The Creation of Memecode

During a normal day of printing a document from my PC, as happens from time to time I made a mistake. One of the settings had been altered from their usual state and instead of a page of my text, the printer spat out a long string of printer code. A document that is displayed on screen is a representation of the code that exists within the file, every line break and font style is encoded into a language that the printer can understand and translate into the necessary colours and letters to form a page. On this occasion, however, the printer simply began to print out the code itself. The first thing that struck me, upon closer examination, was that it made a kind of sense, half way between what I had written and the digital process.

I then began trying to purposefully print out code; renaming other file formats into plain text and forcing them into the printer to see what spewed forth. Much of it consisted of code chunks that clearly showed how the printer was attempting to deal with the information I was feeding it. Sections were formed from an initial statement of the file format and file details, introductions to fonts used, changes to colours and styles and with it sections of descriptive text from the original format. Despite the incomprehensibility of the code, some of it seemed almost poetic.

This led me further into researching code, at first I was looking for ways to force the computer to crash and discover what code snippets were created in response to errors but I soon widened my search into the various systems of computer code and language. I studied some of the most popular and widespread computer languages; Unix, DOS, C++, Perl, JavaScript, and ASP, taking out the most useful and meaningful conventions and combining them in order to translate ideas into code. Every system has its own structure and syntax, its own set of verbs and nouns, each communicating a set of instructions differently. I also used a number of conventions from hacker writing styles that were developed in Usenet and forums by programmers. These conventions use programming terminology and ideas, that other programmers would understand as a sort of shorthand slang, to convey real world ideas.

The use the logical construction of the programming language in this way, as a means of communication, distorts the traditional use of punctuation for literary emphasis yet still contains a literal meaning. It incorporates the code structure by using punctuation that can be pronounced and relates to the syntax of programming by using certain key words, such as select, sort, bind, connect, read, etc, to convey secondary meanings. I wanted to use the grammatical structure of many programming languages and create a new language of my own that could only run on a fictional computer yet would still seem to be a functioning computer language. I named the new language Memecode, based on the concept of the "meme". A meme is described in the Principia Cybernetica as follows...

meme : (pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behaviour, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.

This fitted in with my intent of creating a language, that was at once a purely technical code and could still contain deeper information that was not of a technical nature. An encryption of ideas that could only be "parsed" via that most computer like miracle, the human mind. The first use I could find for Memecode was in trying to translate ideas and sections of written text and to begin with I looked to 'Art of Strategy' by Sun Tzu. Known as the Art of War, it has acted as a definitive study on the practice of advanced strategy on the battle field, as well as offering an understanding that can be applied to other aspects of conflict in our day to day lives. It is full of concise conditional phrases and statements that make it an ideal candidate for a translation into code. Once translated I could see that the Memecode would break down all the flowing concepts into economic statements, creating something new that carried the same basic information as the original. This experiment let me know that Memecode was successful and that maybe I should start translating my own work into Memecode.
The Use of Memecode as an Operating System

After beginning the Memecode project and its application in the field of translation, I realised that I had a structure upon which I could hang many different ideas. The full body of working experiments that looked and read like a programming language, became decipherable upon closer inspection as the syntax and context was realised. As well as the main structure that Memecode used I wanted to further cover larger sections of plain text that were to be incorporated. The text to be included was first passed through a series of find and replace actions that substituted letters for numbers and key phrases for computer jargon and conventions used by hackers and programmers in the Usenet online forums. This would allow me to create more meaningful Memecode and a deeper level of communication.

I planned to use the code to encrypt a narrative, as by breaking down a story into its various composites I could present a complex plot in very simple terms. The Memecode structure first introduces the genre, setting, characters, locations, main themes and ideas before moving to the main narrative. Then, this is broken down into chapters and further subdivided into the key events, responses and outcomes. Thus, I knew I could begin creating a story that would exist as an encrypted set of code, but could also be presented as the programming language for a fictional computer. If this was to be a programming language, then what would the end result be? What would be rendered by the fictional computer that could understand it? If Memecode was the language behind a new operating system, what kind of environment would be created? It was here that I fixated upon the idea of the Memecom Gateway Operating System, a fake computer environment that concealed a story in its files and folders al relating to the main narrative that was embedded in the very code that formed the interface.