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Programming
history - Page 2
The
appeal of programming to me has many origins.
Firstly, it offers an opportunity to create an
environment entirely according to the programmers
own consciousness, where every variable, every
logical step is carefully controlled, filtered,
and integrated into a unified system that slowly,
frighteningly begins to acquire a motive force,
an animation of its own. To write an engine is
to expose yourself to the worst of frustration,
when you realise that to make it do exactly what
the programmer wants is nigh on impossible; but
to complete it to your satisfaction, and see it
working real time on a stream of data is to be
party to a piece of your own freakishly disembodied
consciousness, processing at 133,000,000 operations
a second, achieving something that would take
years on paper accomplished in a millisecond.
Secondly, the programmer begins to become aware
of the layers of logic that surround even the
simplest mundane activity, and the levels of complexity
of their own mind: even the most banal program
becomes a unique reflection of the author's consciousness,
the most instictive procedure becomes a work of
deterministic beauty- try working out an algorithm
for sorting an array of figures from scratch.
This is the logical equivalent of the layers of
narrative in a novel: the ultimate extention of
this being, as is the case in Nabokov's work,
a reversal of the logical order of these layers,
and a sense that the human consciousness is itself
a layer of perception, a part of the strata that
constitutes "reality". Those who think
that computer programmers are all people who are
completely unaware of the world around them have
no idea: a proportion are nerds, but to render
a logical operation into code requires acute perception
of the way the world works, and an intense self
awareness of one's own consciousness. And I don't
just mean this in an abstract sense: a few weeks
ago, when working on my 3D engine, I genuinely
experienced an altered state of consciousness
when I left the house: I was so acutely aware
of the complexity of perspective that all the
assumptions we make about the way our vision works
were suddenly removed, and for a few hours the
world appeared entirely differently. I have come
accross this phenomenon when studying both Biochemistry
and Organic synthesis and, most vividely when
reading. Maybe it's just this is perculiar to
me, but even if it is I think computers have a
profound philosophical impact on the war we think
about consciousness. Enjoy my programs, Jon.
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