An Overview of Past and Future Code Praxis, and England's role
The introduction to the theoretical concepts in Part One is the prelude to presenting an original interpretation of the recorded history of governance in terms of a pattern of mechanical depersonalisation in governance, which, from the perspective of binary coding, can be analysed as a continuity between two points in time — an early modern depersonalisation of governance and the contemporary discontinuity of governance coding in the anglosphere. I regard the early seventeenth century as the start of the historical pattern of personal-impersonal state coding, and of its associated theoretical notions of mechanical or automated ‘system’ governance. I view the early twenty-first century as a turning point leading to either a denouement or reinvigoration of the distinctive Western pattern of governance, since the current trajectory is unlikely to be survivable.
Part Two focuses on the double contingency crisis which caused the emergence of personal-impersonal code in England’s first seven…