code as culture
## Readings Students read Paul Ford's sprawling and hilarious essay "[What is code](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/)" before this session. In addition, they read "[Sleep-Worker’s Enquiry](https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/2/en/endnotes-sleep-worker-s-enquiry)" and "[The Agile Labor Union](http://journal.westspace.org.au/article/the-agile-union/)," two texts that helped make the link to a subsequent session on digital labor. ## Lecture I briefly lectured on the topic of "code as culture," which related the idea that "[software is eating the world](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460)" to Weber's [iron cage](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch05.htm) before talking about code in relation to practices, aesthetics, and status & power hierarchies. This was probably a bit confusing, but I think it got across the idea that we can frame code and coding as continuations of long-term cultural developments and in relation to bread-and-butter topics of critical anthropological research. ## We’re writing a bot! I gave the following instructions: > In your team, write code that generates a semi-random saying for your bot to broadcast out into the world. > Take notes as you create your bot. Each team member will write about your bot-making experience from a different perspective (about 400 words each): > - The designer’s perspective: How did approach the problem? (specification) > - The coder’s perspective: How did you solve it? (implementation) > - The user’s perspective: How does it work? (documentation) I demoed a small script that I had written that output random silly sayings. In retrospect I should have explained what a bot is a bit more because they weren't really familiar with Twitter bots and the like. They worked in small groups. I told them to open [repl.it](https://repl.it) and start a Python project unless they had prior knowledge of another programming language. I also told them about [devdocs.io](https://devdocs.io/), but for the most part they turned to Youtube for tutorials. They also encountered Stackoverflow and other sites as they googled for how to do various things. This gave them a sense of what Ford calls the "entire civilizations" contained in programming language communities. ## How it went Almost universally, they went from being bewildered and frustrated to having a breakthrough and getting excited about what they were making. They were all able to create *something* -- though in some cases I gave them some pretty strong hints that they wanted to write `from random import choice` in their scripts, that they wanted to use string formatting, lists, etc. Some students missed the class and couldn't write follow-up assignments asking them to reflect on their experience. For them I made [an instructional video](https://video.leidenuniv.nl/media/t/1_kx2ynjoi). That doesn't really put them in a position of having to figure stuff out by themselves though.