Software as Ideology

American Artist
Code Societies, Summer 2018
School for Poetic Computation
July 12, 2018 6:30 – 9:30PM

Expanding on Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s theory of software as an analogy for ideology, we will look in depth at Alexander Galloway’s take on the idea, which contrasts a historical overview of ideology with a contemporary description of software, to reveal where these two interfacing methods of society overlap. We will discuss how software became distinct from hardware, the presumption of programmers as different from users, and how obfuscation is an essential tool of software development as well as ideology.

Course

Course Outline (Updated 7/12/18)

Lecture

1. History of software (Chun)
2. Definition of ideology (Althusser)
3. Infrastructure/Superstructure (Althusser)
4. Determinism (Zizek)
5. Interface (Galloway)
6. Software/Hardware (Kittler)
7. Obfuscation (Galloway)
8. Fetishism (Marx)
9. Types of software
10. Functionality (Galloway)
11. My work—Personal computing and afro-pessimism

Activity
* Social Software: We will perform a group activity where we mimic software to see how ideology determines our understanding of the world. Gonna watch some art vids instead! 💯

Readings

Required

1. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “On Software or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge”
2. Alexander Galloway, “Software as Ideology”, from The Interface Effect

Further Reading

• Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
• Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
• Friedrich Kittler, “There is No Software”
• American Artist, “Black Gooey Universe”