[SIGCIS-Members] the nature of computational error

[Sam Kellogg]

Hello Matt, all,

What an exciting email thread!

For those many of you who don't know me, my name is Sam Kellogg—I'd a PhD
student in Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU and a long-time lurker
on this list. My current dissertation research actually revolves around
this very question of computational error, in a historical, philosophical,
and linguistic sense—Matt, I think that you're absolutely right in your
characterization of 'literal' mathematical error being a rather rare
occurrence, though what precisely we mean by error is perhaps what most
needs unpacking. After all, many of the 'error' messages we encounter seem
to signify that things are still working as intended, at least on some
level—the machine is still humming along! Anyways, I thoroughly agree this
question needs a good deal more attention.

I presented a paper on a specific class of error at SIGCIS in Milan last
year. This was based on a series of contemporary empirical cases of errors
I encountered that were functioning in overtly political ways in the
context of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, but which were still appearing *as
though* they had purely technical origins. Sanctions and political
disjunctures, I argued, were being internalized within software systems as
'errors' (sometimes with accompanying bug reports and maintenance tickets!)
with all kinds of bizarre outcomes. The fieldwork, undertaken a few years
ago when travel between New York and Havana was a bit simpler, led me down
a rabbit hole of questioning the role of error in the history of
computation more broadly, and as well as in mathematics and philosophy, and
I've been trying to think through these questions in view of some of the
political consequences that we see downstream. I'd be happy to send you,
and anyone else on this list, my slides and notes, with the proviso that
the project has progressed quite a bit since then.

Laurent, Chuck, Annette, Paul, Tom, and everyone else who has already
responded (I receive the digest of this list so apologies if I've missed
someone), all of these recommendations are exceedingly valuable. I am in
the midst of moving house right now, but if there is interest I could put
together a selection from my bibliography along with the materials already
shared to distribute over the coming week.

I myself have become particularly fascinated by Turing Award winner Richard
Hamming's work on error (his early paper and accompanying patent for Error
detecting and error correcting codes
<https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6772729> is a key touchpoint), who I
don't think has been mentioned yet. The backstory of how he ended up
working on error in the first place is a good one, and I'm working on
writing up this history, likely as a dissertation chapter, right now.
Hamming's notion of what we now refer to as Hamming Distance
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance> is well worth reading up
on—according to this schema, greater deviation from an intended message is
rendered as greater 'distance' within a multidimensional space, a powerful
transformation of the problem into spatialized terms. There's a great deal
more to say here about how error is conceived of metaphorically and
visually in order to transform it into something a little more workable or
interpretable in different contexts, though for the moment I'll spare this
list any further rambling.

Matt, and anyone else actively pursuing this topic, please do reach out—I'd
love to discuss further, hear more about parallel research, and in general
welcome fellow travellers in the theory and history of error!

Warm regards,
Sam

-- 
Sam P. Kellogg
MCC, NYU <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> // PUBLIC CULTURE
<https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture> // samkellogg.com
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