Wendy Chun – Programmed Visions
Chun’s book looks into the very idea of software, and what it encompasses. She sort of describes technology as this vast unknown, with possibilities we still haven’t thought of yet. Defining hardware becomes difficult without defining software, at which point there is some possibility of encompassing the vast range of functions of hardware. Even still, software itself is very broad. Personally I feel like Chun’s description of hardware versus software is a little too binary – already we’re seeing technology where the two are inseparable and hard to distinguish between. For example – the software if the Nintendo Wii was specific to the Wii, and the physical object of the Wii was dependant on the program that allowed it to run. Chun seems to acknowledge this, and I’d hope her work goes into further depth in that
Matthew Fuller – How to be a Geek
Fuller approaches software similarly to Chun, in that he acknowledges the software is an incredibly broad term, and even within individual software, there’s a ton of variety in operations. So Fuller tackles understanding technology through Geek Culture, which often produces said software. To be a geek is to have a practical obsessive interest in any sort of thing, particularly technology in this context. Geeks largely develop our software, and that software, as a result, becomes more than just an extension of humanity, but its own diverse set of values and meanings. The technology geeks make is reflective of their obsession over it, in that it is filled to the brim with data and potential commands.
Geert Lovink – Sad by Design
The podcast looks at Lovink and his ideas of “platform nihilism”, wherein he looks at how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., appear to present a sort of casually negative affect that’s subtle enough to not realize, as well as an atmosphere that lends itself to a sort of depressing mood that follows you even when you close the app. The platforms are reflective of our human nature, but more than that the companies behind each platform work under an agenda to keep you on their respective sites, so they aren’t incentivized to remove morally damaging content if it keeps you coming back.
Søren Bro Pold – New ways of hiding: towards metainterface realism
Pold describes “metainerface realism” – the idea of a system so integrated that data all just sort of converges in a cloud system. Honestly, this reading was a bit complicated and wordy, but at the very least it does get across the basic ideas of our data being sort of stolen without our knowledge and consent, and being coagulated and hidden for whatever business wishes to utilize it. Ideally, we as people who depend on technology should become more critical and technologically literate before allowing our data to go anywhere, but the mechanisms by which our data is taken are often so tricky that it’s hard to understand the scope of it all.