Readings:

1) Without Claude Shannon’s information theory there would have been no internet, by Alok Jha from The Guardian
2) Alexander Galloway, Language wants to be overlooked,  Journal of Visual Culture, 5(3), 315-331.
3) David Gauthier, On Commands and Executions: Tyrants, Spectres and Vagabonds, in DATA browser 06; EXECUTING PRACTICES 

Galloway – what is the main distinction he draws between his and Chun’s perspective?

In Chun’s “Programmed Visions”, she says that ‘software is a functional analog to ideology’. She compares software to ideology, suggesting that, as Galloway interprets, software is “functional in nature, and therefore suggesting that ideology might be too”, and hence “software is ideology turned machinic”. The main distinction Galloway draws is that software is that he believes in the inverse–he agrees with Hayles that software is “machinic first and linguistic second”. He sees code as technical first, and views Chun’s understanding of code as an anthropomorphising code, as projecting code onto psychology rather than understanding code in itself, as a technical infrastructure with its own logic.

Galloway hence sees a distinction between code and language, software and ideology, as code–with its electrical signals and logical operation–is material, whereas natural language, which is based more on the presence of a social understanding, is not. He further emphasises this by pointing out how the fundamental purpose of code is to provide commands which a machine then executes, while this is not the same for natural languages. Chun’s perspective binds software’s visual aspects to its machinic aspects. Whereas in Galloway’s perspective, is hence not an ‘analog’ to ideology; rather, software’s visual (and ideological) aspects are separated from its machinic aspects.

Gauthier –  put it all together – what are the relationships between code, language, law, execution, and tyranny?

[incomplete!] Gauthier describes execution as a “prescription and a proscription”,

• Prescription: an ordinance, law, or command
  • Authoritative; an order imposed
• Proscription: condemnation or denunciation of something, or a ban
  • Disapproval of; strongly declared to be condemned, but not exactly imposed
• Because it is forced, it is a tyranny–suggests that it cannot be opposed
  • Likewise, the execution of a command in programming is enforced; the program will run to completion, until it is force-terminated. (e.g. in C, the lines of code which make up a program will run once it is commanded to compile and run; and it will not break unless it is forced to, or unless there is a problem with the code.)
  • A tyranny would suggest oppression and unreasonable, absolute use of power and control
  • “effected and effaced”: the act of violence occurs, and at the same time the act is erased
    • “despotic foreclosure”: tyrannical, forced possession of property
• Gauthier makes the element of control in execution the contentious issue
  • The order to execute vanishes after the execution has occurred

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