Speculative Deployment
To read through the code is to cross over, cross over into the processing of the machine, cross over into the process of the project's development, cross over into the execution of the code of the user's experience as the code is processed. To read the code is to perform what Ricardo Dominguez has called "a speculative deployment."
To imagine the consequences of the tool is a speculative deployment. By giving supporters and detractors the power to deploy, by framing their narratives and counter-narratives as deployments, Dominguez implicates these groups -- or rather, incorporates them in the project. At the same, time, when a person reads through the code, particularly a programmer, they deploy the code in an imaginary reality. One of the goals of this media-rich code annotation project is to provide opportunities for a richer speculation on the life of the code. To aid and enhance the code reading process by radically contextualizing the code in the conditions of its creation. This essay built around the annotation of the source code of the Transborder Immigrant invites the reader into just such a speculative deployment.
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