Numeric and numerical

The distinction between the terms **numeric** and **numerical** is that the first denotes things consisting of numbers, and the second, things having to do, e.g. operating on, numbers. **Numeral** is a noun meaning the way of writing down a number with digits, characters, etc — and the *number* itself is a mathematical object.

Why are numbers important to CCRU? The obvious thing is that it is rooted in the digital nature of computerized information and signals. Further, numbers are asignifying: numbers can mean anything, but by default they refer to nothing, nothing other than themselves, that is.

> *The asignifying codes of synthetic culture are not at all to be identified with the great inarticulable deferred transcendental object blearily hallucinated by senescent Bavarian Catholicism and lingua-Francophony neo-communitarian dessicated Judaism in their post-theoretical guises. Materially functional numerical systems, these codes represent nothing, but are real parts of abstract machines, hooking up desiring machines by way of a continually complexifying axiomatic.*
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> *Although Y2K is sheer semiotic event it is not textual, ideological, representational, intentional, or phenomenological - Y2K, Teotwawki, C -1, OK+100 - mix dates and acronyms in criterial semiotic clusters that are not signifiers or arbitrary signs because what they say is no different from the way they are built. They can mean whatever Hummpa-Taddum chooses, but none of that matters. Beyond the domain of the fuzz-god lies the nonsignifying-chatter of unconscious-numeric Pandemonium, where names are cryptomodules, meaningless packets of effective information, immanently productive machine-jargons.*
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The immanence of numbers is the original, or one of the most early, ideas of Ccru. Numbers and operations on them are non-representational (asignifying), practical, productive but the production=discovery.

> *Simultaneously, Ccru was exploring mechanomics, gematria and the schizonumerics of digital reduction through the work of the infamous Professor Barker. . .in order to develop their previous work regarding flat numeric cultures which did not rely on a system of belief in some transcendent entity but rather a certainty in the immanent traits of number itself.*
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> *In one piece, Eglash describes the parallels between Senagelese sand divination systems and the Cantor set. No-one is seriously suggesting that there is a line of influence or evolution here; there are parallel routes to the same discovery. Numbers and what they do are no more something we invent than they’re already sitting in some Platonic heaven." Hence mechanomics. "Mech because numeric dabbling is not representational, but practical. Following what numbers do is an act of production, but only because all production is really a matter of discovery not ex nihilo creation. Making things up is always a matter of subtracting from zero."*
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Why is numeracy important? It is trickier question; on one side, numeracy allows us access numbers symbolically — but on the other hand, numerals are almost indistinguishable from numbers in the popular consciousness, and so while formally, a numeral is a sign for a number, practically they meld together into a complex asignifying object. Such an object is distinct from a pure abstract mathematical number by having a radix – and additional intricacies and possibilities, such as on operation of reduction (digital root). Mathematically (in “serious” math), the closest object I know is modular arithmetic.

Positional numeracy is also important because of employment of zero (or cypher):

> *Y2K is simultaneously about friction (between humans and computers) and convergence (of time systems). Things click together on the machinic unconscious just as they fall apart in the social world. At the moment of Y2K, the two-digit convention converges the date with the time: 99 becomes 00 at 00:00 hours precisely. This string of noughts should give pause to PoMo relativists who insists that any sign will do; it is the very precise function of zero that allows Y2K to happen as (and when) it does, effectuating a collision of the Hindu-Arab numeric system with Roman numerals. Although translated into Hindu-Arab numerals, the Gregorian calendar still effectively runs on a Roman numeric system ignorant of zero. Y2K ciphers what will not happen in undebugged cyberspace: the Gregorian Year 2000. Skipping SF's 2000 AD, computers will cyberpunk the date, counting what the Gregorian calendar never has: zero. An anti-PoMo and anti-Gregorian weapon, Y2K quite literally signifies nothing. The effect is a calendric revolution carried out entirely by the machinic unconscious. Unraveling the virtual computer calendar is complicated. When is Y2K's year zero: the Gregorian year 2000, or Greg year 1900? Both are candidates, since, in addition to treating January 1st "2000" as year zero, the implicit computer calendar has retrospectively coded January 1st "1900" as its start-date. And, at the level of the unconscious, anyone logging onto a computer has been in complicity with the computer-calendar. On the darkside of the Net, news is breaking of 00-cults dedicated to the computer-generated calendric system…*
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There is a lot of philosophical context via Robin Mackay, including Alain Badiou’s *Number and Numbers* and Quentin Meillassoux’s *The Number and the Siren*; numbers also play an important role in *A Thousand Plateaus*, starting with the idea of rhizome one of most important aspect of which is that it is multiple; and further in numbering and numbered numbers of nomadology.

1. ↑ Mark Fisher & Robin Mackay- Pomophobia
2. ↑ The Excruciation of Hummpa-Taddum
3. ↑ Interview with kode9
4. ↑ APOCALYPSE – BEEN IN EFFECT? – Maria De Rosario - from the New England Educational Review, August, 1998
5. ↑ A Short Prehistory of Ccru