a laborer or slave was taught.  As we have seen, throughout the term, the liberal arts have been transformed by computation.  Yet, what about work and labor?  Have they changed too?  What are the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of digital labor?

• Readings:
  • Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture. London: Reaktion Books, 2002.  (Chapter 1: The Beginnings of Digital Culture) [Course Reader]
  • Batchen, Geoffrey.  “Electricity Made Visible.”Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong, and Thomas Keenan, Editors. New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006. (Chapter 2) [Course Reader]
  • Grier, David Alan. When Computers Were Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. (Chapter 1: The First Anticipated Return: Halley’s Comet 1758 & Chapter 2: The Children of Adam Smith) [Course Reader]
  • Terranova, Tiziana.  “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.”  Electronic Book Review, 2003.http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary
• Recommended:
  • Babbage, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4238/pg4238.html
  • de Prony, Gaspard. On the Great Logarithmic and Trignometric Tables, Adapted to the New Decimal Metric System http://sites.google.com/site/babbagedifferenceengine/barondeprony%27sdescriptionoftheconstructi
  • Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Theory and history of literature, v. 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
  • Mattelart, Armand. The Information Society: An Introduction. London: Sage, 2003.
  • Scholtz, Trebor. (organizer) The Internet as Playground and Factory: A Conference on Digital Labor http://digitallabor.org/
  • Scholtz, Trebor. “Conference Postmortum” http://is.gd/5vCcv See, especially, the short video statements (55 total) made by many of the participants: http://vimeo.com/user2103510/videos/sort:plays And, note also, the list of references for digital labor compiled by the participants: http://digitallabor.org/references/