Orion Reed
08/12/2022, 3:10 PMAny organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structureIf we apply this line of thinking to computation at large, we might ask questions on the impact of communication mechanisms inherent to capitalism and their structuring effect on the computing landscape. This maps quite well to software, as there is often a correspondence between software production and individual firms. We might imagine a different economy (e.g. some highly federated, anarchist society) and think of what the organisation of computing might look like. This is something I think is interesting to explore on its own, but it lead to a different idea I find quite compelling: That the success of software is a result of a drive to make computing economically “legible” to capitalism. (I’m appropriating legibility here from James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State) This makes some sense as an explanation for software, but it might also offer a new explanation for things like app stores among others. • Platforms could be seen as (among other things) exertion of control of legibility, where legibility is much higher for those who control the system (e.g. Amazons view of their own services vs a users view). • The apparent success of software over alternatives such as open document systems, or composable (non-software) GUI systems, or "computational media" efforts, might be explained as not a technical or conceptual success, but as providing legibility that alternatives lack. • More interestingly to me, is wether legibility is even something desirable in the first place. [This is a slightly rehashed line of thinking I passed around at work that I thought might be interesting to this crowd. This isn’t thought through, so just read it as casual speculation. But I do think we need an explanation, if we are ever to move beyond this current way of interacting with digital systems]
Konrad Hinsen
08/12/2022, 3:25 PMPersonal Dynamic Media
08/12/2022, 3:29 PMKonrad Hinsen
08/12/2022, 3:35 PMOrion Reed
08/12/2022, 3:42 PMJack Rusher
08/12/2022, 5:19 PMAndrew F
08/12/2022, 5:39 PMLuke Persola
08/12/2022, 7:09 PMwtaysom
08/12/2022, 11:17 PMLuke Persola
08/13/2022, 4:53 AMKonrad Hinsen
08/13/2022, 8:38 AMAndrew F
08/13/2022, 5:03 PMKonrad Hinsen
08/15/2022, 8:59 AM