Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Among Media: The place of mediatization 271 sequences of words, which are in turn sequences of letters. We can tell (say) by reference to the form alone which combinations of the words are sentences, which sentences are axioms, and which sentences follow as immediate consequences of others.’ 3 When meanings come down to sentences, sen- tences to words, and words to letters, there is no software at all. Rather, there would be no software if computer systems were not surrounded by an environment of everyday language. (KITTLER, 2017, p. 377-380) Understanding that software must be the writing of hardware justifies the analogy between software and the non- isolating language system that characterizes almost all Western languages, and, through this analogical approach, one under- stands why software does not exist. Considering that it would only support itself as a hardware language, if it were capable of generating its significant system and its semantics unrelated to the programmed hardware matrix, one would have to admit that software is as symbolic as any language and, therefore, capable of exchanging information with the surrounding environment, and far from technical programming system. If the software does not exist, the digital-technical language is just programming. Kittler’s view of the technological world is that of a world without software, language, and, above all, without ethi- cal or political awareness of the everyday technocracy. The ex- cessive presence of a missing software as a language explains why, at the end of the century, and more precisely from 1995 onwards (GUMBRECHT, 2017, p. 517), the technical philosopher and media theory scholar took refuge in Greek culture in search of self-unveiling, capable of overcoming the self-controlling pro- gramed technique, which would reduce consciousness and au- tonomy of beings to technocracy. Kittler was neither apocalyptic nor integrated, but in his Media Theory, he sought the meaning of technicality for man. 3 Stephen C. Kleene, quoted by Robert Rosen, “Effective Processes and Natural Law, in The Universal Turing Machine: A Half-Century Survey, ed. Rolf Herken, Hamburg, Berlin, Oxford, 1988, p. 527.