Life in Code and Software/

LivingCodeSoftwareCover.jpg

Mediated life in a complex computational ecology

ISBN: 978-1-60785-XXX-X
edited by David Berry

Introduction: What is code and software?

This book explores the relationship between living and code and software. It does so because these technologies are increasingly part of our urban environment, and indeed stretching even to very remote areas of the world. The book introduces and explores the way in which code and software become the conditions of possibility for human living, crucially becoming a computational ecology which we inhabit. As such we need to take account of this new computational world and think about how we live today in a highly mediated code-based world.(more...)

Thinking Software

What is a Turing Machine? by Wolfram Alpha

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. He shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control.

Code Literacy ('iteracy')

Show Us Your Screens by Louis McCallum and Davy Smith

A short documentary about live coding practise by Louis McCallum and Davy Smith.

Decoding Code

Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon

When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a very strange puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: what was its purpose? Ralph Langner and team helped crack the programming code that revealed this digital warhead's final target – and its origins in international politics and cyberwarfare. This is a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics and the processes of reading code to understand how it works and what it attacks.

Matrosov, A., Rodionov, E., Harley, D. and Malcho, J. (n.d.) Stuxnet Under the Microscope, accessed 04/03/2012, http://go.eset.com/us/resources/white-papers/Stuxnet_Under_the_Microscope.pdf

Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools by Stephen Ramsay

A short film on livecoding presented as part of the Critical Code Studies Working Group, March 2010, by Stephen Ramsay. Presents a "live reading" of a performance by composer Andrew Sorensen.

Wendy Chun - Critical Code Studies

Wendy Chun giving a lecture on code studies and reading source code.

Federica Frabetti - Critical Code Studies

Federica Frabetti giving a lecture on code studies and reading source code.

Software Ecologies

Kitchin, R. (2012) The Programmable City, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, volume 38, pages 945-951, accessed 15/03/2012, http://www.envplan.com/epb/editorials/b3806com.pdf