From ‘Hello World’ to ‘How are We Doing?’: fostering collective sensemaking with and about the unidirectional conversationality of code

Abstract The manner in which the software platforms and tools that surround us are built and marketed is designed to lead us not into conversations, but silences. It has been 20 years since Cass Sunstein first warned us of the manner in which new media lead us to choose as consumers, rather than citizens, and yet we still find that the dominant paradigm for technology adoption primes us to consider our decision-making around ICT tools as independent and neutral, needing only to meet a measure of value for money. Because of the all-pervasive nature of code and its compiled products, however, this particular socio-technical imaginary brings with it an exceptional power to alienate us not just from each other, but, in a post-Marxian twist, from the very tools, we might use to manage this deterioration in interpersonal exchange. This is, in particular, the case with artificial intelligence, due to the opacity and complexity of the methods deployed, and the dark ethical underbelly of its effects on power, labour, and rights. This article will look at this and other imaginaries that hold us back from forging a cultural relationship to AI and other forms of coded culture that is not just human-centred, but community aware, embodying the oft-cited values of human-centredness and trustworthiness. To do this, it will propose strategies by which to recentre code as a site for the discursive activity of collective sensemaking. Starting from the roots of the human-readable in code, the argument coalesces around the details of two experimental cases that have sought to foster human conversations that include code as an active participant.