Coding Agency: A Semiotic Interpretation of Programming

• In Event: Materiality, Meaning, Agency & Value - II

Abstract

From where do programs acquire their agency, if they ever have? How computers transform from the machine that takes in commands and renders result to “universal purpose" automata depends on the conceptualization of software, a highly structured form of pre-scripted text that “acts” on behalf of the human agents (Chun 2013). While the emergence of software seemingly marked the redistribution of agency between human and computer, I argue that such redistribution of agency is in fact a prolonged semiosis that reconfigures the organization of human agents. The program’s script mediates historical configurations of human agents through its highly structured and instrumental form of script and interface. This paper draws on participant observation of a small collective programming activity in Beijing, China as an example to show how programming can be construed as a series of semiotic events that marches from uptake-formation to object-formation and from programming language to automatic program (Agha 2007, 2011). From the participant observation, the paper demonstrates that programming is a semiotic process that transfers agency (as the capacity to act in particular way) across time and space and therefore obfuscates our comprehension of the magical power of computer.

Author

• Yalong Chen, University of Pennsylvania