Re: [-empyre-] Vernacular languages can persuade us but not execute actions

[giselle beiguelman <desvirtual@gmail.com>]

<<<<Vernacular languages can persuade us but not execute actions.>>
 Could you describe how?

1) I can call you and invite you to dinner and persuade you to leave
your students earlier but my invitation will not make you come... In
this sense my words can not transform material environments.

2) The executable code sets a machine into motion. You print something
because there is a written command line that configure this material
action. In this sense programming languages can affect and transform
reality.

<<what differences you´d point as relevant...>>

Relevant questions in our discussion:

1) Programming languages could be a relevant pattern of a
non-atropocentric culture. A new cultural background where we will
exchange roles with machines. It means: Machines will be more than
human extensions...
2) Digital writing makes us to rethink memory and representation (I'm
now calling back my statement about the loss of inscription)


2005/10/14, marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>:
> <<<<Vernacular languages can persuade us but not execute actions.>>
> but: Is it certainly so? Could you describe how?
>
> I like the idea of 'performatives', developed by Austin in the book
> "Quand dit c´est faire". He says that the promise (made by the lover),
> as well as the conviction (declared by the judge), are examples of
> "words" that execute actions. For Austin, when the judge declares
> somene guilty, those are not mere words, but also instructions for the
> repressive instances of society to put the guilty one away. In other
> words, they are the program for the execution of that order.
> (Deleuze goes a lot into that on his critique of linguistic postulates
> I mentioned before; a similar mechanism is described by Foucault, when
> he shows how the 'Stultifera navis' was a device of exclusion)
>
> <<It seems to me that they don't have precedents in our cultural traditions.>>
> I agree with that!!!! Of course the idea of a performative instance in
> laguage is very different from the processes of coding executable
> texts. I don´t want to imply, with the prior comments, that there´s
> nothing different about digital texts, I just want to lean a bit more
> about what differences you´d point as relevant...
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> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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