Cutting Code: Software and SocialitySoftware has often been marginalized in accounts of digital cultures and network societies. Although software is everywhere, it is hard to say what it actually is. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality is one of the first books to treat software seriously as a full-blown cultural process and as a subtly powerful material in contemporary communication. From deCSS to Java, from Linux to Extreme Programming, this book analyses software artworks, operating systems, commercial products, infrastructures, and programming practices. It explores social forms, identities, materialities, and power relations associated with software, and it asks how software provokes the re-thinking of production, consumption and distribution as entwined cultural processes. Cutting Code argues that analysis of code as a mosaic of algorithms, protocols, infrastructures, and programming conventions offers valuable insights into how contemporary social formations invent new kinds of personhood and new ways of acting. |
Contents
Softwarily | 1 |
Expression and execution in software | 21 |
Sequence and convolution | 43 |
Code in time and space | 67 |
Practical virtuality | 91 |
Infrastructures in software | 115 |
Code as prototype for software | 139 |
Conclusion | 169 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstraction accessed action agency algorithms applications architecture argued associated attached authority become bioinformatics biological bodies called cards changes chapter circulation collective communication complex complicated components configuration connections constitute contemporary context conventions corporate cultural databases devices discussion distributed documents effects engineering execution existing expression figure Forge formal forms function hardware highly imagining implementations important infrastructure instance interface Internet Java kinds knowledge Linux living machine material means models move movement object operating system organization originators particular performativity platform political practices problem production programming language protocols question RAMOSS reference relations sequence sequence data server situations social software development sometimes source code space specific standards structure studies suggests task technical telecommunications telephone tests things understanding Universal Unix virtual visible writing written