Week 3

There is no software – Friedrich Kittler 

This reading delves into the concept that Software only exists in the plane of our existence due to our use of language itself. In the previous reading by Finn, ‘languages’ are symbolic and abstract systems of communication that makes up the foundation of code used to create softwares. Without it, the concept of ’Software’ ceases to exist. 

Despite the ubiquitous presence of softwares, our inability to realise its physical presence has affected our ways of perceiving reality through it’s own medium. The physical Church-Turing-hypothesis which entails the injection of algorithmic behaviour into the physical world seems to offer software the concept of visibility within our realm. But Kittler argues that it is an exclusive feature of hardware itself and is not an all knowing and faultless entity. 

“Only this paradoxical relation between two physical parameters, thermal continuity and electrical discretization on chip, allows integrated circuits to be not only finite state machines like so many other devices on earth”

Electrons leak, and transistors make mistakes and it goes against the whole idea that ‘softwares are error-free’ which isn’t real and that it in fact, does not follow rules perfectly. 

Code (or, How You Can Write Something Differently) – Friedrich Kittler 

“Today technology puts code into the practice of realities, that is to say: it encodes the world.”

In the reading Kittler presents to us how the meaning of code has evolved throughout history in different ways, but for the same intentions. Interestingly, how we used codes in the past still applies today. Codes are inevitably entrenched within our lives through the medium of technology that we use on a daily basis. Almost like a language that is ever-present but never truly exposed to the masses, much less understandable to them. 

“The so-called “hidden layers” in today’s neuronal networks present a good, if still trifling, example of how far computing procedures can stray from their design engineers, even if everything works out well in the end. “

Kittler also points out that even the design engineers or programmers wouldn’t be able to articulate every aspect of a code which are embedded into a system. Which goes to show the complexity of the layers of codes implemented. What I find interesting is the jarring difference between the complexities of code within the digital realm and the simplification of communication today for the sake of convenience or habit (you = u or wbu=what about you. I’m making the assumption that as languages shorten, could that be an indication that as a society, we are becoming more idle? for convenience sake, we won’t bother trying to understand the complexities nor would we demand an explanation for it. With Kittler’s essay, it attempts to remind us that it can and should still be criticised when we don’t understand it, instead of placing blind faith into it.