We, as humans, are only able to manipulate the power of computers utilizing a medium to translate for us. So we make up a language that is somewhere between regular english and a mess of circuits that lets us control the machine. And that is exactly what makes us humans. The ability to communicate with each other, but also the ability to communicate with a machine. But remember that the way in which we communicate with the computer is with our own words. The following is an excerpt from a program that I wrote last semester:

for(int counter = 0 ; counter < _numberOfElements ; counter++){

_piece.MoveDown();

}//end of for loop

This may seem like a foreign language to you, but look closely and you will be able to get at least some idea of what is going on here. (Again I urge you, if any of this is remotely interesting to you, visit I write, I program. Michelle does a much more thorough and eloquent job speaking on much the same topic that I am speaking about. Or just explore the hypertext web which this is part of for many other projects that explore this connection between hypertext and critical theory.) First of all, every word is made up of letters, all except for int are words that you can recognize. I'm sure that you also notice that the word counter is used three times. Well what does this thing do? It looks as though a piece moves down, which it does. How long does it keep on doing it, well the piece keeps on moving down as long as the counter variable is less than the number of elements, which is just some variable that records the number of things that we need to do something with. Just as these combination of letter and symbols together signify something differently when they are conjoined in a certain manner, words are given the same kind of useful meaning in our everyday conversations or works of literature.