a journal of software studies
Editorial for Issue Three Articles Michael Castelle, Relational and Non-Relational Models in the Entextualization of Bureaucracy Evelyn Ruppert, Not just another database: the transactions that enact young offenders Anne Helmond, The Algorithmization of the Hyperlink Taina Bucher, Objects of Intense Feeling: The Case of the Twitter API Reviews Thor Magnusson, On Creativity and Calculation: Attempts …
Ok, it’s fun, but writing a lengthy article like this for that … Wait, a book? – oelmekki, Hacker News discussion about 10 PRINT.1 Aiming to analyze the titular Commodore 64 BASIC one-liner which draws a maze, and referred to as 10 PRINT throughout, the ten authors weave in and out of subjects at will, …
A popular fable goes like this: on May 11th 1997, when a computer called Deep Blue beat the world champion Gary Kasparov in a six-game chess match, researchers in artificial intelligence had to replace their old milestone for another. The event had made it clear that, even if outperforming the world champion in chess, computers …
Introduction Government practices from social work and criminal justice to health care and taxation rely on administrative databases to identify, track, monitor, evaluate, govern and intervene in the life chances and trajectories of people. 1 While governments have long compiled such databases their proliferation and the uses to which they are being put are being …
Continue reading “Not just another database: the transactions that enact young offenders”
With the rapid ascent of Big Data – always the capitals – into the vapour clouds of overheated, media-saturated publicity, and its condensation into the steady drip, drip of the recent Snowden leaks, questions about the generation, storage and processing of data have become a matter of concern for many. The thoughts and anxieties of …
Introduction The hyperlink as a key natively digital object 1 is considered to be the fabric of the web and in this role has the capacity to create relations, constitute networks and organize and rank content. Strands of hyperlink studies have been distinguished that deal with links as objects that form networks, objects that signify …
Introduction This paper addresses data management practices of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, specifically in the context of their use by large formal organizations. The most significant processual development in this period is the rise and subsequent dominance of data management systems using the relational model. 1 Such relational database systems—which organize information …
Continue reading “Relational and Non-Relational Models in the Entextualization of Bureaucracy”
Introduction The past decade has seen a staggering rise of social media – online services that facilitate social interaction between its users. We live and breathe social media, as services like Facebook and Twitter have not only become household names, but something like actual households themselves – places people choose to live and socialize. Whilst …
Continue reading “Objects of Intense Feeling: The Case of the Twitter API”
When our imaginary relationship to our conditions of existence becomes desynchronized with ongoing events, phenomena such as Wikileaks become impossible to comprehend. One snowy Berlin night after the Chaos Computer Congress in 2009, I rather accidentally ended up getting dinner with Jacob Appelbaum and a few other assorted computer security experts. In the context of …
Speaking Code is a book about language – and in particular, the languages of digital technology. The notion of the programming “language” has always acted as a provocation to critical commentary, since the earliest speculations on giant electronic brains and their apparent potential to participate in human society. But increasingly pervasive digital media mean that …
Continue reading “Critical Codes – from forkbomb to brainfuck”
On several occasions over the last few years I have asked new students in digital design to identify and describe the assumptions made in the design process of the touchscreen smartphone. When I ask them what the smartphone would have looked like had it been invented in Denmark where we live, they always look puzzled, …