I noticed that WordNet gives three senses of the noun “code,” and the second one lumps brevity and secrecy together (not mentioning clarity).

1. (9) code, codification — (a set of rules or principles or laws (especially written ones))
2. (1) code — (a coding system used for transmitting messages requiring brevity or secrecy)
3. code, computer code — ((computer science) the symbolic arrangement of data or instructions in a computer program or the set of such instructions)

But the two senses of the verb “code” are more clear in showing the split between formal representation and such representation for purposes of encipherment:

1. (1) code — (attach a code to; “Code the pieces with numbers so that you can identify them later”)
2. encode, code, encipher, cipher, cypher, encrypt, inscribe, write in code — (convert ordinary language into code; “We should encode the message for security reasons”)

Encrypted messages do have some things in common with ones that are encoded (e.g., in Morse code or ASCII) but not encrypted – they’re both formal representations, very suitable for manipulation by computers. And, of course, do you have to know the representation to decode and understand them. But that still seems to leave a big gulf between codes (encodings) created to foster universal, open communication and those codes (ciphers) created to explicitly obscure messages during transmission.

I suppose that what’s important here is the sense in which both/all definitions of code also define a community by excluding those not in the know

Yes, although I think that’s true of any communication system, even if it isn’t formal. If we were to speak to each other in Latin somewhere where the people around us didn’t know Latin, that could serve the exclusive/secrecy purpose, even though Latin wasn’t developed as a cipher, and can’t be one in the formal sense, as isn’t a formal system.

What seems most interesting to me is the move from hooking up patch cables and wiring together logic gates to the stored program, a sequence of numbers, and then to a more human-readable form in assembly language, and then up the software hierarchy through programming languages and user interfaces. (This topic is taken up Maurice Black in chapter 2 of The Art of Code.) This “invention of code” and the progression to higher-levels ways of coding resulted in people having to do less memorization of the specifics of machine capabilities and remembering of esoteric codes. What would once have been accomplished with patch cables or binary digits can now be accomplished quickly with some “scripting” language that even runs in the same way on different computer platforms.

Well, that reminds me, I’d better get back to my coding…

Briefly, the progression looks something like this:

code.1 = a set of Rules
code.2 = a set of rules for communicating information in a military context (e.g. Morse)
code.3 = the specific dots and dashes that make up the encoded messages.
code.4 = stuff you put into a computer to make it do stuff

This is kind of off the cuff, but it seems that the crucial shift occurs between 2 and 3 where the word goes from referring to the rules governing a system, to the system itself, to the “governed” part of the system. As a sidenote, let’s not forget “codex”, which also started as “a set of rules”, but came to refer to the book containing that set of rules, etc.

I suppose that what’s important here is the sense in which both/all definitions of code also define a community by excluding those not in the know, which is perhaps why the “computer user as cryptanalyst” model is so seductive. Also, I don’t usually make much of puns, but “cybertext” has a nice rhyme with “ciphertext”, which is obviously intentional.

This assumption of mine, and apparently, Kramer’s, that computer code is related more closely to cryptography than rules-systems, seems to have its problems. For example, I had always thought that calling HTML “code” was simply a misnomer, because HTML is a straightforward markup language and writing html doesn’t involve “encoding” or any other obfuscation. I suppose, however, that something like Perl is also a set of rules that dictates a way for me to make something happen with 1′s and 0′s without having to actually encode myself. So Perl as code is also more like the “rules” definition.

Anyway, I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop. Thanks for letting me work through a couple of thoughts that are probably obvious. Thanks also, Nick, for the heads-up on the Kramer book.

ebook on code in history

Found this on: http://grandtextauto.org/2005/07/26/confusion-of-codes/ it’s an ebook [...]