Simon Yuill: The Ontology of Code and the Coding of Ontology

What are the different processes and forms in which software and code 'come into being'?

How are the claims around such ontologies and the 'being' of code constructed?

How can this inform a political praxis of software and the modes of production under which it is created?

These questions will be explored though a discussion which, rather than seeking either a metaphysical or post-metaphysical 'uncovering' of software as 'object', addresses the differing forms of 'ontological claims' made upon the production of software and the putting into action of
software within production. It doing so it will critically explore aspects of two dominant paradigms of software development: Operations Research, a hybrid discipline that brought together military research,  systems theory, and commercial logistics; and Collective Intelligence, a  set of algorithms and processes used in the collation of user behaviours within Web 2.0 and social network infrastructures.

David Berry: The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age

As software increasingly structures the contemporary world, curiously, it also withdraws, and becomes harder and harder for us to focus on as it is embedded, hidden, off-shored or merely forgotten about. The challenge is to bring software back into visibility so that we can pay attention to both what it is (ontology), where it has come from (through media archaeology
and genealogy) but also what it is doing (through a form of mechanology), so we can understand this ‘dynamic of organized inorganic matter’.  In this talk I want to present some of the arguments of my new book, The Philosophy of Software, but also to think through some of the implications of code/software for the changing nature of the university itself.

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Simon Yuill is an Artist and programmer based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a developer in the spring_alpha and Social Versioning System (SVS) projects. He has helped setup and run a number of hacklab and free media labs in Scotland including the Chateau Institute of Technology (ChIT) and Electron Club, as well as the Glasgow branch of OpenLab. He has written on aspects
of Free Software and cultural praxis and has contributed to publications such as Software Studies (MIT Press, 2008), the FLOSS Manuals and Digital Artists Handbook project (GOTO10 and Folly).

David Berry is Senior Lecturer in Political and Cultural Studies at the University of Swansea. His books include, the forthcoming The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age,and Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source.  He is co-author of  Libre Culture, http://www.archive.org/details/LibreCultureMeditationsOnFreeCulture/
David's research covers a wide theoretical area including culture, political economy, media/medium theory, software studies, actor-network theory, the philosophy of technology, and The computational turn in Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences (Digital Humanities).