The Philosophy of Software and the Ontology of Code, David Berry and Simon Yuill

David Berry speaking on The Philosophy of Software

Tonight I attended a public lecture at Goldsmiths with my friend Dr Sheena Calvert. The first speaker was Simon Yuill, an Artist and programmer based in Glasgow, Scotland. Unfortunately as Simon announced he was a quiet speaker, and without a microphone, it was difficult to hear most of what he was saying, even with continuous prompts from the audience to speak up.

However I managed to make some notes, however the ontology of code appears such an abstract subject for me that I tended to respond more to the visual than the verbal. This book jacket was the first slide that Simon projected and I really liked the simplicity of it:

The following is taken from my notebooks, I think that given the nature of the subject, and some of the inaudible moments, the notes will be more interesting than my standard appraisal.

_Automata as cognative neurological model
_Philosophy and simulation – thunderstorm
_Epistemological devices become ontological statements
_Campbell Smith – Origins of objects
_Ontology is political
_Ontology post-metaphysical moments inherently unstable
_Program as physical
_computation in the wild
_Dona Harraway – hybridity
_Adjacent – becoming of agency in the network
_Operations Research – WWII Industry and Government, control military to civilian, U-boats used to attack Atlantic convoys
_OR – capitalisation of warfare USA Rand Corp.
_MO Association of Scientist Workers 1917 – 1947
_Lubetkin – Finsbury Health Centre – socialist USS Enterprise
_Operational Research Coal Board ‘for and by the workers’ Soviet model
_National Coal Board – on behalf of the people – Harold Wilson ‘a socialist inspired technological revolution

_Tomlinson 1971 – each colliery transfer of manpower
_Collective Intelligence – Toby Seagram
_Post-Fordist production
_Systems Theory Levy
_Eric Raymond: Web 2.0 commerce, more about intelligence gathering
_Ontology driven information systems, filtering and clustering, not only information but desire and capacity
_data mining – privacy disclosure 1967 New Jersey
_Disclosure of military matter, migration of data, framing of online privacy
_Anonymisation – removal of identifiers in data
_Quasi Identifiers – Hegel
_Aggregation of mined data most useful, user outside the domain of production to which they are contributing
_Felix Stalder – ‘Oneness’ as a precarious configuration
_Creative commons license

David Berry

The digital university is coming, universities are being ‘softwarised’, no longer are we constrained by geography and architecture (evidenced by this BBC article). Berry gave us a mine of statistical data about the amount of images stored on Facebook (40 billion) and how many lines of code are in an F-16 fighter jet, not as many as you may think compared to high-end motorcars (200-300 million lines of code in future cars Berry predicts), Google processes 35,000 searches a second and Wal-mart houses 2.5 petabytes of data in its data warehouses (every transaction is recorded).

This preamble about Moore’s Law, data processing and quasi-visible technologies didn’t appear to be very philosophical to me, unless the statement ‘you don’t fly an F-16 – it flies you’ can be regarded as such. Much of Berry’s talk was aligned more towards social science discourse, affects, models and predictions of behavior and outcomes, much less ontology and philosophy.

Professor Sue Golding from the University of Greenwich questioned Berry’s assertion that computer science is effectively making philosophy obsolete, and this was very much the agitating premise that had the philosophers in the audience grinding their teeth.

However, I will have to read Berry’s book to fully understand what all this truly means, or embark on PhD study to embrace the philosophical constructs that underpinned the evening.

Berry’s closing points seem worthy of note here:

‘the surplus that remains non computational is desire’

and Berry quotes Apple’s Chairman Steve Jobs:

‘Apple is at the junction of technology and the liberal arts’

Berry asks ‘is the digital university a new form of sociology’ and ‘is philosophy no longer metaphysical?’

‘What is a sociologist? Does the social dissolve the technical?

Filed under: Philosophy

Paternalism

This evening I attended an event at organised by Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts:

‘Part of a lecture series with guest speakers, Autumn 2010 – Spring 2011. This event is hosted by Amnesty International UK. In the second of a lecture series evaluating keywords in art, culture and society, theorists Judith Butler and Sudeep Dasgupta explore the term ‘paternalism’. Keywords takes its title from Raymond Williams‘ seminal book ‘Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society’ first published in 1976, which looks at how the meaning of words change as the context in which they are used changes about them’ (Iniva website).

Sudeep and Judith

Having read Butler’s Gender Trouble (originally published in 1990 and considered a seminal work in the formation of Queer Theory) as part of my MA research last year it was a timely opportunity to see Judith and hear her debate. I attended the event with my dear friend Dr Sheena Calvert (who was a tutor on my MA course) and we both spent the evening writing copius amounts of notes as Butler unpacked her way through the thoughts and opinions posed by her interlocutor Sudeep.

Sudeep’s extended introduction (undertones of paternalistic dominance maybe!) promted Sheena to write a missive on the back of an envelope, it read ‘will she ever get to speak’ my response written covertly as well ‘the butler hardly ever speaks’. Our disobedience was halted the minute Butler responded, the whole audience felt as if it had stiffened and the silence was tangible.

Half way through the debate, as she was speaking, Butler’s phone rang, housekeeping demanded we all silence our phones, however Butler picked up her phone and said in a surprised tone ‘it’s my mother’ the audience erupted ‘if she doesn’t like what I’m saying’ and again we all laughed. This spontaneous moment showed a lighter side to this deeply intelligent and rehearsed performance and Sheena and I both agreed that she had shattered the preconceptions we had of her.

The ideas put forward from both speakers were challenging, and demanded an intense level of concentration and focus, I have a notebook full of fragments, and appropriately, keywords, such as:

who is speaking? Who identifies whom? Claim to knowledge. People not performing their identity properly. The difference between I and they. How is a subject produced through a speech act? History of benevolence – augmented power of the paternal subject. Recognition/allocation of acts. Is redistribution taking place in an equitable way? Sovereign paternalistic authority. I am the measure, the fulcrum/pivot. Radical democratic practice – the people in the place of the sovereign. Beneficence and dependency. Europe and its internal others. Those who are decided about are denied agency. Mubarak – I will protect Egypt’ from itself” or against radical democracy. A classical paternalistic mode. Non-paternalistic protection. Cultural difference as a trope in cultural analysis. Double bind….

The notebook pages go on but the above should give a flavour of the trajectory. Interestingly Butler made her concerns topical with events in Egypt and this seemed to me an accessible way into the subject.

Butler is talking at The British Museum on Monday night on the subject of ‘Who owns Kafka?’ one I would loved to go to but alas it is fully booked. If the opportunity arises again that Butler is speaking in the UK, book a ticket as quickly as you can, you will not be disappointed.

Filed under: Philosophy