A few weeks back Juliet Walters wrote an op-ed called the The Code Life. I had read the Eggers excerpt of The Circle and thought it was odd; odd because having worked at Google and been in the Valley, his portrayal was not that creepy. It was just corporate America. Office Space alone captures the be all you can as part of a team which may not value you (cue Lorde to contrast and for irony). Walters goes further. She has tried coding as a way to understand and take some control over her life. She used Code Academy to learn coding and found
Yes, programming is challenging, frustrating and often tedious. But it offers satisfactions that are not unlike those of writing. The elegant loops of logic, the attention to detail, the mission of getting the maximum amount of impact from the fewest possible lines, the feeling of making something engaging from a few wispy, abstract ideas — these challenges were familiar to me as a critic. By my third month, I had internalized a new logic, a different way of looking at information. By the time summer came around, I was learning about good web design by constructing web applications, taking them from simple prototypes to something sophisticated enough to test with users. And by the end of the course, I knew the basic structure of computer operating systems.
For me, even reading computer science papers and theory has given me a better, deeper appreciation for the tech world, how it works, and policy debates (both worthwhile and frivolous). And I was happy to read Walters re-calibrated her life:
The biggest surprise has been the recovery of the feeling that my mind is once again my own. The “always-on” agenda of mobile technology, now visible to me in the very design of the devices, could not manipulate me as easily. Where my devices were interrupting my work or my life in these ways, I’ve had an easier time filtering and controlling them.
It’s also become more obvious to me how to use social media to enrich my life, not unravel it. For one, I don’t waste time trying to “catch up” on a Twitter or Facebook feed, any more than I would waste time ringing the doorbell of every person in my neighborhood every day.
With understanding comes more reasoned responses to technology and how it fits into our life. When Walters write she sympathizes with Eggers and Franzen (another tech critic) but rejected their tribalism and embrace of “techno-illiteracy.” Her example is a call for STEM without being explicit. I hope to add some Code Academy to my learning list this year. I don’t always get to such goals, but Walters, a humanities type, like me, found a world I like too. Coding may not set us free, but it may open the door to new freedoms. Tech literacy should at least help stop the real threat of those who misuse technology by allowing us to offer other options and to call B.S. on tech utopianism, and thus counter the downside of technology more than we suspect.