Andrew Pilsch is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University. He researches and teaches rhetoric and digital humanities, with specific focus on post-digital ideas of embodiment, online utopianism, and forms of digital rhetorical engagement. He is the author of Transhumanism: Evolutionary Futurism and the Human Technologies of Utopia from University of Minnesota Press. He tweets online at @oncomouse.
Authors | Andrew Pilsch
Articles on Amodern by Andrew Pilsch
TRANSLATING THE FUTURE
Transpilers and the New Temporalities of Programming in JavaScript
This essay explores the intersection between machine translation and contemporary software development. Specifically, the article considers ES6 transpilers, JavaScript utilities that translate the as-yet-unimplemented future standard for the JavaScript language (ES6) into executable code. These programs translate from a language that might exist in the future into one that exists in the present, mirroring several conversations about contemporary translation (including work by Rita Raley and Michael Cronin) and writing practices (most prominently Vilém Flusser). Flusser in particular sees digital writing as a process of translating the future into the present in dialogue with machines, and this essay argues that ES6 transpilation is an early example of this new temporal rhythm.