“ To mediate an object, a computational device requires that it be translated. This minimal transformation is effected through the input mechanism of a socio-technical device within which a model or image is stabilised and attended to, and then internally transformed depending on a number of interventions, processes or filters and then outputted as a final calculation. This results in real-world situations where computation is event-driven and divided into discrete processes to undertake a particular user task. The key point is that without the possibility of discrete encoding there is no object for the computational device to process; however, in cutting up the world in this manner, information about the world necessarily has to be discarded in order to store a representation within the computer. In other words, a computer requires that everything is transformed from the continuous flow of our everyday reality into a grid of numbers that can be stored as a representation of reality which can then be manipulated using algorithms. The other side of the coin, of course, is that these subtractive methods of understanding reality (episteme) produce new knowledges and methods for the control of reality (techne).
— Berry, David M. The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (via carvalhais)
