The crucial question with which this book has been concerned is how the ‘new kind of science’ that underwrites the Regime of Computation can serve to deepen our understanding of what it means to be in the world rather than apart form it, comaker rather than dominator, participants in the complex dynamics that connect ‘what we make’ and ‘what (we think) we are.’
—Hayles (241)
So, we’ve come full circle. I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve enjoyed this book; I’m happy to see it go. There were plenty of moments where it made sense, but a lot of times when I had to put forth a lot of effort to make the most out of the readings.
Overall, I feel like the book definitely made more sense as we moved along, and like Aja, I was able to make connections about ownership—a theme that we’ve been handling for the length of this semester. However, at the same time, there were instances where the relationship to coding went a little over my head. It seemed like Jalen and Katy were able to make sense of it though.
Jalen wrote a concise entry on the relationship of manipulation within coding. I wrote about the same section in my blog but when I read his, I immediately thought of the way in which writers, especially journalists, manipulate words. I know Jalen was writing this in reference to one of the stories we read about in the book, but it still helped me to come up with new comparisons.
Katy talked about viewing code in a “feminine” way and also touched on gender roles associated with “The Patchwork.” I found her entry to be most enlightening as I noted some of the same things while I was reading the chapter.
For the most part, this text book wasn’t too bad, aside from all of the confusion and issues I had understanding the text. I noticed it was easier if you took the time to analyze the text, something I don’t always have time to do since my schedule is so busy all of the time. Even so, I don’t think this book would go over too well with a group of freshmen quite like Cognitive Surplus would.
via Hayles 4b.