Opinions on Software Studies by M.Fuller + Program with words

    Happy New year,
    
    What we had to do for the holidays was mainly reading, there were three chapters from the same        book, Software Studies by M. Fuller, we could choose from, and also try to make a code based on      one of them. I read all of them but I found the Function and Ethnocomputing ones more                      interesting.
    I will share some of the best quotations.

Function.

"Programming is a civic-minded activity. Politeness counts. Intense thought is expended in the hope that others, including most importantly one’s future self, will not have to keep repeating the same tired phrases again and again. We try to be smart about parameterizing and abstracting, about dignifying as Variables those parts of things that vary, and as Functions the parts that do not, and which are to this degree redundant, vulnerable to automation, ripe for refactoring or removal." 
(p. 102)

This is an interesting concept of function and variables. To me, it means that if we are smart enough, we use functions as much as we can, as they define our reality. Also:

"The activity of programming, like Jean Tinguely’s famous self- destroying automaton (“Homage to New York,” 1960), occupies the peculiar position, part teleological and part topological, of existing, ultimately, to obviate its own existence. (Q: “If computers are so smart, why don’t they program themselves?” A: “Somebody would first have to write the program, and no- one has yet been that smart.”) "
(p. 102)

This shows that the concept of "smart" it's not universal, and often used to mean different things. We can't define a human smart in the same way a computer is smart. This, unless Artificial Intelligence would get to a point never seen before, and start processing stuff like us humans do.

     "Functions and Logic

 A function is an abstract replica of causality. It’s what it is to be a simple, deterministic machine: the
same input must always map to the same output.

This intuition is at the heart of logic. If repeating the same operation with the same input gives a different output, you know without a doubt that something changed: it isn’t the function you thought it was, it isn’t a simple machine. Or perhaps one’s measuring instrument was faulty; maybe you blinked. Still you will know for certain that something went sideways since (it is of our humanness to believe) nothing happens without a reason. This inferential form was anciently termed “modus tollens.” It says that “A implies B; but not B; hence not A.” In other words, there is some theory “A” with testable consequence “B,” but when the experiment is performed the predicted outcome wasn’t observed, so we must conclude (assuming that the twin constancies of nature and reason haven’t failed us) that the theory was wrong."

 (p. 105) 

That theory it's obviously not always true, a function is not an equation. 

"IAAEC Alternative to the Desktop Metaphor Project 
Brian Smith from MIT Media Lab and Juan Gilbert from Auburn University have explored culturally- specifi c alternatives to the desktop metaphor. They note that prior attempts to redesign the graphical user interface (GUI) by replacing the desktop with spatial metaphors (e.g., rooms, buildings, villages) had largely failed—they were more cumbersome than the desktop metaphor. Ethnocomputing 99 The aim of Smith and Gilbert is to focus on African- American populations and to explore the various approaches to information manipulation that are already in use in these communities. While replacing the desktop GUI is one possible outcome, it is not necessarily the ultimate goal. Rather the aim is to use the metaphor research as a spring board for broader research that aims to capture aspects of use that have been neglected by the dominance of the desktop metaphor."
(p. 92)

It is interesting the concept of ethnocomputing itself. For instance, the example given that we are used to the idea of 'desktop' and link it to an actual desk in our minds, but in some cultures people do not even have desks, so they do not understand a concept that we give for guaranteed.

http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog/files/2010/02/softwarestudies.pdf

I was working trying to represent the function, I was trying to take a quotation from the reading and make it slide on the canvas. I didn't make it that far but I managed to display something.




References:
https://p5js.org/examples/interaction-tickle.html
https://p5js.org/reference/#/p5/textFont


Ciao,
Eleonora