Read/write

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as we have technologies we have moved from read (passive) to read/write (active and interactive) while our language has moved from interactive write/read (interpretative imaginative) to read (symbol processing/data processing) and due to requirements of scale systems have moved to dynamic complex systems to simpler ones in the interests of control focused with no interaction, responsibility

One way communication is symbol processing. Code. A set of single instructions with no ambiguity that leads to a deterministic outcome. It is binary.

The very design of the Turing machine, at its core is predicated on the impossibility of ambiguity. A switch is on or off. Open or closed. There is no third way. Nothing between 1 and 0. There is no betweenness.

If weintroduced a “between” value — if code was written in tertiary, not binary, then what would that intermediate value represent? Maybe? Somewhat? You decide?

That a baffling amount of complicatedness emerges from binary code if there is enough of it and it runs fast enough should not obscure this fact: there is no decision, discretion or interpretative act conferred on the processor of code. (I don’t want to call a symbol processor a “reader” because reading is an inherently interpretative act, and by sloppy use of our non-binary language — it is ambiguous — we risk imputing to a signal processor feats of reading which it cannot perform.)

Recap: symbol processing is a unidirectional, simple (or complicated) mechanical, deterministic outcome. It is a simple system. It can be optimised, brute force calculated, probabilised and, with enough processing power, solved. It is alpha go, or chess. A finite game

A read/write process is, by contrast, a collaboration: an open, dynamic, unpredictable system. It is undetermined; its rules, boundaries and participants change and are beyond the control of any player. A speech act can be (from the speaker’s perspective) be misconstrued, ignored, disputed or reinterpreted. It is complex.

The larger an organisation is, the more that good governance demands it be run like a turing machine. A sole trader can make whatever decisions she likes. An employer of five can comfortably delegate wide discretion to her staff, as she has good view of what they are doing. A firm of five thousand, this is clearly less so.

See also

• The Unaccountability Machine