To the Taste of the Pentagon and the Manufacturers

The evolution of calculation, from the digital gesture of the human hand to electronic flows, by way of the use of calculi and machinic gears, appears as a natural evolution of technics, during which human capacities are progressively exteriorized, aiming to free the human body while expanding the possibilities of action of the human-machine ensemble. It is an organic movement that seeks economy of means, while accelerating the time needed to carry out tasks.

However, the setting up of successive layers of coding, which follow one another while recoding one another (while remaining reducible to machine language), appears – as already suggested – non-organic, artificial, as if it were an over-artificialization of the machine. This project, a failed attempt to force natural (living) human language into the heart of the machine, responds less to the natural tendency of technical evolution than to social, economic and strategic reasons. This time it is the expression of a will that can be very specifically described and delimited, that of the North American techno-economic-military complex – one might say, with a Flusserian accent – which, echoing Kittler’s intuitions and Mahoney’s historiographical interpretations, articulated and organized a collective work capable of further denaturing the visible face of the computer machine, so that it could be used by the greatest number, within a hierarchically controllable framework.

Indeed, as Jean E. Sammet (1928-2017) recounts – a computing pioneer who, at the time, worked on building computers for the US Army – a first meeting took place on April 8, 1959, at the University of Pennsylvania¹. It brought together representatives of the actors in the nascent world of computers in the United States of the time: university researchers, users and manufacturers, with the aim of developing a common programming language dedicated to business. At the meeting, the scope and difficulty of the task were identified and considered, and it was estimated that the complete development of such a language would take several years². It was the Department of Defense that took over, convening a new meeting (the first formal meeting) on the subject. It took place on May 28, 1959, at the Pentagon, with the participation of about 40 people, including 11 users and consultants, among them only one person from the university world, 7 representatives of government organizations and 15 representatives of manufacturers (Burroughs, GE, Honeywell, IBM, NCR, Philco, RCA, Remington-Rand Univac, Sylvania Electric Products and ITC)³.

A parenthetical comment deserves to be highlighted. In the literature, we usually find thinkers who seek to characterize the murky nature of the “apparatuses” for capturing and processing images (cameras, computers, programs). For some, such as Vilém Flusser, Jean-Louis Déotte and Theodor W. Adorno, these must be “diverted” so that they can be mobilized in the direction of artistic creation. We also find many artists sensitive to the conditionings and normalizations inherent in digital images and in the apparatuses from which they derive. In the field of the digital, we have mentioned the case of Rosa Menkman, Samuel Bianchini, Disnovation.org, Jacques Perconte and Jodi.org, among many others.

Within the framework of these thoughts and approaches, the conditionings conveyed by technics are often attributed to the fact that these dispositifs are designed by various actors according to their interests, interests that are not always compatible with the emancipatory approach of art. These thinkers and artists refer to forms of power that often remain unspecified or are not described concretely. Vilém Flusser, for example, repeatedly considers, in a somewhat vague way, the manufacturers of apparatuses and the military sector – without further precision – as part of the sector of power that designs apparatuses according to specific interests.

Yet the meeting described in lavish detail by Jean E. Sammet bears witness to the fact that the concerns of thinkers and artists regarding the conditionings introduced into the tools used in digital creation, far from conspiracy theories, are justified in a very concrete way. This meeting, whose follow-up would take place within the Pentagon itself, marks the founding act of the software industry, which would develop under the aegis of manufacturers and the military, with no participation – or almost none – from university research, and with no participation at all from artists. Seen from this point of view, the rapprochement suggested by the first aesthetics of the digital arts, between natural human language and a machinic code arising from an agreement between the Pentagon and computer manufacturers, seems all the more regrettable.

1. Jean E. Sammet, «The early history of COBOL ». ACM SIGPLAN Notices [en ligne]. August 1978, vol. 13, n° 8, p. 121–161.↩︎

2. Ibid.↩︎

3. Ibid.↩︎