The second reason for studying the Oulipo’s contributions to writing is related to Le Lionnais’ esteem for scholars with “double nationality.” Members of the Oulipo, who combined the languages of number and word in their research methodologies, demonstrated how writers can cross the “two cultures” split between the humanities and sciences. In 1959, C.P. Snow popularized the trope of the “two cultures” in his Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge. Snow argued that intellectual work in the West had split in two. On one side of the dividing line are the humanists, and on the other are the scientists. Between the two exists “a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding” (4). Snow’s concern with the split is that it threatens intellectual progress at all levels of society: “This polarization is a sheer loss to us all. To us as people, to our society. It is at the same time practical and intellectual and creative loss” (11). Toward the end of his lecture, he calls for educators to help bridge the gap between the two.

Compared to other fields in the humanities, computers and writing has developed numerous bridges across the “two cultures” divide. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of “software studies,” the lack of engagement with numerate modes of thinking and research is a topic that needs to be addressed. Considering the extent to which computers and computational media are based on numerate concepts and methodologies, an explicit engagement with the language of size, number, and quantity (i.e., mathematics) would be a productive basis for the study of software.

In his book titled Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, John Allen Paulos defines innumeracy as “an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance” (3). His book opens with an epigraph that reads, “Math was always my worse subject” (3). In the introduction to his book, Paulos presents an anecdote that demonstrates the way in which innumeracy contributes to the “two cultures” split about which Snow spoke. Moreover, it is an anecdote that most English majors and their professors will relate.

I remember once listening to someone at a party drone on about the difference between “continually” and “continuously.” Later that evening we were watching the news, and the TV weathercaster announced that there was a 50 percent chance of rain for Saturday and a 50 percent chance of rain for Sunday, and concluded that there was therefore a 100 percent chance of rain that weekend. The remark went right by the self-styled grammarian, and even after I explained the mistake to him, he wasn’t nearly as indignant as he would have been had the weathercaster left a dangling participle. (3-4)

This anecdote resonates with my past experiences. On several occasions, I have heard graduate students and professors in the humanities express their disdain for mathematics and their inability to think with numbers. An implied distrust supports their innumeracy. Based on my own dislike of mathematics after a dismal high school experience, I sympathize. I wish I’d had someone like Ian Stewart to write letters in response to my questions about math in high school. In the following excerpt from his book titled Letters to a Young Mathematician, Stewart offers a simple analogy for “school math”:

The school math you are learning is mainly some basic tricks of the trade, and how to use them in very simple contexts. If we were talking woodwork, it’s like learning to use a hammer to drive a nail, or a aw to cut wood to size. (19)

A few pages later, he adds, “Schools—not just yours, Meg, but around the world—are so preoccupied with teaching sums that they do a poor job of preparing students to answer (or even ask) the far more interesting question of what mathematics is” (22). I did not begin entertaining answers to the definitional question that Stewart claims is missing until graduate school, which is when I took a series of courses in software programming. As I learned how to think with software in order to conceptualize solutions to “problems” I was programming, I developed an enthusiasm for math and numerate thinking.

One of the ways in which that enthusiasm manifested itself was during moments of brainstorming. Since a good portion of the programming with which I was preoccupied was visual, I was particularly interested in the ways in which a programming language could be used to represent perspective, movement, and the physical phenomena related to them. For example, after watching door chimes swaying in the wind, I wondered how the property, swaying, could be programmed. It’s not as if there is wind in a programming environment. Rather, there are numbers that can be generated within the programming environment and passed to an object that uses those numbers in an equation that simulates swaying. I would pass my time thinking through issues such as these.

In his book titled Mathematics for the Million, Lancelot Hogben explains that linguistic thought and communication is concerned largely with qualitative issues. By contrast, the language of mathematics is concerned with quantitative issues. Hogben explains, ”In contradistinction to common speech which deals largely with the qualities of things, mathematics deals only with matters of size, order, and shape” (75). As I think about the my enthusiastic brainstorming sessions as an amateur programmer, Hogben’s distinction helps me understand the different ways of thinking and that developed during my training in software writing. For scholars and instructors in computers and writing, an ability to think in quantitative terms is an important part of thinking with software, which means that innumeracy is an obstacle

In my estimation as a software programmer, becoming numerate does not entail learning anything beyond the branches of mathematics offered in high school, but rather how to recognize the basic arithmetical operations and numerate properties with which an on-screen event is structured. In The Language of New Media, Manovich's first principle of new media can be interpreted as a call for a numerate turn in our studies of computers and writing. Manovich’s first principle is “Numerical Representation,” which he defines as follows: “All new media objects, whether created from scratch on computers or converted from analog media sources, are composed of digital code; they are numerical representations” (27). He lists two “consequences” of this principle of new media.

1. A new media object can be described mathematically. This means that the properties by which a programmer will define and subsequently access an object, requires one or more numerate acts.
2. A new media object is “subject to algorithmic manipulation” (27). The same object, whether it is a word or an image, can be transformed with the help of arithmetical operations. I can use basic algebra to evaluate the position of a letter in a string of words, or trigonometry to move those words in an arc across the screen.

The ability to expand literate modes of reasoning and expression numerically is essential for scholars and instructors in computers and writing who want to expand their interests in new media to software programming. In addition to these two consequences is a third: the opportunity to delve more deeply into the computational layers of writing and rhetoric in new media.