Analog folder poem as cootie catcher by Kiwako Sakamoto

Agenda

  • Welcome ♡
  • Guest Lecture from Mindy Seu
  • Break
  • Folder Poetry II
  • Folder Poetry & Love Letters to a Speculative Liberatory Learning Evironment – Sharing & Discussing

Always Already Programming

Everyone who interacts with computers has in important ways always already been programming them.

Every time you make a folder or rename a file on your computer, the actions you take through moving your mouse and clicking on buttons, translate into text-based commands or scripts which eventually translate into binary.

Why are the common conceptions of what a programmer and user is so divorced from each other? The distinction between programmer and user is reinforced and maintained by a tech industry that benefits from a population rendered computationally passive. If we accept and adopt the role of less agency, we then make it harder for ourselves to come into more agency.

We’ve unpacked the “user” a little, now let’s look at the “programmer.” When a programmer is writing javascript, they are using prewritten, packaged functions and variables in order to carry out the actions they want their code to do. In this way, the programmer is also the user. Why is using pre-made scripts seen so differently than using buttons that fire pre-made scripts?

When we all build up and cultivate one another’s agency to shape technology and online spaces, we are contributing to creating a world that is more supportive, affirming, and healing.

∞ The user programs and the programmer uses ∞

∞ It’s buttons all the way down, buttons pressing buttons ∞

Something beautiful happened on the internet today pic.twitter.com/nHW9gf2NuG

— ⟴ ↭ ⥉ ⬼ ↯ ↬ (@melanieh0ff) May 4, 2020

Graphics by Alexa Ann Bonomo

Zoe Sandoval from DLL 2020 made a bash script that will sequentially print folder poems
  • treepoem.sh is a modification of treefile, and should be placed in your bash profile. It prints the contents of your whole directory and adds the file name + directory name.

Watch Zoe’s video demo here!  

Homework for next week ☼☽