Here is the same ported to C. Compile with:

gcc -o exist exist.c

exist.c

// exist is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// exist is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
// See the GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

/* exist */

main()
{
while(1){
//exist
}
}

Hi Pall,

Mine is more of a philosophical comment, but it seems like you're approach favors a kind of reductivist Cartesian goal. It would be interesting to see the code for Heideggerean Dasein, for what Graham Harman calls "tool-being," for a Deleuzean conception of subjective being as merely the habit of saying "I." In other words, multiple programs for multiple philosophical conceptions of being.

Also, I wonder if being ports without getting modulated. To write a program for being in pseudocode would be to embrace a kind of Platonic, metaphysical conception of being. Then each specific programming language would be more or less particularly suitable for describing one or another conception of being (actionScript for a pragmatic model, lingo for a semiotic model, javaScript for a limited/deterministic model, etc). The fact that you as programmer are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence. A purely immanent program for being would perpetually write itself. The fact that you think being can be abstracted and modeled inescapably presumes some sort of metaphysics.

A provocative project.

Curt

I've been reviewing the software and discovered a bug. I can't understand how it got by me in the first release. I apologize. Apparently existing is not synonymous with being. What seems to be happening is that the software is existing without being. This could not have happened in reverse as attempting to be without existing would have produced an error. Here is the corrected code. Please update immediately as this is a serious bug-fix. Also, I've noticed that pasting the code here removes the proper indentation. To maintain code-readability, please observe common indenting practices when reproducing the code.

exist.pl (C port follows)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

# exist.pl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# exist.pl is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
# See the GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

### exist 0.11 ###

my $exist = 1;

while(1){
if($exist){
# be
}else{
last;
}
}


exist.c

#include <stdlib.h>

// exist is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// exist is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
// See the GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

/* exist 0.11 */

main()
{
int exist = 1;
while(1){
if(exist = 1){
//be
}else{
exit(0);
}
}
}

Interesting points Curt. Perhaps my open sourcing of it is an attempt at escaping a purely private and personal interpretation of being. Regarding the metaphysics of various languages, notice that in the new version of the C port, it's no longer capable of adequately being while existing without the help of stdlib.h

Also, I think these programs do escape any cartesian goals because that centers around the idea of actually doing something as a necessary element of being. These programs suggest that a computer program is capable of transcending this by being without doing anything. But it's all open for debate.

Pall

oops, sorry. Slight mistake in the C code. Should be like this:

exist.c

#include <stdlib.h>

// exist is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// exist is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
// See the GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

/* exist 0.11 */

main()
{
int exist = 1;
while(1){
if(exist){
//be
}else{
exit(0);
}
}
}

_trEm[d]o[lls]r_

doll_tre[ru]mor[s] = <<TREMORS
<tremor name='the_5th_world'>
<fracture>
<fracture name='post2charinscription'>
<polymers>
<polymer var='user' val='YourDollUserName'/>
<polymer var='3rdperson' val='Your3rdPerson'/>
<polymer var='location' val='YourSoddenSelf'/>
<polymer var='spikey' val='YourSpiKeySelf'/>
</polymers>
</fracture>
<fracture name='post2skin'>
<polymers>
<polymer var='user' val='YourPolyannaUserName'/>
<polymer var='msg' val='YourPleading'/>
<polymer var='lastword' val='YourLastword'/>
</polymers>
</fracture>
</fractures>
</tremor>"
TREMOR

heidegger.being.c#-+

case of {

(stone)
//"weltlos"
(animal)
//"weltarm"
(human being)
//"weltbildend"
(computer program)
//"dasselbe wie Stein"

}

Maybe lose the use strict;

In existence it is sometimes the case that variables don't come predeclared, references turn out to be merely symbolic, or no quotation marks warn you about what turns out to be just a bareword string.

Hey, at least that wasn't as corny as this:

while(true) {
continue;
}
else {
break;
}

Curt, I was re-reading your comments and have a couple of points/questions. First of all, you say "The fact that you as programmer..." Well, I'm not a programmer. I'm an artist and that changes everything. In viewing this as the work of an artist as opposed to the work of a programmer, you have to consider the conceptual suggestions of the work and not just the functionality of the program. This distinction between artist and programmer becomes quite apparent with the bug-fix update. On a purely functional level it would make a lot more sense to write it like this:

while(exist){
# be
}

But as I said, I think something can exist without being but not vise versa. The above code would suggest that being naturally follows existing. Putting the being inside the if(exist) clause creates a degree of separation between the two. The program makes a conscious decision to be as long as it exists. A programmer would see these extra lines as a waste of resources that don't add to the functionality of the program.

I would be interested in hearing what your "conception of being" is to see if we can manage to incorporate that in some way into the program.

Pall

lost in translation

You could do this in Haskell and lazily evaluate an infinite series of being.

This could tie into Badiou's ontology.

I don't know Haskell well enough to write such a program though.

Here's a new update. I've determined that we can't hardcode the exist variable as being true. That makes existence and therefore "being" dependent upon a God-like entity and drops us smack-dab in the center of a Cartesian circle. The software has to determine on its own whether or not it actually exists. We do that by telling it to check if it has a process ID. If it does, it must exist. Also, I agree with Vijay that the Perl version can't use strict variable declarations. I've also eliminated the -w tag as I don't feel that existence is capable of issuing warnings. So here is the new code. Please update as soon as possible.

exist.pl (C port follows)

#!/usr/bin/perl

# exist.pl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# exist.pl is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
# See the GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

### exist 0.12 ###

my $exist = $$;

while(1){
if($exist){
# be
}else{
last;
}
}


exist.c

#include <stdlib.h>

// exist is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// exist is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
// See the GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

/* exist 0.12 */

main()
{
int exist = getpid();
while(1){
if(exist){
//be
}else{
exit(0);
}
}
}

A MAJOR UPDATE!!!

I've been reconsidering a few things as far as the program's "existence" and "being" go. Curt, I believe this ties somewhat in to your mention of Heidegger's "Dasein". The process ID does not indicate existence. It was categorically wrong of me to think so. The existence of the program file indicates existence. The process ID does in fact indicate "being" as it means that the program is "active" or "alive", if you will. So, this new version provides the program with a personal realization of both its existence and its being. I've even added to it the desire to maintain its existence. I've discontinued my own updating of the C port. Someone else can take that over if they wish. It's just getting a little too bothersome for me to maintain two different version in active development. So now what the new Perl version does is to determine its existence and then records that existence by reading its own code into itself. Following this, it enters a loop that is maintained as long as it exists. Through each iteration it checks the process ID to determine its state of being. If it still exists and is still in a state of being, it continues the loop. If for any reason its state of being is interrupted, it simply dies. However, if it's state of existence is interrupted it will attempt to recreate itself by rewriting its own code into a new exist.pl file but it's state of being will be interrupted. To restore its state of being, the script has to be re-run.

And I give you, version 0.13:

exist.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Cwd qw(realpath);

# exist.pl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# exist.pl is distributed in the hope that it will be enlightening,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# ENLIGHTENMENT, MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
# See the GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

### exist 0.13 ###

my $path = realpath($0);

open(FILE, $path);
my @contents = <FILE>;
close(FILE);

my $exist = $$;

while(-e $path){
if($exist){
$exist = $$;
}else{
last;
}
}

open(FILE, ">$path");
foreach(@contents){
print FILE $_;
}
close(FILE);

while (<>) {
$_;
}

Hi Joe,
I'm actually beyond that now. Since I began working on this (yesterday evening) a number of factors have entered into the project. The primary one that I'm dealing with now is "awareness" as a requirement for "being". So in the latest version, the program is endowed with an awareness of both its existence and its being. Put someone offlist just pointed out that Karl Jasper's "existenz" depends on an awareness of one's existence within one's environment. So that's the next step.

I wonder if $_ should accumulate or simply be in the moment .
push and pop or just push?
shift and unshift or just unshift?

I think that since the plan now is to make the program aware of itself within its surroundings, actually more along the lines of making it aware of the "beingness" of other entities within its environment so as to better understand its own "beingness", the next logical step would be to make it aware of all these things within time. To achieve the awareness of other beingness I may use a system call to ps -Af within each iteration of the loop. The best thing to do would be to capture this data in an array of hashes so that it can be aware of the location and pid of other "beings" and be aware of the way this changes over time. The array would have to be completely rewritten each time to make sure it doesn't contain processes... er... beings after they've been terminated.

The important thing is that these are all meant to be the program's inward reflections regarding its own existence and being, therefore it should never output any of this data.

OK, much like Husserl's "attitudes". Once you become aware of the natural attitude you can no longer be in it. This line of thought had occurred to me but I think it's a bit premature. I want to take this one step at a time and I also like the idea of having a complete record of the steps and the ideas and discussion that influence each one here on Rhizome.

One more thing, I also want to avoid the trap of thinking about all this in too human terms. The idea is to get at the notion of "being" as it relates to a computer program existing in a computer as opposed to a computer program that thinks it's a human existing in the Universe.

Programming as transcendence?

That makes me think about how Rob Myers describes hacking as "immanent critique" ...

http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=307

Vijay

Hi people,
I've moved the exist.pl development to Google code at:

http://code.google.com/p/existpl

This is mostly done to ease the tracking of changes and version history. I do however intend to post all revisions to this forum as well to maintain a complete record of the development within the context of any discussion.

I would like permission to use any and all comments and suggestions for exhibition purposes (if that occurs). If anyone has a problem with that, let me know. Otherwise I'll assume it's OK.

Pall

It recently occurred to me what the fundamental problem is with a project such as this. It's not going to stop me and in a way it justifies my intervention in this computer processes search for self enlightenment. The problem is that a computer process has no inherent interest in learning about its existence and state of being. That's why I'm here.

I've just filed the following defect issue on exist.pl's Google Code site:

Reported by pallthay, Today (moments ago)

Program sees itself as being alone in the universe. Needs to understand
that it is an individual process amongst other processes. It should seek to
discover what differentiates itself from the other processes.

The issue can be seen at:

http://code.google.com/p/existpl/issues/detail?id=1