Source Code Criticism

On Programming as a Cultural Technique and its Judicial Linkages

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research into cultural techniques, questions regarding the digital, such as the operation of algorithms, have remained underexplored in this field of media studies. I will meet this desideratum by examining programming as a cultural technique. Similar to methods in Critical Code Studies (e.g., by Mark Marino) this includes to situate algorithms in a discursive and historical context by elucidating code through systematic commentary, making software transparent by critical analysis. The following is an attempt to shine some light into the black box, first by examining the varying modes of creating inaccessibility that make it difficult to understand and reconstruct code, and then by proposing a method that could act as a remedy for the opacity of algorithms. My approach aims to narrativise, historicise, and discursivise code by means of extensive commentary, in order to provide a lever to open the black boxes of both AI processes and deterministic execution of code.