Logic of the Digital

Building a foundational understanding of the digital, Logic of the Digital examines it as a unique ontology. Starting with its formal and technical characteristics, captured by the binary code, Aden Evans asks how the digital domain of abstract logic encounters a material, human world. Focusing on the formal, universal code and the elements of creative production, Evans shows how any encounter between the actual and the digital must cross an ontological divide: the gap between the productive materiality of the human world and the reductive abstraction of this binary code. Evans traces the distortions of this ontological crossing, looking directly at formal abstraction as well as analyzing exemplary digital technologies such as the mouse, the internet, and the concept of software. He also raises the paradoxical issue of creativity in relation to digital technologies: ontology of abstraction leaves little room for the unpredictable or accidental that is essential to creativity, but digital technologies are nevertheless patently creative. Evans tackles how the ostensibly sterile binary code can lend itself to such fecund cultural production. Through clarification of the digital's ontological foundation, Evans points to a significant threat to creativity lurking in the nature of the digital and explains the importance of creating a digital ethics. Constructing a map of the ontology of the digital, exploring the potentials of programming and using gaming as the ideal test of digital ontology, Logic of the Digital guides future practices and shapes academic research in digital technologies.