PRAGMATA MEANING SOFTWARE
PRAGMATA MEANING CODE

PRAGMATA MEANING SOFTWARE

The long list of trials and errors, and the free immaterial labour behind the realisation of the finished software can appear in the form of faults, glitches and crashes. The final product of such relentless work of code-writing is software. The author explains that what is withdrawn is also the incessant “immaterial labour” made up of programmers’ trials and errors necessary for the writing of code.

PRAGMATA MEANING CODE

In such a digitised world, code and software help construct our experiences or our “knowing-how”. Throughout the book it is argued that although code has a “withdrawn” nature, it is indispensable to current societies.

With regards to software code, Berry states that it is hidden from human view but it is at the same time fundamental to the execution of almost any task. The impression that a reader could gather from reading into this concept is comparable to that of naturalisation as put forward by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh-Star 6. Aside from this, the concept that is worth drawing attention to as presented by the book is that of a “withdrawal”. The rather confusing mix of theories – the move from Actor Network Theory to Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari is very rapid – doesn’t clarify how the author wishes to articulate the discursive formation of a philosophy of software. Although Berry doesn’t discuss the rhizome as such, it is possible to recognise some basic concepts coming from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, along with some Heideggerian principles, such as that of society being infused with technology to the point of becoming a tool of its own tools (from Martin Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology). Rich with examples and quotations, the grammar of code as presented by Berry resembles the rhizome with its characteristics of constant expansion over space rather than time (spatiality) and its being made of several layers, with each layer having a certain role in the construction of the overall rhizomatic entity. In Berry’s opinion, there is a very fine line between code and software, with the software being “a tangle, a knot which ties together the physical and the ephemeral” 5 his intent seems to be that of presenting a rather approachable “grammar” of code in order to conclude with a complete philosophy of software. Following the epistemological framework of Actor Network Theory, and its core concepts of mediation, translation and representation, the book sets out an introduction to understanding what lies behind technological devices. This can be done through an analysis of the materiality of code, which he defines as pragmata, and by constructing a phenomenology and philosophy of software despite its relatively ephemeral being.Īlthough Berry doesn’t elaborate on what he means by pragmata, the materiality of code that Berry introduces in the first two chapters of the book becomes somewhat clearer through examples taken from a multiplicity of realities: from the red light at the traffic light, to the world of computer and Internet music in the work of Masahiro Miwa. As Berry argues throughout the book, questions related to digital media are too often discussed in essentialist or contradictory terms, and what is instead needed is to “unpack different modalities of code as digital forms and allow us an understanding of how it is used in computer technology” 4. Taking into consideration these and other questions, The Philosophy of Software tries to move towards an understanding of the materiality of software. Berry asks “what is culture after it has been softwarised?” 2, echoing Lev Manovich’s questions about “how is cultural production being changed by software and code?” and “how and in what perspective can we talk about “software culture”?” 3.

This leads to some important questions being raised. As David Berry has aptly observed, we are trying to learn “the way in which certain social formations are actualized through crystallization in computer code” 1. This has led to the development of Software Studies, a nascent field that takes into analysis how “the background”, or data and software assemblages, contribute to the world. Nevertheless, over the last fifteen years there has been an increasing interest in how software forms society in a way that goes beyond its being more than a set of “inaccessible codes”. Despite this, what lies behind these technological assemblages – data, code, and software – has received little attention, effectively remaining an off-limits world populated by software engineers, programmers, and geeks. Everyday life relies heavily on networked technologies that allow for a wide range of actions to take place, from the management of medical devices to the withdrawal of money from a cash point.

Pragmata meaning