Fully Human, Fully Machine: Rhetorics of Digital Disembodiment in Programming

ABSTRACT

One way toward a more embodied digital rhetoric is through interrogating constructions of digital disembodiment. To make that case, this article examines one of the most famous esoteric or “weird” programming languages, which are not designed for any “real world” purpose, but as art, parody, or experiment. This language, named “brainfuck,” is notorious for its difficulty and uses challenges of mastery to assert a “true” (white, straight, masculine) programmer identity. As brainfuck reveals, a contemporary struggle to connect the effects of technologies with the people who create them can be sustained because their creators perform being machine-like themselves.

Notes

1. I am grateful for the feedback I received from Christa Olson, Jim Brown, Meg Marquardt, Emily Loney, Lisa Marvel Johnson, Elise Verzosa Hurley, and Rhetoric Review readers Bridget Gelms and Jessica Reyman.

2. “Brainfuck” is always lowercase, except at the beginning of a sentence. It is also sometimes referred to as “brainf*ck,” “BF,” “branflakes,” and “b****fuck.”

3. I apply James J. Brown, Jr’s three rhetorics of software to frame this idea: “arguing about software, arguing with software, and arguing in software” (Ethical Programs 173). Arguing about software captures the most traditionally rhetorical area of these three: discourse about software, including authors, audiences, arguments, and contexts. Arguing with software captures dual meanings.First, software can be used as a tool for rhetorical expression and action. Secondly, it also draws our attention software as an “interlocutor” in rhetorical action: “[W]hen I attempt to use computation to build an argument, I work with and struggle against the affordances of a given platform or language” (176). Arguing in software describes the questions we might ask about how rhetoric happens in digital environments constructed by software.

4. Although Turing’s name is most popularly attached to artificial intelligence, this references a different computing theory. Being “Turing complete” is a classification of a programming language that indicates it can perform the operations of any other Turing complete language or machine. In weird programming language communities, this designation indicates that the programming language design has achieved a certain level of sophistication.

5. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a system of numeric values assigned to characters, including letters and punctuation, to enable standard communication between computers.

6. “Everyone Can Code” is a coding literacy campaign launched by Apple.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brandee Easter

Brandee Easter is an Assistant Professor of Writing at York University. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies.