Computer programs

Computer programs are the necessary tools for the processing of digital information. They therefore make the digital world possible (see also §01.00.11). Accordingly, computer programs need the digital world; they cannot exist only in the analogue world. In other words, the digital world is natural to them. Computer programs may have effigies in both the analogue and the digital worlds (e.g. in robots and drones, or in online computer game characters respectively) or only in the digital world (i.e. their interfaces towards their users). This is, however, the only possible way to classify them, in view of their immense versatility (and, at the same time, an unavoidable difference from language or money, which both acquired tangible forms in the analogue world). Computer programs run (operate) on information processing tools (‘computers’, meaning any artefact that is capable of processing digital information). Humans have used computer programs to create the digital world. Certain computer programs operate as access points to it. They are the points of entry, the necessary tools through which the digital world is accessible to humans (i.e. they make it possible for its digital information to be processed by them).

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