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Tools are not neutral. Technique is always materialized knowledge, a particular material form of thinking. An object, a system or a process embodies a worldview and certain particular values.

This observation is even more prominent when thinking is formalized in the form of computer code, which can be literally (and eventually literarily) read and analyzed.

Tools are not just tools. They are cognitive interfaces that presuppose forms of mental and physical discipline and organization. By scripting an action, they produce and transmit knowledge, and, in turn, model a world.

Digital_Humanities, p. 105

Tools are therefore non-neutral agents to thought. As “cognitive interfaces,” they determine the conditions of access and possibility of knowledge (what is technically possible to do—therefore possible—and what is technically not possible to do—therefore impossible). The intricacy between technique and intellect is such that the two cannot be separated.

The second part of the passage is significant: tools (code in particular) allows the operationalization of worldviews, “executing” them. They render a project, an idea, technically possible, highlighting the power of writing, its effective property.

Scripting: writing for execution. (Hence the fundamental importance of technique.)