<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Rachel -<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Is your work also intersecting with ideas about electricity as “clean” energy? </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">-Julie</div><div class=""><br class=""><div class="">
<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">Julie Cohn, Ph.D.<br class=""><br class="">Non-Resident Scholar, Center for Energy Studies<br class="">Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, and<br class="">Research Historian, Center for Public History<br class="">University of Houston<br class=""><br class=""><a href="mailto:cohnconnor@gmail.com" class="">email: cohnconnor@gmail.com</a><br class="">cell: 713.516.0849</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br class="">Author:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> <b class=""><i class="">T</i></b></span><i class=""><b class="">he Grid: Biography of an American Technology</b></i><b class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(MIT Press, 2017)</b><br class=""><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/grid" class="">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/grid</a><br class=""><br class=""></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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<div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 4, 2021, at 5:53 AM, Rachel Plotnick <<a href="mailto:rachelplotnick2012@u.northwestern.edu" class="">rachelplotnick2012@u.northwestern.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Hi all,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I've been working on the question of cleanliness in computing for the past couple of years - and am now contextualizing it in a larger project on cleanliness and media technologies. I don't have a specific answer on the origin of "clean code," but my initial thought is that it fits into a much broader discourse about the ways that we talk about things being "clean" or "dirty" as a metaphor or skeuomorph in so many technological contexts. In the running list I've been keeping specifically for computing, I've documented:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean install</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean design</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean copy</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean room (physical and coding)</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean code</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean images</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean interface</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean the registry</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Disk Clean Up</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Dirty data</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Dirty PC (not vetted to be virus-free)</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Dirty download/dirty files</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Digital janitors</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Trash and recycling bin icons</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Computer virus</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Clean desktop/clutter</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Zero inbox</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">And there are likely many more examples. I'm also looking at how questions of physical cleaning - of monitors, mouse, keyboard, desk, hard
drive, disks - also take on great importance in computing. Some of my recent interest has been in the ways that clean room language came into conflict with computer rooms and then multi-purpose offices by challenging what human-machine hygiene meant. I've published a chapter in an edited volume, <i class="">Computer Architectures</i>, that provides some preliminary thoughts: <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429264306-7/unclean-human-machine-interface-rachel-plotnick" class="">https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429264306-7/unclean-human-machine-interface-rachel-plotnick</a> </div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">This is a great question and I'm always happy to talk more about it and hear others' thoughts!</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Regards,</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Rachel Plotnick</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class="">Indiana University Bloomington</div><div style="margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><a href="mailto:raplotni@iu.edu" class="">raplotni@iu.edu</a> </div></div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 12:16 AM Ben Peters <<a href="mailto:bjpeters@gmail.com" class="">bjpeters@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto" class="">The excellent media historian Rachel Plotnick has done at least a talk touching on “clean”: <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="https://www.blog.shanedenson.com/?p=5027" target="_blank" class="">https://www.blog.shanedenson.com/?p=5027</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">No doubt there are other resources as well, <br class=""><br class="">Ben</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="http://Benjaminpeters.org" class="">Benjaminpeters.org</a></div><div class=""><br class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr" class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Sep 3, 2021, at 19:24, MikeWillegal <<a href="mailto:mike@willegal.net" target="_blank" class="">mike@willegal.net</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">I would suggest you review the many meanings of clean in a dictionary. Among them included in <a href="http://merriam-webster.com/" target="_blank" class="">Merriam-Webster.com</a> are …<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="color:rgb(48,51,54);font-family:"Open Sans",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;letter-spacing:0.2px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" class="">1 b. free from contamination or disease</span></div><div class=""><span style="color:rgb(48,51,54);font-family:"Open Sans",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;letter-spacing:0.2px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" class="">6 a. relatively free from error or blemish</span></div><div class=""><span style="color:rgb(48,51,54);font-family:"Open Sans",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;letter-spacing:0.2px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" class="">7 a. characterized by clarity and precision</span><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">So I would suggest that regardless of the origin of usage of the word clean in computer science, this adjective is, in fact, quite useful and appropriate. Of course, there are probably more cases than not where it could be argued whether a particular piece of code is clean or not. If there is a disagreement between observers, the substitution of a different adjective is not likely to change anybody’s opinion.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">regards,</div><div class="">Mike Willegal</div><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 3, 2021, at 3:19 PM, Azhar Desai <<a href="mailto:mail@azh-r.com" target="_blank" class="">mail@azh-r.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class=""><div class=""><div class="">Hi SIGCIS,<br class=""><br class="">I'm a software engineer, who reads & relies some of your work, to help make sense of working in the astonishingly ahistorical tech sector - so thank you!<br class=""><br class="">I'm interested in the origins of the word "clean" in software design. In conversations about software, people might often prefer some code over another, arguing that it's "cleaner". An example from a 2020 paper on the implementation of a VPN in Linux:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">While the Linux kernel’s crypto API has a large collection of primitives... ultimately, using raw primitives with direct, non-abstracted APIs proved to be far cleaner [1] <br class=""></blockquote><br class="">The most famous example is the eponymously titled book "Clean Code" (2008) which proposes snippets of code that are ostensibly always preferred.<br class=""><br class="">Does anyone know where I might find out how the word "clean" came to be used like this in software? My reasons for asking are somewhat impure: I'm trying to discourage this not very meaningful word in favour of more precise language.<br class=""><br class="">One of the earliest uses I've seen of "clean" is in one of Djikstra's notes from 1974 [2] on a design for arrays in response to how ALGOL 60 had it. [2] But I have no idea if it was in common use then, or had always been in the development of programming languages at least. I'd love to hear any thoughts.<br class=""><br class="">Best,<br class="">Az<br class=""><br class="">[1] <a href="https://www.wireguard.com/papers/wireguard.pdf" target="_blank" class="">https://www.wireguard.com/papers/wireguard.pdf</a><br class="">[2] <a href="https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd04xx/EWD417.PDF" target="_blank" class="">https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd04xx/EWD417.PDF</a><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org/" target="_blank" class="">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div><span class="">_______________________________________________</span><br class=""><span class="">This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org/" target="_blank" class="">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a></span></div></blockquote></div></div>_______________________________________________<br class="">
This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a></blockquote></div><br clear="all" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div>-- <br class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Rachel Plotnick, PhD<br class="">Media, Technology and Society Program<br class="">Northwestern University</div>
_______________________________________________<br class="">This email is relayed from members at <a href="http://sigcis.org" class="">sigcis.org</a>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/</a> and you can change your subscription options at <a href="http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org" class="">http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org</a></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>