Decoding a Natural Philosophy of Software Practice

Abstract

Nowadays, software production is known for being surveillant, colonizing, oppressive, deranging, impoverishing and otherwise harmful for users and society at large. That view of software is based on the dominance of Big Tech ideology, which is essentially fear-driven. But there is a different value system simultaneously at work in software practice, discernable in the operations of conventional software teams. Those operations have evolved over time to optimize the production of value for software users, not the protection of capital — in other words, to prioritize help over hustle. Because software production at this level is a type of knowledge production, the metaphysical values enacted by software teams in this pursuit combine with empirical practices of knowledge production to produce what we can recognize as a natural philosophy (i.e. a science fused with a consonant metaphysics). The ontological and epistemological stances embodied in this natural philosophy are not accidental: they are appropriate to daily work that recognizes software as a Deleuzean assemblage, and they demonstrate the effectiveness of treating it as such. Doing so, they subvert the values of Big Tech ideology and hold the potential to debug it from the inside.

Session Information

13:30 HST Wednesday 8 November 2023

Room 305A, Hawai`i Convention Center

Session 77: Counter-hegemonic Technocultures

(Un)learning Modalities for Decolonizing Algorithmic Systems &emdash; Hannah Holtzclaw, Simon Fraser University

Decoding a Natural Philosophy of Software Practice &emdash; Sasha Akhavi, York University

From Baby Talk to Technobabble &emdash; Rory Sharp, York University; Aviva Weizman, York University

Slippery landscapes: Towards anti/ante-sentiment analysis &emdash; Mel Racho, TMU

Techno-politics of the Apocalypse &emdash; Anthony Burton, Simon Fraser University