The Critical Code Studies website is the focal point for an emerging field dedicated to the consideration of computer code and software as cultural constructs. By treating the programs that run our virtual interfaces and tools as sources of semantic and ideological meaning, practitioners hope to define a new critical territory at the intersection of Cultural Studies, Computer Science, Electronic Literature and practical programming. The CCS website offers a number of resources including a blog, conference abstracts, methodologies, a list of participating scholars, and a collaborative CCS bibliography.

A Critical Code Studies Working Group organized by Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass and others in the summer of 2010 brought together participants from a variety of academic fields and provided momentum for a CCS conference at the University of Southern California on July 23rd, 2010. Critical Code Studies has been evolving for several years, and Marino made one notable early articulation of the field in a 2006 essay in the electronic book review.