Abstract
This essay engages with the aesthetics and politics of digitality through a parallel study of Samuel Beckett's writing and the development of the electronic digital computer. By placing these distinct threads in parallel, the essay argues that the digital logic of command and control, in which the experienced world and the possibilities for future action are parsed, formulated as text and expressed as sets of discrete algorithms, represents an emerging mode of thought that must be traced through textual as well as technical practices from the mid-twentieth century onwards. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.