The working definition for Critical Code Studies (CCS) is "the application of humanities style hermeneutics to the interpretation of computer source code." However, lately, I have found it more useful to explain the field to people as the analysis of technoculture (culture as imbricated with technology) through the entry point of the source code of a particular digital object. The code is not the ends of the analyses, but the beginning. Critical Code Studies finds code meaningful not as text but "as a text," an artifact of a digital moment, full of hooks for discussing digital culture and programming communities. I should note that Critical Code Studies also looks at code separated from functioning software as in the case of some codework poetry, such as Mez's work or Zach Blas' trasnCoder anti-programming language. To that extent, Critical Code Studies is also interested in the culture of code, the art of code, and code in culture more broadly.

by Mark C. Marino

The computer does not understand what it says. Literally speaking, the computer does not even interpret that code. When the function is called, the computer will print (output) the list of the two atoms (as symbolic units are called in Lisp) "Hello" and "World." The single quotation marks tell the computer not to interpret the words "Hello" and "World" (as the double quotation marks do in this sentence). With this distinction, language becomes divided between the operational code and data. The computer here merely shuffles the words as so many strings of data. It does not interpret, only uses those strings. However, those words in quotation marks are significant to us, the humans who read the code. "Hello" and "World" have significance, just as the function name "print" has a significance that goes far beyond its instructions to the computer and gestures toward a material culture of ink and writing surfaces.

Currently, all of computer code lies before us with single