[NetBehaviour] Iteracy And The Digital Humanities

[Rob Myers]

On 13/10/11 16:14, Andreas Jacobs wrote:
>> Do we need to programme to have a say in contemporary democracy?
> 
> Well, definitively NO!

Absolutely.

But society is increasingly affected by code, so to *effectively*
participate in democracy as an informed citizen, it *helps* to know how
to program.

You'll notice I don't say "it helps to have a critical appreciation of
code". It doesn't, at least not in the sense of being able to talk about
Deleuze instead. Being able to program brings a more fundamental
critical insight - what code can and cannot do and how it does it. This
is vital to evaluating political claims that involve code.

Programming is part of contemporary literacy (Rushkoff's point). So is
statistics. So is visual literacy. It's interesting that these three
forms of literacy are being fought against so hard by the non-digital
humanities at the moment.

Rushkoff's talk is a precis of his book "Program Or Be Programmed",
which I found disappointing but would still recommend as it has some
very good ideas despite not really pulling them together. (With it,
Rushkoff becomes part of the generational trend of recanting cyberprophets.)

http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/program/

If people want to learn to program, there are many fine languages and
ways of learning them. Python is probably the least worst language for
beginners at the moment -

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

Processing is more confusing if it goes wrong but lots of people like it
and it's more graphics oriented than Python -

http://www.processing.org/learning/

If anyone wants to learn on list or if a Furthercode emerges I'd be
happy to help. :-)

- Rob.