Gestures and Programs, Exteriorized

Gilbert Simondon, a keen observer of technics, had already grasped this:

The presence of man to machines is a perpetuated invention. What resides in machines is human reality, human gesture fixed and crystallized in structures that function. […] Modern calculating machines are not pure automata; they are technical beings which, over and above their automatisms of addition (or of decision by the functioning of elementary switches), possess very vast possibilities of switching circuits […]¹

For Simondon, the computer, like any machine, is first and foremost human gesture: gesture crystallized in a structure that has been in-formed in a certain way². These gestures are evident at the level of the Turing machine, a theoretical model – which can nonetheless be implemented physically³ – that works on the basis of elementary gestures (but also of a machinic “perception”): moving a tape to the left or to the right, detecting a presence or an absence, replacing a presence with an absence and vice versa, doing nothing, stopping, etc.

This intuition of Simondon’s, which sees the computer as a vast set of gestures, places it in the continuation of the calculating operations that have accompanied humans since the dawn of time. These operations depend on a matter whose configuration is gesturally modified to signify the calculated number. The word calculation itself comes from the Latin calculus, which means small pebble⁴. The presence of these pebbles and their accounting function is attested at least since the Neolithic⁵. The French-American archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat demonstrated, on the basis of a long study (1970–1990) grounded in material remains, that writing itself would have found its first form and function in association with the material tokens used to count goods in Mesopotamia: marks on small clay objects that were at the basis of cuneiform writing⁶.

When we recognize, with Gilbert Simondon, human gesture crystallized in machines, when we think of the primitive forms of calculation, mobilizing fingers and/or calculi, we understand the need to consider an expanded definition of the algorithm, one capable of bearing witness to its – social – presence, which transcends the perimeter of the computer, while reconciling it with its gestural and material genealogy. The definition of the algorithm – very close to our intuitions – proposed by Ars Industrialis meets this need:

The algorithm is a finite sequence of formal rules applied to a finite number of data in order to solve classes of similar problems; it is a series of elementary operations transcribed by a code. […] With that first calculating organ, the hand, man notched sticks, then heaped up pebbles (calculi), then constituted abaci and counting frames. Does the functioning of an abacus not already help us understand that a calculating operation can be translated into sequential gestures operating according to binary instructions (bringing the bead toward the central bar or not touching it)? […] When a child sets down on paper a multiplication that he could not solve otherwise, he shows how pen, notebook, hand and brain take part in one and the same algorithm. But, contrary to what is commonly believed, the algorithm does not concern only calculating procedures, in the narrow sense of the word, since, to take a very simple example, looking up a word in the dictionary already involves an algorithm⁷.

Despite its long presence and the salience that binds it to the human, the algorithm remains inscribed in the social imaginary either as an object of technophobic fear or as a vector of technophile enthusiasm. These opposing visions of the technical object converge in that they establish a distance from it. Archaeological reflection nonetheless brings out the human side of the algorithm, in which we should see not only exteriorized gestures but also, directly, programs – chained gestures –, the latter, even when they were not clearly inscribed or coded in binary, having been necessary to the individual and collective functioning of humans.

Indeed, Leroi-Gourhan emphasizes the programmatic aspect as a fundamental element that has always accompanied human evolution. The archaeologist distinguishes, on the one hand, the “vital programs of the individual⁸” – practices related to eating, hygiene, professional gestures, etc. –; these are programs that “are organized in chains of stereotyped gestures⁹,” and that ensure the individual’s balance within the group¹⁰. On the other hand, Leroi-Gourhan considers periodic or exceptional chains that call upon several individuals, or even the entire “ethnic group”: agricultural or festive activities, the conduct of hunting or fishing, etc.¹¹. These repetitive behaviors, individual and collective, remind us that automatism and programs – understood as the chained execution of stereotyped gestures – were first a human affair, long before it became possible to exteriorize them into the computing machine.

1. Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, op. cit., p. 13.↩︎

2. The logic gates which, assembled by the millions, form computer processors are a perfect example of this informed matter that is equivalent to a gesture or to a sequence of gestures, as we will see further on.↩︎

3. On this subject, see for example the work of students at the ENS de Lyon, who built a Turing machine out of Lego. URL: https://mmi-lyon.fr/?site_exposition=expo-1.↩︎

4. Diminutive of calax (stone). In Félix Gaffiot, Dictionnaire latin-français. Paris : Hachette, 1934, p. 243.↩︎

5. Their first known appearance dates from 8000 BCE at Asiab and Ganj Dareh, in Iran. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, La genèse de l’écriture. Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2022, chapter 2.↩︎

6. See in this regard Ibid., chapter 7 Du comptage à l’émergence de l’écriture.↩︎

7. Definition of Algorithme (Programme) in the vocabulary of Ars Industrialis. URL: https://arsindustrialis.org/vocabulaire-algorithme-programme, accessed June 22, 2025.↩︎

8. André Leroi-Gourhan, Le Geste et la Parole, tome 2 : La Mémoire et les Rythmes, op. cit., p. 28.↩︎

9. Ibid.↩︎

10. Ibid.↩︎

11. Ibid., p. 32.↩︎