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Decoding What is Good in Code: Toward a Metaphysical Ethics of Unicode
Abstract
Programming benefits from universal standards that facilitate effective global transmission of information. The Unicode Standard, for example, is a character encoding system that aims to assign a unique number set to each letter, mark, and symbol in the world's various written systems, including Arabic, Korean, Cherokee, and even Cuneiform. As the quantity of these numerical encodings grow, the differences among the written systems of natural languages pose increasingly little consequence to the artificial languages of both programmers and machines. However, the instrumental, technical effects of Unicode must not be mistaken as its only effects. Recognized as a metaphysical object in its own right, Unicode, specifically, and code, generally, creates a protocol for the actualization of moral and political values. This chapter examines how Microsoft's inclusion and then deletion of the Unicode encodings U+5350 and U+534D in its Office Bookshelf Symbol 7 font illustrates how technically successful coding can be rhetorically buggy, meaning that it invokes competing ethical values that, in this case, involve free speech, anti-Semitism, and Western privilege.
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