2-7: breakdown, exposure, (sk)interface
As an exemplary case of the intersection of biological and information technological themes, it should come as no surprise that the key procedure of the virus is to copy. As nothing more than a simple piece of software, the virus is able to achieve this copying in two ways: by infecting the executable files in a host computer and mutating itself to fit with the specific affordances of the local operating system; but also by looping the output of its executed instructions back into the program as input.[20] By virtue of these two techniques, the computer virus is able to clog a computer's disk space by extensively reproducing itself.
This is a simple enough technical description of how computer viruses operate, but it is interesting to see how the specificity of these operations play out against larger themes of dematerializtion, copying, and dissemination in both media studies and biology. For, on one level, the computer virus represents the pinnacle of immateriality: as a piece of software that refers only to itself or other pieces of software, it would seem to bring the immaterial copying logic of the computer in general to the point of parody or excess. As a malleable set of instructions for completing a task, the computer virus as software is thus pure information and pure copy - by extensively reproducing the instructions for copying itself, and then by mutating these instructions to the needs of a local context (ala Benjamin), the computer virus posits a notion of infinite transformability and interoperability beyond the specific materiality of any particular machine. Thus, as pure code and copy; as information that is both flexible and robust; the computer virus becomes particularly well suited to the transversal mobility needed to operate across the multiple platforms of networks, transgressing the localities of physical space and the material contingencies of computer hardware, alike.
![[20]](http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/lipshin/media/copy-footnote-20.jpg){kind=link}
This is a simple enough technical description of how computer viruses operate, but it is interesting to see how the specificity of these operations play out against larger themes of dematerializtion, copying, and dissemination in both media studies and biology. For, on one level, the computer virus represents the pinnacle of immateriality: as a piece of software that refers only to itself or other pieces of software, it would seem to bring the immaterial copying logic of the computer in general to the point of parody or excess. As a malleable set of instructions for completing a task, the computer virus as software is thus pure information and pure copy - by extensively reproducing the instructions for copying itself, and then by mutating these instructions to the needs of a local context (ala Benjamin), the computer virus posits a notion of infinite transformability and interoperability beyond the specific materiality of any particular machine. Thus, as pure code and copy; as information that is both flexible and robust; the computer virus becomes particularly well suited to the transversal mobility needed to operate across the multiple platforms of networks, transgressing the localities of physical space and the material contingencies of computer hardware, alike.
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