“An abstraction layer (or abstraction level) is a way of hiding the implementation details of a particular set of functionality. Software models that use layers of abstraction include the OSI 7 Layer model for computer network protocols, the OpenGL graphics drawing library, and the byte stream input/output (I/O) model originated by Unix and adopted by MSDOS, Linux, and most other modern operating systems.”
occasionally mechanisms teach metaphysicians
how machines heal time
Piet Zwart Institute – Words Made Flesh
WORDS MADE FLESH
Code, Culture, Imagination
Florian Cramer
A b s t r a c t: Executable code existed centuries before the invention of the computer in magic, Kabbalah, musical composition and experimental poetry. These practices are often neglected as a historical pretext of contemporary software culture and electronic arts. Above all, they link computations to a vast speculative imagination that encompasses art, language, technology, philosophy and religion. These speculations in turn inscribe themselves into the technology. Since even the most simple formalism requires symbols with which it can be expressed, and symbols have cultural connotations, any code is loaded with meaning. This booklet writes a small cultural history of imaginative computation, reconstructing both the obsessive persistence and contradictory mutations of the phantasm that symbols turn physical, and words are made flesh.