Cybernetic Difference

    In a discussion of Kittler's Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, it has been argued that the author narrates the subsumption of difference by the war machine.  Whatever else Kittler may be doing in his text, I would suggest that he cannot successfully demonstrate the eliding of difference by technology, as a brief consideration of early microcomputer architectures can elucidate.

    Let us consider the machine instruction sets of two early personal computers, both of which I had the opportunity to become quite acquainted with as a child.  The first, we might note, was designed with a decidedly spare command set, emulating a Turing machine without a marked degree of redundancy. We find, for instance, an operator that might be translated as "if the accumulator contains zero, jump to the address of my operand".  In this particular architecture, the complementary operator for not equal to zero is absent.  

    This places the operator subsequent to the conditional operation in a position of privilege with respect to the distal operator targeted by the same conditional, a privilege necessitated by the inarticulability of the condition of the subsequent.  Unable to speak "not equal to zero", the processor must seek the operator of that unspeakable condition immediately proximate, where the distal operator reached by the spoken conditional may be positioned anywhere--except in the position of the subsequent.

    In this privilege, difference is evident.  The subsequent operator does not merely perform difference, is occupies difference, determines its own position through an uncanny difference from that which may be spoken.

    Such architectures did not last long, however.  We find in latter computers a much denser command set.  Not simply an "equal to zero" conditional but also its complement, "not equal to zero".  With this, the privileged position of the subsequent is vacated, as the position of subsequent and distal may be arbitrarily interchanged through an inversion of the conditional with its complement.  

    Yet in this evacuation of privilege, difference is not eliminated, but relocated.  Where before the inarticulable possessed a position determinative of the structure of the program, now structure hinges on, is articulated by, the arbitrary occupancy of the conditional position.  The difference between conditional and its complement is the difference between the performance of functionally isomorphic but structurally distinct programs.

    Here, we move from the realm of what has been called "spaghetti code" to the regime of subroutine.  The structure of programs no longer dictated by the poetics of inarticulability, the linear sequence of code may be strategically segmented and segregated, just as the hierarchical strata of corps are segmented and segregated in a modern military structure.  And just as with war machine subdivisions, for war machine subroutines difference in position is determinative:  as any German general speaking "eastern" or "westward" would know.

    In the circuit, position makes all the difference.