In “Getting Real,” Barad proposes that “reality is sedimented out of the process ofmaking the world intelligible through certain practices and not others ...” (1998: 105). If,as Barad and other feminist researchers suggest, we are responsible for what exists, what isthe reality that current discourses and practices regarding new technologies makeintelligible, and what is excluded? To answer this question Barad argues that we need asimultaneous account of the relations of humans and nonhumansandof their asymmetriesand differences. This requires remembering that boundaries between humans and machinesare not naturally given but constructed, in particular historical ways and with particularsocial and material consequences. As Barad points out, boundaries are necessary for thecreation of meaning, and, for that very reason, are never innocent. Because the cuts impliedin boundary making are always agentially positioned rather than naturally occurring, andbecause boundaries have real consequences, she argues, “accountability is mandatory”(187). :We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitraryconstruction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practicesthat we have a role in shaping (1998: 102).The accountability involved is not, however, a matter of identifying authorship in anysimple sense, but rather a problem of understanding the effects of particular assemblages,and assessing the distributions, for better and worse, that they engender.

Text is not going away, but if we really want it to be understood and remembered, we should integrate it better with physical and emotional experience. This convergence may happen with the “physicalization” of the digital world, where digital experiences become part of our physical life.

What is missing is a space between the $( and the following (, to avoid the arithmetic expression syntax. The section on command substitution in the shell command language specification actually warns for that:

I regret that the documentation does not focus on what is most relevant; by focusing on a largely irrelevant implementation detail, we enlarge the importance of that implementation detail and obscure the importance of what makes a value type semantically useful. I dearly wish that all those articles explaining what “the stack” is would instead spend time explaining what exactly “copied by value” means and how misunderstanding or misusing “copy by value” can cause bugs.

Surely the most relevant fact about value types is not the implementation detail of how they are allocated, but rather the by-design semantic meaning of “value type”, namely that they are always copied “by value”.

For there are who read and yet neglect them; they read to remember the words, but are careless about knowing the meaning. It is plain we must set far above these the men who are not so retentive of the words, but see with the eyes of the heart into the heart of Scripture. Better than either of these, however, is the man who, when he wishes, can repeat the words, and at the same time correctly apprehends their meaning.