Grammars of Process: Agency, Collective Becoming, and the Organization of Software

On: September 17, 2010
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About John Haltiwanger
An underliner. An intensifier. A meanderer. A walker in betweens. The gross product of the souls of forebears sliced into ribbons and blown into a clay him. A poetic impulse. An open source advocate. A master of ceremonies. A writer of codes. An interface fiend philandering among operating sytems. Creative nonfiction research artist. Textual mystic. Frequently explicit Function 'popular education' enumerated 03.03-12.6 TESC (Evergreen) WA NW US. Political economics, systems administration, cultural studies, writing, ethnomusicology, computer programming, web design, etc. All part of a balanced liberal arts degree. Socialist high school founded by feminists with a farm (Putney) 01-02 VT NE US. Deserter of West Chester PA. 16 year old proto Perl monger. 26 year old Ruby excavator. New new media student, old new media sponge. Mondo minded year 2000 Millenial Generation American. Of a rare form. Eagerly chewing electronic book reviews, ctheories, and autonomedias independent of any formal Media scholastics. Before the field had a name in my mind. Chasing a thing called 'software studies' through the tubes, across the Atlantic, and into a Nederlands classroom. Playfully aware that this bio, like the medium it exists in, like the life it describes, remains malleable. Yet static in its own right.

Website
http://drippingdigital.com/blog    

Abstract

Despite years of theorization, a concise definition of what constitutes a medium remains elusive. Theorists have variously described media as extensions of human senses (Marshall McLuhan), as agents of reform ruled by a double-logic of remediation (Jay David Bolter and Robert Grusin), as aggregates of material specificity (N. Katherine Hayles), and as evolutionarily selected forms defined by their effects (Lev Manovich). While all of these theorists use examples of and from specific media, none of them explicitly address the specificities of media themselves. This thesis proposes viewing media through an analytics of becoming in an attempt to address this slipperiness that has resulted from unclear definitions of the concept—a slipperiness that only intensifies within the context of the computer metamedium. Media are seen as reflexive sites in which humans create grammars that organize and distribute processe. As reflexive sites, they both change and are changed by human beings. The reflexiveness of the computer metamedium, defined as it is by its programmability, inspires an investigation into the dynamic and co-evolving relationship between the human and the digital. The practice of generative design is selected as an evocative instance of this relationship, and a reflexive engagement with the practice is undertaken as the thesis becomes a site of generative typesetting. Undergoing this practice-based approach leads to complications with existing theorizations of media and also allows for the articulation of free, libre, and open source software as a reflexive site of agency for collective change. The concept of process utilized here is organized according to Gilbert Simondon’s theory of ontogenesis, a framework that questions ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ and in so doing provides a mechanism for explaining collective change.

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