By: George Norsman
“We need database literacies, algorithmic literacies, computational literacies, interface literacies. We need new hybrid practitioners: artist-theorists, programming humanists, activist-scholars; theoretical archivists, critical race coders.”
Johnson and Salter, “Introduction: Provocations for Making,” in Critical Making in the Age of AI (Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press, 2025), 6.
The part I didn’t expect
I read this line multiple times before I moved on to the rest of the piece. My first reaction was almost defensive. I don’t code; I’m not an “algorithmic” anything, so why does this feel aimed at me?
Then I thought about how much of my day runs through interfaces that I never think to question. I open an app, scroll, close it. I didn’t design any of the feed; I didn’t choose what gets ranked first, and until this reading, I hadn’t really realized that someone did choose, on purpose, with a goal that isn’t mine. Johnson and Salter aren’t asking me to become a programmer. They’re asking me to notice that these systems argue for things, the same way that a book argues for things, and nobody taught me to read them that way.
I grew up assuming that knowing how to use my phone meant I understood it. Those turned out to be different skills. I can navigate ten apps without thinking and still have no idea why one video autoplays into the next, or why a group chat suggestion knows my friends before I’ve told it anything.
What got me is the idea that not asking isn’t neutral. It’s giving up ground. If I never wonder who built a system or what they wanted from me, I’m letting someone else’s assumptions run unexamined through my day. That’s not so different from reading a book without asking who wrote it. I just never pointed that instinct at software before.
What I want to try next
Two things I want to try this term: text analysis with a tool like Voyant to see what patterns show up in something I already know well, and counter-mapping, since a map looks like a fact until you notice someone chose what to leave off. I’m much less drawn to game-building tools like Twine right now. I’d rather get good at questioning a system before I try making one people move through.