Overview

In a world where digital spaces are prevalent, and the youth are overwhelmingly made up of digital natives, the impact of code is vital to tackle. This chapter takes a cursory look at the basics of code and how it connects computer action with human action. From there, it explores procedural rhetoric, and thus how rhetoric can exist in code—both in covert methods and in plain English. Finally, there’s a brief look at how code can affect visual rhetoric, and how the modern approach compares to years past.

The Basics of Code

Digital spaces do not exist without code. Considering that you are most likely a digital native (read: you’ve grown up with digital spaces), it’s only natural that you have some awareness about the impact of code. Code comprises any instruction given to a computer by a human being. A computer cannot understand human language; at a baseline level, it can only understand instructions in binary: zeroes (off states) and ones (on states). Think about a light switch, in that regard. Luckily, there are several languages that have been developed over the years that act as a medium between the computer and the human.

Of course, even the simplest of these languages may seem obtuse to the average passerby. First, there’s low-level languages. These skew away from human understanding, towards something that is crystal-clear to the computer. Machine code and assembly are firmly in this territory. One who knows assembly is one who knows how to talk to a computer directly; again, it’s obtuse, but knowing these secrets can lead to more efficient results. High-level languages are closer to what you would understand as speech or writing. Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and others are in this category—this is what you’d learn in a modern computer science course. These languages employ functions and wording that theoretically say what they do.

For example, a high-level coding language will invariably have a simple method of creating conditionals. If and else are the key words here. If this condition is met, do something. Otherwise, do something else. For our purposes, this is as far as technological nitty-gritty needs to go; if-else statements allow a system to execute procedures. That said, procedures are something we, as humans, have in common with computers.

Procedural Rhetoric

Let’s break away from code for a bit. Before proceeding, you need to know that rhetoric can exist in code. How can rhetoric exist in something that is largely under the hood, so to speak? Because rhetoric exists in processes or procedures; the steps that allow one to go about their day-to-day business. Procedural rhetoric is the message communicated through a procedure. Any procedure. Take your morning routine as an example. How you choose to present yourself for the day can say a lot. Your choice of clothing, for one thing, is a fashion statement that will be loud and clear to other people. Certainly, to yourself.

Usually, when discussing procedural rhetoric, it’s regarding a procedure that someone else is imparting on you. In other words, when someone forces you to do something so that you can achieve a goal, you get a certain vibe from that experience. Think about the processes you must put up within a university setting, such as meeting up with your professor. The act of even grabbing a meeting time communicates something. Does your professor use a scheduling system, or do you have to hope that they check their email? How easy is it to even contact your professor? This is a moment where unprofessionalism and basic respect for students can become apparent.

That’s before you even get to the meeting. Does your professor take the time to have a civil dialogue with you? Do you gain anything from having a one-on-one discussion with them? It’s possible for a meeting to become uncomfortable; perhaps they seem like they don’t want to be there or take the opportunity to put you down. How you’re affected by this experience is decided by the person who structured this process. If your professor chose to make scheduling and contacting easy, and makes this meeting worth your time, you feel good. Processes communicate messages.

The Rhetoric in Code

Because procedural rhetoric exists, rhetoric is inherent in code. In the same way a professor can craft the process of being able to meet with them, a computer scientist crafts the instructions that a computer executes. In both cases, you’re the end user affected by all of this. Finding rhetoric in code can be difficult if you don’t know what to look for. For all intents and purposes, you don’t see code unless you specifically look for it; modern desktop browsers sport an “inspect element” feature, if you’re curious. Even then, you won’t be able to see every bit of code within a website. Some things are kept under lock and key.

Take any of the biggest platforms on the Internet as an example. X (née Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are only a few platforms that employ intricate algorithms. You absolutely cannot see these algorithms. You can be aware of what they do, but they’re not for display. They’re complex sets of instructions that aim to analyze what you do and what you seem to like; they’re a platform’s secret recipe. At the time of this writing, the signed TikTok ban in the United States is a hot issue: one of the major issues regarding its forced sale pertains to the attachment of the algorithm that powers the “For You” page. They’re that important to the companies that run these platforms. On the surface, they’re handy for getting suggested more Steely Dan songs if you’ve just listened to all of Aja. In reality: the scoop on you is valuable data that can be sold to advertisers. Also, keeping you on their platform for as long as possible would be ideal.

Comments

All that might make rhetoric in code look particularly sneaky, but I’m willing to leave this section on a helpful note: it can also be obvious. Any coding language has a feature to denote a comment: a string of text that the computer is oblivious to, but a human onlooker can read. Usually, they’re meant to explain what a chunk of code is meant to do; if you’ve written a function that displays a sequence of numbers that count down, it’s considered basic coding etiquette to outright say so.

Because they’re “plain” writing, comments can act as the most blatant example of rhetoric in code. They can act as the window as to how a coder feels towards their audience, their coworkers, and the project. Fun examples to this effect can be found in abundance on The Cutting Room Floor, a website dedicated to documenting unused, cut, or otherwise invisible content in video games. Naturally, that includes a lot of comments that the average user cannot see. Although I encourage you to poke around and find examples on your own, I invite you to unpack this strongly worded message to software pirates, hidden within data meant for music.

Visual Rhetoric

Speaking of rhetoric that one can see clearly, coding decisions can alter visual rhetoric. Digital spaces and visual rhetoric have been intertwined for decades; today, we still feel the effect of Susan Kare’s work for the original Macintosh on digital literacy. She was able to translate the functions of a computer into concepts that humans could easily understand, and in a visually appealing manner that matched perfectly with the Macintosh’s crispy monochrome display. We still use a floppy disk to represent the act of saving a file. I point this all out to drive in that digital spaces live by communicating messages to a user through visuals. The visuals must be clear, and even their appeal is important.

Sticking with the realm of websites, the visuals of the Web start with HTML and CSS. HTML is the backbone of any website, and CSS allows one to enhance visuals further. As for HTML alone, you can change the size and color of text, for one thing. You can insert images by pointing to a link elsewhere on the Internet. You can italicize and bold text using tags such as <i> and <b>. You can make tables. Once you know what you’re doing, the sky’s the limit with HTML; once you supplement that with CSS, you can do some spiffy work. It was a common hobby at the turn of the millennium to learn HTML and make a website. Nothing’s stopping you, though. If you’re curious, W3Schools offers a free HTML tutorial. If you want to poke around modern hobby websites, and even publish your own pure HTML/CSS site (as much as WordPress has its merits), take a look at Neocities.

Comparing the Past with Today

To analyze how messaging to an end user has altered over time, it’s best to look at professional examples by organizations. There’s no shortage of examples regarding the Web’s evolution. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and the Web Design Museum house plenty of them, although the latter only houses images. For a good example of an intact, plain HTML site, there’s the Space Jam website. I invite you to explore and hit “inspect element”. Notice just how simple the code is. The homepage is really just a 3×3 table of clickable images.

Of course, we’re comparing two extremes here. One look at the Web Design Museum tells you that Space Jam’s plain HTML approach was mighty dated even by the millennium. Still, I encourage you to hit “inspect element” on any modern website. Chances are that it’s going to look cleaner, and it’ll fit your mobile device better. The code will also look much more complex; it’s probably being helped by JavaScript. Interestingly, as web design has been ironed out to be cleaner, the underlying code still looks obtuse to a passerby.

Conclusion

Code makes the digital world go round. Thus, it’s more important than ever to understand what code is doing in your life. Code influences the look and feel of the platforms you use; it influences your decisions on those platforms, be it to look at something or stay for a bit. The ones writing it always have something to say. Whether or not they’re loud about it doesn’t change the fact. Even if you can’t read all the code in your life, it’s important that you read the things that it executes, if nothing else.