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[...] a scan of the literature shows that it is entirely possible to have a social or literary theorist discourse on 'algorithms' without any references other than to others of their ilk. This kind of elective solipsism of disciplines is familiar to those navigating interdisciplinary terrains, and is also articulated through the kinds of citation politics that other fields, such as feminist research, have become all too familiar with. We are in the amusing position where the emphasis on materiality in recent theory results in what is technical and important sounding being elevated to the same kind of generalizations that, say, the more banal pronouncements of postmodernity suffered from in their heyday. Social theory too often beings along its upstairs/downstairs split between high theory and empiricism.
[...] Friedrich Kittler neatly boiled down the condition of media as being those mechanisms to do with the production, storage and dissemination of information. The systems in the last paragraph added analysis to this triad. Analysis here is the breaking down of complex entities into what, at a certain scale, can be read as nominally fundamental units, and working out their immanent, potential or emergent relationships. [...]
possibly a useful definition to know. (the systems in the last paragraph being PageRank of OpenGraph etc)
Amongst others, Philip Mirowski interprets neoliberal economics, particularly in the work of Friedrich Hayek, as the dream or ruse of a perfect information machine. There are certainly accounts of distributed version control systems that have such an inflection, or make the explicit correlation with idealized markets. [...]
this definitely feels like a leap but maybe they're onto something here, idk
[...] Github works via the encouragement of contribution. Some of this encouragement is achieved through an efficient and useful system, via the extension adoption of user experience design, contemporary 'flat design'-style graphic design and, of course, a cartoon mascot. Equally, the site operates by numerous types of granularity of access to analytics. There are numerous 'social' features such as letting you view the repos 'people you may know' have starred [...] we have the archive also operating as a matrix of capture and semiotization devices driven by the imperatives to rate, share, participate! As an economic factor, such hyper-auditing devices allow the site to become a means of finding an hiring programmers; Git and Github profiles become key to coders' CVs as a means of displaying the productivity, uptake and significance of the work produced. In this way, as in others, the archive is a site of production, an engine for the development of new software that involutes the sense or the archive as a repository of the unchanging past. Storage becomes the site of production when the form of production is variation.
need to think about insightful the last bit really is, but it is cool to read about GitHub from this kind of theoretical perspective
[...] Post-FLOSS inhabits conditions in which code objects, scripts, css files for the layout of a website, configuration files for customising the look and function of a program etc. form so much part of everyday generic stuff that they are not worth protecting in the way that the adoption of a licence implies, even when that licence is available on a drop-down menu.
[...] computational processes are experienced, as something to be judged and interacted with on the basis of human skill. To experience them otherwise is to 'cheat'. An example of the persistence of such is in the rules governing many massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft or Runescape. Here, the use of macros, autotypers (to repeat messages), autoclickers (to repeat functions) and other kinds of bots is generally deemed to be an offence, a violation of the game. But such things, bots especially, can, in turn, be means of having fun with the rather jaded rule sets of online gaming, through griefing or more interesting means. On the one hand, the prohibition on bots argues for an assumed level playing field: that real users are playing the game, not sets of competing scripts or mechanical devices tapping keyboards. In turn, the use of gold farmers, or professional players, in MMORPGs is seen as a betrayal of such experiential requirement, but also as part of the game, when players are increasingly plugged into wider sets of economic systems through games as backchannels. [...]
lmao
think about this more for my essay on RS (what does it mean to cheat when the rules are so arbitrary, and how it feels so empty even in success cus you know it's all pointless)
link to ad fraud? spotify counts?
On the one hand, computation is a technique of abstraction. Layers of abstractions are piled up [...] abstraction is a self-contained dimension of existence of the computational. Historically and conceptually, computation draws upon the formal abstractions of logic and mathematics. Abstract mechanisms of inference drive it, while formal languages and symbolic manipulation are among the abstract means that ground the very possibility of algorithmic 'effective procedures'. On the other hand, however, computation is as concrete as the world in which it participates. Computation not only abstracts from the world in order to model and represent it; through such abstractions, it also partakes in the world. In this sense, computation is a technology of material agency [...]
[...] Capitalism has generated massive increases in productivity and extravagant wealth for some, yet many people still struggle to make ends meet. Capitalism is an inequality-enhancing machine as well as a growth machine. What’s more, it is becoming ever clearer that capitalism, driven by the relentless search for profits, is destroying the environment. And in any case, the pivotal issue is not whether material conditions on average have improved in the long run within capitalist economies, but rather whether, looking forward from this point in history, things would be better for most people in an alternative kind of economy. It is true that the centralized, authoritarian state-run economies of twentieth-century Russia and China were in many ways economic failures, but these are not the only possibilities.
Both of these stories are anchored in the realities of capitalism. It is not an illusion that capitalism has transformed the material conditions of life in the world and enormously increased human productivity; many people have benefited from this. But equally, it is not an illusion that capitalism generates great harms and perpetuates eliminable forms of human suffering. Where the real disagreement lies—a disagreement that is fundamental—is over whether it is possible to have the productivity, innovation and dynamism that we see in capitalism without the harms. Margaret Thatcher famously announced in the early 1980s, “There is no alternative”; two decades later, the World Social Forum declared, “Another world is possible.” That is the fundamental debate.
Two general kinds of motivations are in play in these diverse forms of struggle within and over capitalism: class interests and moral values. You can oppose capitalism because it harms your own material interests, but also because it offends certain moral values that are important to you.
There is a poster from the late 1970s that shows a working-class woman leaning on a fence. The caption reads: “class consciousness is knowing what side of the fence you’re on; class analysis is figuring out who is there with you.” The metaphor of the fence sees conflict over capitalism as anchored in conflicts of class interests. Being on opposite sides of the fence defines friends and enemies in terms of opposing interests. Some people may be sitting on the fence, but ultimately they may have to make a choice: “you’re either with us or against us.” In some historical situations, the interests that define the fence are pretty easy to figure out. It is obvious to nearly everyone that in the United States before the Civil War, slaves were harmed by slavery and they therefore had a class interest in its abolition, while slave owners had an interest in its perpetuation. There may have been slave owners who felt some ambivalence about owning slaves—this is certainly the case for Thomas Jefferson, for example—but this ambivalence was not because of their class interests; it was because of a tension between those interests and certain moral values they held.