This is what happens when academic non-scientists attempt to write about “geeks.” Here Scott McLemee describes the thesis of the new book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, written by an anthropologist:
[T]he whole process of creating and distributing free software is itself, to borrow a programming term, recursive.
Per the OED, recursivity involves “a repeated procedure such that the required result at each step except the last is given in terms of the result(s) of the next step, until … a terminus is reached with an outright evaluation of the result.”
Something like that dynamic – the combination of forward motion, regressive processing, and cumulative feedback – is found in geekdom’s approach to collaboration and evaluation.
What’s recursive about a development process that involves a “combination of forward motion, regressive processing, and cumulative feedback”? Why isn’t it just iterative? The book is described as “an effort to analyze the source code, so to speak, of geekdom itself”; it’s enough to make you wish that “geekdom” were proprietary.
Young Urban Amateur | 18-Jul-08 at 12:09 pm | Permalink
To quote Mr. McLamee (perh. paraphrasing Dr. Kelty), it’s “something like that”.
You’re quite right about the iterative/recursive distinction, of course. (Though it sounds like Kelty is at least trying to describe a legitimate feedback loop). And nice zinger in that last sentence.