Welcome!

[Greg Borenstein]

Hello and welcome to Philosophy in a Time of Software!

This list came about out of a conversation between me and Steve Klabnik on Twitter about a few strands of recent philosophy we both seemed to be reading in parallel. It's goal (as I just improvised into the "Description" box Google made me fill out to create this group) is to think about how philosophy can help us think through the existence, function, meaning, making, and use of technology as well as its social, political, and environmental context.

To give a more extended (and personal) introduction, I thought I'd briefly tell you a little about my background with philosophy and technology my current interest in the intersections between the two.

As an undergrad I studied art history, particularly modern art and early cinema. That meant the usual circuit of what's called alternately 'continental philosophy' and 'theory': Marx, Freud, Lacan, structuralism, post-structuralism, especially Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Latour, etc. We always studied this stuff in the context of how we could use it to interpret art and culture.

Simultaneously, my school had a very traditional mandatory humanities curriculum so I got brief flybys on Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, etc. as well early modern political philosophy: Kant, Hobbes, etc.

There was also a strong strand of 'analytic philosophy' in my school's philosophy department, but after a very bad experience with an intro logic class I never spent much time in their courses. The result is that I have a vague and biased view of much of that work -- one I'd be happy to engage with expanding.

Then, much time passed. I made web software and other things. I went to grad school for interactive technology. More and more those other things became art and design experiences that used software (and especially computer vision) as their medium.

Right around the time I finished grad school, two things happened: one of my professors, Marina Zurkow, introduced me to a new strain in contemporary philosophy called Object Oriented Ontology[1] and specifically the work of Tim Morton and Graham Harman. Secondly, I got involved in the discussion around The New Aesthetic, a blog and ongoing project by James Bridle that tries to look at "the new ways of seeing the world" that are emerging in contemporary technology and society.[2]

I immediately had a strong sense that these two areas of thought were connected: that Object Oriented Ontology, and other surrounding areas of philosophy, might help me think through the aesthetic, technical, social, and political questions that were emerging in the conversation about the New Aesthetic. So, I began a focused program of reading, thinking, and writing to see if I could tease out these ideas.[3] That program has gradually expanded out and engaged of lots of the other things I'm currently thinking about: from political issues to aesthetic questions to ideas about teaching software.

Last philosophical book I read: Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennet

Currently Reading: Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour

I assume each of you has stories like this in one way or another. I'd love to hear them, both as a way of doing introductions and figuring out some of the subjects we have in common that might make good topics for this list.

In closing I just wanted to say a few things about expectations for this list:

* Accessible to laymen. Just like software discussions, philosophical conversations can become technical quickly in a way that makes them impenetrable to anyone other than experts in the particular area being discussed. When in doubt don't assume anyone shares your knowledge. Some of the best philosophy takes the form of explaining long-established ideas in a way that is fresh and aimed at a new audience or problem.

* Civil. Again, like software discussions, philosophical debates can become heated and personal. It's easy to descend into ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority, and other rhetorical devices mainly used to silence the voices of others -- even without meaning to. This group assumes none of us are experts and the best way to do that is if we treat each other with empathy.

* Open and diverse. The reason to be accessible and civil is to include as many different perspectives and voices in the conversation as possible. This open-mindedness is key to good philosophy and will also just make things more fun and interesting for everyone. Extra points for anything that broadens the conversation and includes more people. Intentionally narrowing it or excluding people will not be tolerated.

Ok! Sorry this introduction got so long. Looking forward to the conversation.

[1] Object-Oriented Ontology can be hard to define in brief, but Ian Bogost takes a good whack at it here: http://www.bogost.com/blog/what_is_objectoriented_ontolog.shtml

[2] This early talk by Bridle gives a good, if early, formulation of the project: http://booktwo.org/notebook/waving-at-machines/ 

[3] The best I've probably done so far is "What It's Like to Be a 21st Century Thing" in The Creator's Project: http://thecreatorsproject.com/blog/in-response-to-bruce-sterlings-essay-on-the-new-aesthetic#4

[Steve Klabnik]

I might as well say hi too.

My name is Steve, and I hate bios. Let's just say that I wish I hadn't gotten my CS degree and had gotten a philosophy one instead. Oh well.

I think the Continental/Analytic distinction is silly, but if it must be used, I fall very heavily in the continental camp. At the moment, I'm a devotee of Deleuze, who I think is important for anyone doing technology work to grasp. Since Greg mentioned it, I first heard of OOO through some people I know, and the charge was specifically that it was very... masculine, and apolitical, and capitalism-justifying. I was intrigued by them using a lot of the same words that we do as software developers, but I still have just spent a lot of time reading ABOUT it rather than reading it, something I hope to rectify soon.

That said, I'm also reading Reassembling the Social right now, so maybe we should talk about that first, Greg? I mean, anyone can and should chip in whatever whenever, but that might be a good productive first one for me, at least.

[Greg Borenstein]

Hello and welcome, Steve!

I'd love to hear an intro to Deleuze from you. I've been intrigued by a lot of the ideas I've seen trickle out of his thought for a while now (assemblages, nomads, etc), but have been intimidated by the size of the books. I also really like this Adam Shatz review of the new Deleuze and Guattari biography that just came out as a kind of intro to their thought and the historical situation around it:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n24/adam-shatz/desire-was-everywhere

Everyone else -- if you're interested, please introduce yourselves as well! Some of you included some intro material in your requests for access to this group. I think it would be great to share those with the full group as a way of getting to know each other.

yours,

Greg

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[Bart Oleszczyk]

Hi everyone,

I got immediately interested, when I saw the link on Steve's Twitter feed, so had no other option as to join the group.

I've done my master's degree in philosophy about 9 years ago, and since then, I pretty much lost touch with the subject (this is not the most profitable trade, I'm afraid). 

For past few years I've been developing software and found it really enjoyable, but I'm missing the greater meaning in what I do, at least in day to day routine, so I hope discussions in this group will make my days more interesting.

I'm currently doing a small research on the subject of work ethics in software development, and hope to soon be able, to bounce some ideas of the members of this group.

Great idea, to start the group BTW.

[joshuajnoble]

I'll take a stab at introducing myself as well. My undergraduate degree was in cognitive science, though I bent that as strenuously as possible to focus on linguistics and how people learn systems and patterns. The philosopher I'm most knowledgable about would have to be Wittgenstein, I was fed a steady diet of Thomas Nagel, JL Austin and John Searle but it didn't really stick, and I have a passing familiarity with the pantheon of French philosophers popular in the 90's. 

More recently I've read Ian Bogost, Graham Harman, and Bruno Latour, each of which seems to me not incompatible with the way that Wittgenstein described how we use agreements and norms in loose codification to create meaning and possibilities of communication. One thing I'd love to use this group for is to sharpen some of my own thinking about how we understand and describe learning, be that the learning of 5 year olds or Support Vector Machines. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how we learn, how we learn code, and lately because of a large object recognition project that I'm working on, how we replicate that learning in simple machines. 

On another note, I've tried twice to read Manual Delands Philosophy and Simulation but I keep getting distracted by other things. If anyone else might be interested in digging into this in a social way, do let me know so, I find that inspires much closer reading and deeper reflection on my part.

Thanks much to Greg and Steve for putting this together, it's a fantastic idea.

[Steve Klabnik]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 7:54 PM, joshuajnoble <joshua...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Philosophy and Simulation

I've read a few things by de Landa, but not this yet. I'd be
interested at some point, for sure.

[Joseph Caudle]

Hello everyone,

I too found the group through Steve and am very excited about it.

I received my bachelor's degree in Philosophy five years ago and spent the four years after graduation using it as a teacher. This past summer I began working full time as a professional software developer, but have continued (and in some ways intensified) my studies and interests in philosophy.

I'm interested in threads found throughout the history of philosophy (including the middle ages), but I'm especially interested in ethics and the philosophy of mathematics.

I'm not completely certain how I discovered Deleuze or Bogost's introduction to OOO, but both are current interests of mine. I hope I'll be able to chime in on some of the discussions.

Best,

Joseph

[Greg Borenstein]

+1. Had deLanda on my list for awhile, too.

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>
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[Olivier Saut]

Hi everyone, 

I have also found the group through Steve. 

I am a mathematician working with computers for my research. I have been interested in philosophy (and philosophy and science) for quite a while, but I have recently decided to free some time for it. I have only read a few things, so I consider myself a newcomer in philosophy and expect to learn plenty of things through this group !

Best, 

2013/1/21 Greg Borenstein <greg.bo...@gmail.com>

> --
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--

 

                            - Olivier

[Mark A. Matienzo]

Hi all,

Like others I found this group through Steve.

I'm an archivist and librarian by training and trade, but have worked
as a developer on and off for about the last 6 years. My undergrad
degree was in philosophy, and my focus then was largely in terms of
analytic areas of inquiry (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind,
epistemology). I've had a large interest in continental philosophy and
broader areas of critical inquiry, like literary theory, history of
science, and cultural studies, for quite some time, and took a few
classes that touched on these topics while getting my master's degree.

Much of my professional interests currently relate to digital
preservation, digital forensics, electronic literature, and computer
history, and so I've been focusing a lot of my reading on things that
often tie into that (strongly or loosely): media archaeology [0],
platform studies, hypertext criticism, science and technology studies,
etc. I've had an interest in object-oriented ontology as well; I
recently read Harman's _Quadruple Object_ but unfortunately found it
kind of dry and hard to follow.

Other current, recent, and upcoming reads:

* Terry Harpold, _Ex-Foliations: Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path_
* Parikka and Huhtamo, eds. _Media Archaeology: Approaches,
Applications, and Implications_
* Monfort and Bogost, _Racing the Beam_: The Atari Video Computer System_
* Maurizio Lazzarato, _The Making of the Indebted Man_
* Franco Berardi, _After the Future_

Although I am never wanting for things to read I'm happy to be
flexible and amenable to suggestions. Latour's _Reassembling the
Social_ seems like a great work to start with.

I'm also intending to start blogging again sooner or later, and if I
get enough momentum to do so I may share some posts or ideas that I'm
struggling with.

Side note: Greg, I see you're at NYU - I work out of Bobst Library on
a grant project there three days a week.

Cheers,
Mark


[0] http://jussiparikka.net/2012/12/16/what-is-media-archaeology-beta-definition-ver-0-9/

[Pete Nicholls]

Hello everyone,

Nice to meet you all.

I found this group through Steve as well. I'm interested in learning more about a topic for which I have no background beyond that of a dilettante's, but that continues to fascinate me with every new way of thinking gleamed. I'm very much untutored in philosophy, but it is something I want to focus on and I hope to learn more by joining this group.

I'm something of a mix of trades, flitting between development and business, writing and design. Continually, I'm struck by the parallels between them, their relationship with each other and the outside world, and the wider social, political, and economic forces that affect their structure. I think that philosophy is a way to help contextualise everything that we do, and provide a deeper understanding about what we do and why we do it.

Aside from reading the posts on this mailing list, I'm also interested in building a reading list of books to consume. If you have any recommendations, please share them. I have no criteria beyond those books you found most interesting when you first started to learn.

Thanks so much for setting this group up.

Pete

--

[Steve Klabnik]

Pete, I put the list that I began with and what order here:
https://gist.github.com/4017292

I can't comment on how well it works for people who aren't me, but
it's at least a collection of well-known books in the 'continental'
tradition.

Some sort of 'how to' discussion for newbies would be useful as a
topic, I bet...

[blambeau]

Hi all!

I'm here also because Steve mentioned it on Twitter.

I don't have any degree in philosophy and must confess having read almost no philosophical book. I have a PhD in computer science and currently work as a postdoc researcher in a CS department.

I'm very interested in the vision Steve and others may have on computer science / software development. Most generally, I've always found that CS departements like mine should have much stronger historical and philosophical courses, so I jumped here to listen about inspirations for that.

 

[Alban Leveau-Vallier]

Hi all,

Thanks to Greg and Steve for this awesome initiative.

I also studied philosophy and ended up working as a free-lance software developer, for the freedom it gave me.

I know work at a developer's cooperative, that we are building as a self-managed organization. The issue we tackle there is how to build things that are bigger than personal projects without entering in a relation of domination.

I write short stories, that I put on github as a an experiment, in order to see what would look like a novel that has several branches, many contributors, can be forked, and regular releases.

I am also one the organizers of the RuPy conference that will take place in october 2013 in Budapest – and where there will be a special track on programming and philosophy (I'm looking for speakers by the way, your ideas are welcome).

Current reading : Capitalisme, désir et servitude, Marx et Spinoza, by Frédéric Lordon (forgot to tell, I'm French ;) The approach is interesting, but i'm disappointed by a a lot a details. 

Cheers,

Alban

[Ross Fuhrman]

Hi all,

One of my goals for the year is to spend time learning things that aren't directly related to being a better programmer.
When I graduated 8th grade, I received "Sophie's World". It's basically an overview of philosophy combined with a fictional story. I wish I had read it when I first got it, but I didn't. I'm about half way through. This is pretty much the extent of my philosophy background.
Needless to say, the philosophy backgrounds many of you have is a bit intimidating, but hopefully I'll get something out of this group.

Ross

On Friday, January 18, 2013 2:05:54 PM UTC-6, Greg Borenstein wrote:

[Joel McCracken]

Hello!

I'm Joel McCracken. I'm a software developer from Pittsburgh, PA. I write Ruby.

I am fascinated with the connections between philosophy and software. It seems like many of the problems we have with software are the same problems many philosophers struggle with.

I don't think this should be surprising. We, as software developers, are constantly in a dialog with our machines about our thoughts. Edge cases, examples taken to extremes, and counter-examples are central to both Philosophy and software problems. If code is a form of thought, which I believe it is, then code-in-software is basically a critical examination of that thought. Which is basically the same as philosophy. 

I honestly don't imagine having much time to contribute much new content to this group. From the activity on the group so far, I will have a hard enough time keeping up. However, I hope I can provide some insight!

Sincerely,

Joel McCracken

[Philip Belesky]

Hey!

I study architecture and landscape architecture, along with a little philosophy. Most of my work is looking at the use of programming as a tool within the architectural design process, how it can be used to improve our environment, and how this 'tool' differs from the standard methods for design. 

Most of my experience with philosophy comes straight out of architectural theory, which adopted Deleuze back in the 90's and has yet to let go. I'm interested in Deleuze's ontological concepts, particularly Manuel DeLanda's interpretations of them, and how they map to a 'computational' understanding of the world. Mostly in terms of how a synthesis of Deleuzian thinking, and computer simulations, may help us understand and design natural/urban systems. Like Joel, code-as-thought is something that I'd like to look into more.

Aside from the web development I do to generally make a living, most of what I do is scripting within a 3D or 2D modelling program. Lots of python, the odd bit of java, and sometimes graphical programming interfaces.

I've also done some work regarding the aesthetics of computer/generative art, mostly in reference to the excellent *A Philosophy of Computer Art*.

Currently writing my master's thesis, so I'm reading all over the place.

Philip

[hraberg]

Hello,

Steve brought this list to my attention as well.

I'm Håkan Råberg a consultant/open-source-hacker with an interest in continental philosophy, something I blame my degree in cinema studies for.

In the end of that period of my life I tried, and failed, to write a Derrida and Foucault fueled master thesis about the c2 wiki[1] - this was before Wikipedia, so my professor had never seen a wiki.

I did consider doing a PhD in Software Studies the other year, but kind of fell on the finishing line realizing that if my proposal[2] got accepted, I would have to do this for real for several years, and had no longer any excuse for my dabbling and namedropping[3].

Lately I've been reading D&G What is Philosophy and De Landa's Philosophy and Simulation + 1000 Years of Non-linear History. But I buy way more philosophy books than I ever read or "use".

cheers, Hakan

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki

[2] https://github.com/downloads/hraberg/writings/hakanraberg-draft-proposal.pdf

[3] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Enumerable-Java-Shen-Clojure

[Peat Bakke]

Hello all,

I've been lurking for a while, so I figure it's about time to post a brief introduction. :)

I studied enough philosophy at university to understand how little I know, but I still love it, and enjoy discussing it whenever the opportunity arises. I'm awful with names, and only slightly better with the lingo. Generally stated, I'm a fan of Hume, slightly irritated with Aristotle, amused by Nietzsche and Kant, and have pretty much given up on most of Esotericism.

I started with a philosophical approach to spiritual topics as a kid, landed in the realm of epistemology, fled into the wilderness of communication and information theory, and ended up an agnostic hard determinist with a penchant for optimism and individualism.

I hadn't spent much time thinking about software in the context of philosophy until I saw Greg and Steve talking about it on Twitter. I'm starting to think more about philosophy outside of the realm of the descriptive, and more as a framework for how I ought to do things -- including writing software, and working with all of the parties involved in producing software.

Thanks for getting this conversation started. :)

Cheers,

-Peat

[Nick Pinkston]

Hey guys - I found this group through Greg and Steve on Twitter, and it's been great to see the discussion here. Far too often technical fields like CS get lost in the how of producing and not the why. We need groups like this to help force the broader discourse into the realm of the why.

For myself, my work is generally around how to democratize the means of production and on new forms of economy. This has been through the maker/hackerspace/open source movements and digital manufacturing. You can see more of that stuff on my site: http://NickPinkston.com if you'd like.

For philosophy, I feel like I have a love / hate relationship with it, and I'll admit to being a total n00b in the formal aspects of it, while still wanting to learn what it has to teach as a type of thinking. I've read the usual suspects you read in school: Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Hobbes, Locke, etc. along with some personal interests and generally Wikipedia tabbing the shit out of the field. I'm far more interested in political philosophy and am most widely read in economics / finance / policy. Tangentially, I'm trying to better understanding of the global world of mathematics from foundational axioms building to its many fields - which has some overlap here.

Most of my thinking on it can be summed up in that old Marx quote: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." I want to learn how we can change it meaningfully, sustainably and within our lifetimes.

[jane charlesworth]

Hi, I'm Jane and I also found this through Steve's twitter (my friend Tef told me to follow Steve! :D).

I'm a evolutionary/computational biologist (though also falling in love with computers and programming) and am interested in the philosophical questions brought up by the new biological technologies, among other things. I'm also very skeptical of the ethical consequences resulting from big business growing more involved in science.

I have to admit one thing that's put me off philosophy in the past is how overwhelmingly dominated it is by privileged, dead white males. I guess I think some of the answers that earlier philosophers have come up with feel kind of limited to me because they make assumptions that aren't true. Montaigne, for example (I suppose you could class him as an essayist, not a philosopher) says that women aren't even capable of making friends.

Recently I re-read "Think" by Simon Blackburn, which is a very concise, but I think very good introduction to philosophy (possibly simply by not being as dated as, for example, Bertrand Russell). His definition of philosophy is that it is "conceptual engineering", which I think is an excellent one. As such, I'd like read more to understand how other people think about the world and see how framing concepts in rigorous ways can help make the world better and fairer for everyone.

I also recently read some Sartre and concluded that he is a historical curiosity. Or at least that I don't want to throw my hands up and go "everything is terrible, I must go mad."

anyway, I look forward to reading and learning more. 

[Peat Bakke]

Hi Jane!

The privilege of dead white males is hard to ignore. Heck, the privilege of alive white males is also hard to ignore. :)

I'm curious about your experience with biotech: what questions are brought up?

I'm outside of the biology world, and firmly in the pocket of popular, capitalistic software development. By "popular" I mean ... well ... popular. My company does social network analysis, we are funded by pop-star investors, and we write a lot of code in popular languages and frameworks to get it done.

I want to hear what you're thinking because I like to stretch those boundaries. Biotech is a hot topic right now for people who want to make a lot of money, but it's also hot amongst people who are concerned about the fall out of pervasive data. Of course, that's just my take from inside the software industry.

What are you grappling with? What troubles you?

Therein lays the interesting discussions. :D

-p

[AKA]

Hi everyone, I'm Noah and I'm not great at bios. I'm also not great at participating in forums, lists, etc, as I usually prefer to lurk.

I was first exposed to critical theory and aesthetics through a new media art curriculum, so I've mostly had brief overviews of the work of pretty contemporary people from Walter Benjamin onward; I have almost no knowledge of Kant, Descartes, Plato etc except through work they might have done in mathematics.

I found the group through Greg's twitter; I like Greg.

My most recent philosophy reading was Bogost's "Alien Phenomenology," which I particularly enjoyed for its humane, readable summaries of classical philosophers' positions. However, the last two chapters of the book are the best because they get at "carpentry," which I think is an important notion in the context of Makers, the DIY scene, and an age of the superempowerment of the individual.

Thank you all for your thoughtful contributions to this group - I always look forward to reading your thoughts!

noah feehan / AKA

On Friday, January 18, 2013 3:05:54 PM UTC-5, Greg Borenstein wrote:

[Jane Charlesworth]

Hi Peate,

I'm curious about your experience with biotech: what questions are brought up?

I'm not so much involved in biotech as bioinformatics, so a lot of the questions revolve around openness and access to data (or access to academic papers, which is obviously a wider issue).

For example, one interesting case is the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells -cultured without the consent of her living family- went on to become on of the most widely-used human cell lines. A few weeks ago, scientists sequenced the genome of HeLa cells, the line based on Henrietta's tumour Again, her family were not consulted and people were (naturally) outraged: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/31/henrietta-lacks-cancer-research-genome

In her case, I agree completely that the family should have been asked for consent. However, this raises wider issues. If you can gain information about someone's family from their genome, where are the ethical boundaries? Do family have to give consent for a relative's genome to be sequenced? What about microbes cultured from a patient's sample (which would tell you nothing about the patient's genome given our current knowledge)? Should we even generate stacks of data before having a clear idea of some of the ethical issues (and there are also questions about the philosophy of science - some people think we should sequence as much as possible, others prefer hypothesis-driven experiments)?

I work with DNA sequencing data and at the moment there are several competing technologies, all of which are developing rapidly. So one thing I'm worried about is that due to business interests and good pr puff (this ties in with Steve's O'reilly article, I guess) we might end up locked into one technology (I'm borrowing the term "locked in" from this book - http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0141049111 which I actually have quite mixed feelings about).

cheers

Jane

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[Greg Borenstein]

On Apr 3, 2013, at 10:41 AM, Jane Charlesworth <janepip...@googlemail.com> wrote:

 Should we even generate stacks of data before having a clear idea of some of the ethical issues (and there are also questions about the philosophy of science - some people think we should sequence as much as possible, others prefer hypothesis-driven experiments)?

Really interesting questions, Jane. 

I recently learned about the Precautionary Principle (and the debate around it) for the first time: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle>. For people who haven't come across the term before, it expresses the moral principle that policies and technologies should be proven not to cause harm to people or the environment before being enacted.

On the opposite side of Precautionary Principle is the Proactionary Principle, the idea that there are unacceptable risks to _not_ enacting policies and technologies meant to improve the world. Max More, the CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, makes an interesting case for this: http://www.findtheconversation.com/episode-two-dr-max-more/

I can see the arguments for and against both of these sides. But I find the framing of these issues a bit paralyzing: they raise the stakes of technological and social action or inaction to the apocalyptic.

Jane -- As a practitioner in a field where this moral question is clearly coming up the collection of sensitive medical data, I'm curious what you think about it in practice. Are these framings helpful? Is there some middle way?

-- Greg

[Richard Massey]

Well, I'm going to introduce myself for the heck of it.

I'm Richie, and I studied philosophy as an undergrad. I'm planning on going back for some postgrad studies in philosophy, once I get an idea for a thesis. For now, I'm working as a software engineer.

I quite enjoy the ideas of Richard Rorty, and his notion of "philosophy as literature". I think it's an interesting notion, not only because of the purpose it sees for philosophical writing, but also because of the way it sets itself up in opposition to many other schools of thought -- particularly against analytical philosophy. (That's far too broad an overview, but you get the idea.)

As for the software side of things, I'm interested in information systems and systems design, because I think when it's done well it leads to maintainable systems that are easier to work with. I feel like philosophical training helps in this area, which is one reason why I want to get involved in this group.

Cheers!

On Friday, January 18, 2013 3:05:54 PM UTC-5, Greg Borenstein wrote:

[Daniel Fockler]

Hello! My name is Dan. There's probably nobody reading this anymore, but anyways I mostly make software for the web or at the web and I'm also interested in philosophy. I took a few philosophy courses in school, mostly just introduction to ethics and logic. I'm interested in learning more and reading what other people think about how it relates to technology. So I'll probably just start reading through some of these old posts, see you around! :)

[Christopher Allen]

My thing lately has been teaching, so I've been thinking about the intersection of technology, philosophy, and education.

Listening to a course about the philosophy of science while I think about how to teach programming in a book has been interesting.

Anyway, some of us are still watching :)

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 3:54 PM, Daniel Fockler <dfock...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello! My name is Dan. There's probably nobody reading this anymore, but anyways I mostly make software for the web or at the web and I'm also interested in philosophy. I took a few philosophy courses in school, mostly just introduction to ethics and logic. I'm interested in learning more and reading what other people think about how it relates to technology. So I'll probably just start reading through some of these old posts, see you around! :)

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Chris Allen

Currently working on http://haskellbook.com

[Dan Taeyoung]

Hello! I might as well jump on the introductions party. Apologies if this is a tad long and a little too self-indulgent, and if it is so, it's because I'm totally interested to talk to a group of people who would subscribe to a google group called "philosophy in a time of software".

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I'm personally interested in the intersection of architecture, technology, and community. I studied architecture in grad school, with an undergrad background in art history and computer science. That meant I read a bit of continental philosophy - Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Ranciere, some old-school political philosophy- Kant, Plato, Hobbes, etc. I also did computer science, which meant that I was thinking about decision trees and turing machines, thinking about agent-based simulations, genetic algorithms, etc. Architecture turned out to be a covert design discipline about systems theory, in which I was trained to think speculatively and specifically from massive systems to human-scale objects, and to posit new ideas in these scales, so most of my schoolwork involved positing spatial-financial-communal solutions for viable utopian building projects.

In the past few years I've found myself reading a lot of Marx and Latour, and find myself being aligned with a Marxist-materialist understanding of how labor processes (and its valorization) affects the world; I also find that this mindset is very much compatible with (or superseded/upgraded by) Latour's most recent versions of his actor-network theory. (Particularly, Reassembling the Social and An Inquiry into Modes of Existence). 

The practicing architect part of me is constantly thinking about Latour's ANT formulation of oil pipelines that transport oil, yet is not made of oil (oil pipelines are made out of technology, diplomacy, weather, materials engineering, etc) for the process of building buildings: Buildings are made of laborers and their labor, politics, logistics, materials, images, permits, inspectors, rules of thumb, weather, and so on. What would a philosophical inquiry of logistics be? 

I also teach architecture, and so these paths of thinking also manifest in a course about designing tools - the output of a tool is not a skill, but a mindset. Shouldn't architects thus design their own design tools, in order to modify the mindset with which one designs?.

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In terms of "philosophy in a time of software", I'm largely interested in software as providing helpful handholds for popular mental/philosophical models. Learning from software philosophies, and making them into larger ontological frameworks / philosophical viewpoints, etc.

For example: I think that a simple agent-based simulation of bird flocking behavior, in which phenomena emerges out of simple individual behaviors, is a really important philosophical/mental model that is important for a public to have, so that arguments like "let's let the market decide" or "why does X happen?" is explainable, without resorting to mental models that explain a market as an internally coherent whole, with a specific agenda. "Well, the market wants X" seems like a phenomenally wrong answer to explain a complex system.

I'm also interested in the philosophical concepts that software already has in relation to abstraction/encapsulation/black-boxing. I feel that software has a uniquely interesting stance about abstraction: all software is built on a series of abstractions, whether it be the high-level language itself that compiles to machine code, or the usage of a software library, or implementing abstract classes or interfaces in OOP. At the same time, software developers fully acknowledge the degree to which abstractions are leaky, and sometimes have to be delved deep into, and sometimes even have to be ripped apart and recreated with new paradigms altogether, such as functional programming, or actor-oriented programming. Within software, abstraction is thus a framing device or a helpful restructuring tool, an important mental structuring device to understand complexity, which is also never sacrosanct and constantly in necessity of change.

Should not a similar philosophy of abstraction exist, in which the term 'car' is understood to be a leaky abstraction, fully unveiled when the car overheats, at which point (in your mind) the car explodes into an assemblage of radiator fluid, the engine block, and pipes? For the CFO of Ford, say, all cars may become abstracted into a sales model; for the mechanic, the 'car' becomes a fantastic constellation of hundreds of thousands of gaskets, screws, oil types, pistons, metal alloys, electrical wiring, etc. And for the F1 racecar driver, the 'car' is a visceral experience, years of muscle memory, the asphalt of the road, the curvature of the race track, in which the 'car' becomes 'defined' outside of the physical/material boundaries of the car itself. To engage in a struggle of definition about 'what a car really is' would be both amusing and unproductive, in the way that software developers arguing about 'the singular best way to structure a software program' can also be.

So - that's what I'm interested in. Great to meet you all!

And to end on a question: Very much of my thinking about this is influenced by Latour. Do you know of any other writers/thinkers/philosophers/practitioners who deal with this kind of 'philosophy of black-boxing'?

Cheers,

Dan