Learning the Code: Deciphering Digital Literacy

Introduction: Digital Literacy As Code, Or “Houston, We’Ve Had A Problem!”

According to generous 2020-2024 occupational outlook numbers (data including not only computer programmers, but software developers, data analysts, information and network systems managers, application developers, game developers, and more), professional digital coders (those able to compose, comprehend, and employ computer programming languages, accordingly, the literate) globally number approximately 23.9 million individuals (Bureau of Labor statistics, Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment, 2021; Bureau of Labor statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Daxx Software Development Teams, 2020; Evans Data Corporation, 2019, 2020; US Department of Labor, 2019; Worldometer, 2021). This amounts to around 3% of the world’s population, indicating that the preponderance of our species is illiterate to the dominantly expressive semiotic medium on which a majority of current human communications and transactions, economic and sociopolitical coordination, cultural and personal participations are coded, constructed, and deployed. This signals an alarming situation of global illiteracy pertaining to how information, communication, economies, politics, transportation, labor, education, organization, health and safety, social relationships, and beyond - are structured, produced, presented, accessed, and achieved.¹ There is an ever-increasing illiterate majority reliant upon a minute and diminishing hegemony of public and private entities and organizations determining the governance, access, operations, energy extraction and providence, supply chains, distribution and networking inclusion (or exclusion).²

Public press and scholarship have begun focusing on this in the past decade – outpourings of discussion, debate, publications and documentaries regarding ‘filter bubbles’; privacy and equity issues; ‘fake’ or ‘alternate’ facts and news; search engine biases, parameters and retrieval programs; stacks, spiders, and digital divides; digital rights and access; production costs and natural resource destruction; invasive surveillance; AI/AR/VR and machine-learning innovation; biotechnologies; modeling and control; binary categorizations and politicization; human factors, algorithmic justice, and a host of other issues arising from the global evolution of information communication technologies (ICTs) and their dominance over societal participation - imposing submission to the functional requirements of digital culture and its operative technologies (see Berthier & Teboul, 2018; Chun & Joyrich, 2009; Chun, 2006, 2013, 2016; Clark & Kaptanian, 2018; Drucker, 2001; Elden, 2005; Finn, 2017; Franklin, 2013; Galloway, 2006; Galloway et al., 2013; Galloway & Thacker, 2007; Gunkel, 2014; Han, 2017; Heidegger, 1977; Hui, 2010, 2015, 2016b; Kittler, 1990, 1999; Kittler et al., 2013; Morozov, 2013; Oremus & Oremus, 2016; Pariser, 2011; Pasquale, 2015; Ramsay, 2011; Rouvroy & Stiegler, 2016; Steiner, 2012; Sumpter, 2018; Vaidhyanathan, 2011).