Literary Theory and Software design

Some wonder how the 'twain came to meet for me. I used to joke that both computers and cultures both need programming, so there you go.

Now, a new book (reviewed here) has appeared that puts into better terms that notion:

This concept of 'process expression' is, he says, a common thread running through the various disciplines of computer science. "A logic circuit is an expression of a logical process; an architecture is an expression of a continuously acting process to interpret symbolically expressed processes; a program is a symbolic expression of a process; a programming language is an environment within which to create symbolic process expression; a compiler is an expression of a process that translates between symbolic process expressions in different languages; an operating system is an expression of a process that manages the interpretation of other process expressions; any application is an expression of the application process."

It does not take much work to replace those pairs of concepts with equivalent cultural components: architecture becomes language, a program becomes a signifier or ritual, a programming language a culture, etc.