When we set the theme for issue 8.1—C . O . D . E , we were well aware that these are unmatched times: babies clutching smartphones, facial-recognition technology hitched to lampposts, various self-driving vehicles, insidiously targeted ad algorithms that suddenly know my socks have holes in them . . . and with our necessary engagement with technology, as poets, we have some questions: where does poetry fall into this space?

 

In a submission that did not make the main issue, Lim Chiew Sen, who has worked in the IT industry for most of his life, pointed out the “beautiful poetry” encoded in the emblem of the United States Cyber Command (USCC):

 

9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a

 

 

                                    

 

He says:

 

This string of thirty-two alphabets and numerals is a “cryptographic hash”, a mathematical formula that is applied to an input—in this case, the exact text of the mission statement of the USCC. Even the slightest modification to the text (add an extra unseen space between two words, for instance) and you will get an entirely different cryptographic hash. In effect, the thirty-two-letter code can be thought of as a substitute for the mission statement itself, which in fact reads: USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.

 

Here we have a wordy and ponderous mission statement that is represented by code. Look at that beautiful poetry: 

 

9ec4c129

49a4f314

74f29905

8ce2b22a

 

Perfectly metrical and totally unpronounceable, this code rings more clearly than that lofty rallying call—as soon as someone can come up with a pronunciation for it!

 

As we read through other submissions from contributors and collaborators, we discovered numerous follow-up questions to this first one—whether code is simply a type of poetry, or poetry a type of code—such as:

 

If code is a type of poetry, and poetry a type of code, what is code?

 

Is it a mathematical schematic that hides away secret messages, that obfuscates meaning? Or are codes the gatekeepers of meaning?

 

If code is a key—does it lock or unlock?

 

Are codes meant to be broken? Are they just pretty symbols if left as-is? Are they meaningless once deconstructed?

 

Who, by the way, writes code? Computers? Humans? Who does it better; who does it more predictably? Bot or not?

 

And what is the reason to code? Do we write with an answer key in hand? Or is the writing the act of deciphering?

 

Each of these questions were posed—and answered very differently—by various submissions. In this issue, among others, you’ll find a twenty-line poem that reshuffles with every page refresh, complete with 1,216,451,004,088,320,000 permutations and combinations; poems written by the Facebook hive mind and predict-the-next-word language models; a visual piece built upon binary notation and an old Chinese myth; a poem inspired by the codeswitching and slang used in contemporary revolutionary Hong Kong; and even a very functional crossword puzzle!
 
We hope you’ll enjoy solving, and unsolving, Issue 8.1.

 

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