I'm planning a course in the fall that co-mingles recent work in software studies and platform studies with German theories of Kulturtechniken. The course also features programming instruction and assignments in Perl. An initial copy of the syllabus is attached here as a PDF, and described in excerpt below, so that I can solicit tips and suggestions from colleagues from the interwebs. Since the course is for undergrads who are non-native English speakers, the final syllabus will feature fewer readdings. For the full syllabus in its present state, see the attached PDF. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please contact me at geoghegb@cms.hu-berlin.de.

Note: Since first posting this I've received some great tips that are now appended at the bottom of the post. With luck I can reduce this to a streamlined course in the next few months. Additional tips welcome.

 

Programming as a Cultural Technique

 

Overview

Programming undergirds cultural, economic, and even juridical infrastructures: global finance, power grids, search engines, word processes, library databases, biometric databases, legal evaluation and decision-making, architectural drafting, urban planning, state administration, and cultural policy are informed by the analyses and relays of digital programs. Increasingly language, speech, images, and sounds—the music of Lady GaGa, the Ice Age franchise, and an avalanche of eBooks—are produced, processed, and analyzed by the software that is constantly selecting and discriminating among the possibilities and probabilities of expression.

 

Only in the 1980s did cultural theorists begin widely reflecting on the rapport among programming and human culture. Early accounts by the likes of Ben Schniderman and Friedrich Kittler posited a strong opposition between the logical basis of programing and the phenomenological level of everyday human perception and interaction. In recent years a new trend has emerged in critical and aesthetic though on programming: Theorists of software studies (Manovich), critical code studies (Hayles), and Kulturtechniken (Pias), among others, posit that programming and culture interweave and rework an always already technical human culture.

 

Course Content

Starting from the perspective of recent Germanophone theorists of Kulturtechnik (e.g. Kassung, Krajewski, Macho, Pias, Siegert), this course will offer an introduction to classic and recent cultural theories of programming. We will incorporate recent research in fields such as software studies and consider relevant political and cultural movements (e.g. the Pirate Party and the Free Culture movement). Students will complete the course with an understanding of the fundamental debates in contemporary cultural theories of programing as well as an ability to create their own elementary programs in Perl.

 

Each week we will meet twice: Once for a lecture and seminar discussion on aspects of the cultural history and theory of programming, and again in the computer laboratory for applied work in Perl programming. Lectures, seminars, and programming sessions will be complemented by use of an online forum for reflecting on and discussing the relationship between the theoretical and applied aspects of the course. For their final students may either write a program or a seminar paper.

 

Mode of Instruction

The course will be co-taught by Professor Dr. Christian Kassung and Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan. Readings and lectures will be in German and English, depending on the session. No prerequisite experience in programming necessary or expected.

 

 

Required Texts

Campbell-Kelly, Martin. From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

Ensmenger, Nathan L. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010.

Fuller, Matthew, ed. Software Studies: A Lexicon. The MIT Press, 2008.

Kittler, Friedrich A. Programming Manual. Unveröffentlicht.

Manovich, Lev. Software Takes Command. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.

 

 

Prehistory of Programming

Excerpts from texts by Pascal, Leibniz, Jacquard, Babbage, Lovelace, Hollerith.

 

Supplementary readings:

Excerpts from Campbell-Kelly, Martin. From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

 

 

Recent Origins of Programming

Ensmenger, Nathan L. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010.

excerpts from von Neumann, John. “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” (1945).

 

Supplementary readings:

Excerpts from Campbell-Kelly, Martin. From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

 

 

What is Programming? What is Programmable?

Kittler, Friedrich A. Programming Manual. unveröffentlicht, n.d.

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “Programmability.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.

Cox, Geoff, and Adrian Ward. “Perl.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.

 

Supplementary Readings:

Turing, Alan. “Intelligent Machinery.” edited by B. Jack Copeland, 410–432. The Essential Turing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948.

Dreyfus, Hubert. What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

 

 

The Rise of the Interface

Schneiderman, Ben. “Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages.” In The New Media Reader, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, 485–494. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.

Galloway book on interface, forthcoming.

 

 

What is Software?

Kittler, Friedrich A. “Es Gibt Keine Software.” In Draculas Vermächtnis. Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 1993.

Manovich, Lev. “There Is Only Software” (unveröffentlicht).

 

 

What is Software Studies?

Manovich, Lev. Software Takes Command. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.

 

What is Hardware?

Kittler, Friedrich A. “Hardware, Das Unbekannte Wesen.” In Medien, Computer, Realität: Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen Und Neue Medien, edited by Sybille Krämer, 118–132. Suhrkamp, 1998. http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/kittler/hardware.html.

———. Programming Manual. unveröffentlicht, n.d.

Montfort, Nick, and Ian Bogost. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009.

 

What is a Database?

Manovich, Lev. “Database as Symbolic Form.” In The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Excerpts from Bowker, Geoffrey C. Memory Practices in the Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

 

 

What is Code?

Kittler, Friedrich. “Code.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.

Mackenzie, Adrian. “The Problem of Computer Code: Leviathan or Common Power?” (unveröffentlicht). http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/mackenza/papers/code-leviathan.pdf.

 

 

The Politics of Code

Berry, David. “The Relevance of Understanding Code to International Political Economy.” International Politics 49, no. 2 (2012): 277–296.

Mackenzie, Adrian. “Internationalization.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.

 

Supplementary Readings:

Guattari, Félix, and Gilles Deleuze. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Viking Press, 1977.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

 

 

Programing and Gender

Excerpts from Grier, David Alan. When Computers Were Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Light, Jennifer S. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture 40, no. 3 (1999): 455–483.

 

Supplementary:

Excerpt from Krajewski, Markus. Der Diener: Mediengeschichte Einer Figur Zwischen König Und Klient. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2010.

 

 

Can Programs Think?

Searle, John R. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 03 (1980): 417–424.

Shannon, Claude. “A Chess-Playing Machine.” Scientfic American 182, no. 2 (1950): 48–51.

Turing, Alan. “Intelligent Machinery.” edited by B. Jack Copeland, 410–432. The Essential Turing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948.

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Traumas of Code.” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 1 (2006): 136–157.

 

 

Aesthetics of Code

Fuller, Matthew. “Elegance.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited by Matthew Fuller. The MIT Press, 2008.

Hayles, Katherine N. “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis.” Poetics Today 25, no. 1 (March 20, 2004): 67–90.

Kittler, Friedrich, and Axel Roch. “Wohin Flieht Die Literatur? In Die Software. (Über Microsoft Windows 95).” Süddeutsche Zeitung 40 (Oktober 1995): 28–32.

Marino, Mark. “The Ppg256 Perl Primer: The Poetry of Techneculture.” Emerging Language Practices 1, no. 1 (n.d.).

 

 

Cultures of Coding

Stallman, Richard. “The GNU Manifesto”, http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html.

Kittler, Friedrich. “Wissenschaft Als Open-Source-Prozeß” (n.d.). http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/kittler/os.html.

Berry, David M. Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source: The Politics of Open Source. London: Pluto Press, 2008.

 

 

Cultures of Coding 2

Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

Pirate Party manifesto?

 

Texts suggested since I first made this post
Good References
Course on software by Michael Mahoney: http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h598/h598s03.html
Course on software and networks by Chris Kelty:
http://kelty.org/or/classes/189v/doku.php

Useful Turing Lectures
-The Humble Programmer by Dijkstra
-Iverson, Notation as a tool of thought
-Bachman, The programmer as navigator
-Knuth, Computer programming as an art
-Newell and Simon, Completer Science as Emprical Inquiry: Symbols and Search

Secondary Sources
-Michael Mahoney, What Makes the History of Software Hard
-Mahoney, “Finding a History for Software Engineering”
-Mindell, “Programs and People” in Digital Apollo
-Kelty, Logical Instruments
Hagen, “The Style of Sources: Remarks on the Theory and History of Programming
Languages” [“Der Stil der Sourcen: Anmerkungen zur Theorie und Geschichte der Programmiersprachen.”]
-Jon Agar, The Government Machine
-Bardini, Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing
-History of Programing Languages (2 vols.)
-Philip Kraft, Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programming in the United States?
-David Noble, Forces of Production or
-Shoshanna Zuboff, Work in the Age of the Smart Machine
-Richard Gabriel, misc, http://www.dreamsongs.com/
-Lucy Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions (2nd edition). http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/profiles/Lucy-Suchman/
-misc, by Horst Völz
-Marino, “Critical Code Studies” http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology/
-Parikka, “Archive Dynamics: Software Culture and Digital Heritage” in What is Media Archaeology
-Naur, Pluralism in Software Engineering (critique of McCarthy, Dijkstra-style programming)

-Perhaps something on Conway's Law? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law ?

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