Brock’s Rhetorical Code Studies
In Toward the Rhetorical Study of Code, Kevin Brock dissects the applications of “rhetorical code studies” as a field of study. Intuitively, rhetorical code studies is the study of the rhetorical nature of code. Brock references “Beck (2016), who argued for an understanding of algorithms as being fundamentally persuasive.” Rhetorical code studies operates around there being rhetorical, persuasive, and meaningful “relationships between code, language, software, and procedure.” According to Brock, rhetorical code studies “can potentially address multiple kinds and modes of rhetorical activity and interaction, including communication reflecting complex relationships such as among developers, between developers and users, between developers and technologies, and also users and technologies.” He further emphasizes the impact of “the rhetorical activity of developer-to-developer communication… on subsequently triggered sites of activity, such as in how technological interfaces communicate particular arguments to their users.”
Reference to Kim
Brock’s rhetorical code studies reminds me of Lindsey C. Kim’s Understanding and Maintaining Your Privacy When Writing with Digital Technologies. In this reading, Kim stresses the importance of information privacy in digital environments. Her explanation is rooted in three main ideas. 1) data is the information one leaves behind when interacting with digital spaces, 2) agency is one’s ability to influence what happens around you, and 3) flow is how our information moves and where it goes. Kim further discusses the necessity for students to understand these concepts, so as to gain more control over their information online. She explains the extent to which the Web possesses and uses our data to its advantage, and how we all “unintentionally or unknowingly create informational traces.”
My Thoughts
At the start of this chapter, Brock explores the phenomenon of the “heartbleed,” in which “the bug risked transmission of incredibly sensitive data by accident or by malicious intent.” He writes the ease of which the problem was fixed opens a discourse to why the problem was not fixed sooner. Although I do not know much about code language, from what I have learned so far, it seems to me that Kim was right to caution us about data privacy. Brock’s writing has shown me that code is more than the unassuming skeleton of digital spaces, but can be an intentional form of communication.
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