The Ontology and Expressions of Code and Protocols

“…(C)omputers are no longer interesting because they can simulate reality, but because they transform the written word into reality, a reality whose ontology is to be found in and between ‘environment’ and ‘organism,’ and even if the complexity of the network of networks and their data have not yet reached a threshold where the network actually transforms from merely a set of connected nodes to an entity worth describing as a totally new category, form, or dimension, a rich and fascinating set of issues and areas of research open up by claiming and solidifying it by giving it a name. I propose the term ‘Infome’ to denote this all-encompassing network environment/organism that consists of all computers and code. The term is derived from the word ‘information’ and the suffix ‘ome,’ used in biology and genetics to mean the totality of something as in chromosome or genome.

Within the Infome, artist programmers are more land-artists than writers; software are more earthworks than narratives. The “soil” we move, displace and map is not the soil created by geological processes. It is made up of language, communication protocols, and written agreements. The mapping and displacement of this “soil” has the potential of inheriting, revealing, and questioning the political and economical assumptions that went into this construction…” From The Infome: The Ontology and Expressions of Code and Protocols by Lisa Jevbratt, Crash, London 2005.