The proliferation of digital technology and the emergence of digital code as the
new dominating medium of information storage are acknowledged to be of concern for
social scientists and cultural theorists. The search for meaning in digital code tends to
favor studies of how it is consumed in the contemporary context, and how contemporary
actors construct meaningful experiences with it. Contrary to the intentions of its
inventors, changes in society accompanying the proliferation of digital technology are
often treated as undesirable and even accidental. Often ignored are the philosophical
meanings intentionally embedded into and connoted by the code, and how the technical
and philosophical attributes of digital technology come together to create the possibility
of experience for the user.
This thesis analyses digital code for both its literal technical significance and its
connoted philosophical meaning, arguing that the rhetoric built into the code is intended
by its inventors to bring about some specific changes in the way we know and understand
the universe. Rather than a popular notion of Cartesian dualism, digital code conveys the
monistic philosophy of Leibniz. Computer circuitry reflects this logic, creating a digital
text based on movement and instability rather than the definitiveness of text that Western
society has been accustomed to. This technology was intended to serve humanity as a
reasoning tool. As an android, it is meant in some ways to replace the human mind.
However, where humans find meaning through analog experiences, computers and the
code they operate with are digital, meaning they cannot approach what we might define
as actual thought. Based on the prototype of the human brain, even the most
sophisticated digital technologies can at best mimic human activities. Above all, the
authors of the programs (or the rules the machines must follow) are humans. The popular
use of computers in everyday life ensures that most if not all in contemporary western
society are exposed to the monist logic conveyed by the code in the machine.

The Digital Story: Binary Code As A Cultural Text by Grant Kien (2002) PDF

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