[Softwareandculture] Read 18 Nov 2001 New York Times Sunday magazine, pp. 23-4

[Richard Hull]

Oh Brad, now I really have to intervene.
At 05:46 PM 11/17/01 -0500, you wrote:
>the role of fascination with computer modelling
>(AKA software) in distracting the scholarly community
>from understanding current world politics ...

Sorry, but computer modelling owes its origins and outlook much more to 
'systems theories', and especially right back to the 18th century fusion of 
population systems (Malthus) and economic systems (Smith, Ricardo, even 
Marx to some extent). Indeed, the 'mechanistic' world view - the world can 
be understood as a machine of inter-related parts - is of course much 
older. You absolutely cannot equate a mechanistic or systemic world view 
with software, just as you cannot equate it with the printed word.
Of course, systems theory has some part in the evolution of computer 
programming, but it is only a part of that history and hence only a part of 
whatever we might call software. Software also includes the instructions to 
enable typed input and graphical user interfaces, indeed the instructions 
to enable computer programming in the first place. That is why it is so 
difficult to get a handle on, and why I enjoy lurking on this list - the 
recent discussions of 'code'  are so much more interesting than blanket 
characterisations of 'all software' or 'all computers' or 'all the people 
who work with computers'.
As I have repeatedly argued in print, we can more fruitfully understand the 
characteristics of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) - that 
is, the software and hardware bundled together, as they usually are - in 
terms of a small number of quite distinct 'frameworks of computing'. These 
are quite distinct ways of understanding the nature of computers, the 
people who use them, and the relationships between computers and people. It 
is only the earliest, Technical framework, which has an essentially 
Positivist, calculative, algorithmic and Taylorist core of understandings - 
of computers, people, organisations and the world. From the late 1950s two 
significantly different frameworks emerged, partly with the help of people 
like Weiner, JCR Licklider, Doug Engelbart, etc - which explicitly sought 
for alternatives to Shannon's model of information processing,Taylor's 
model of scientific management, and generally all the Positivist 
perspectives on computing and people. It is with the two new frameworks - 
the Partnership and the Benevolent - that we see the first focus on 
'interaction with a computer', a concept which would have been 
inconceivable within the Technical framework which saw the user either 
giving or receiving instructions and data.

Although I am tempted to say something on the recent discussions of 'code' 
I've got to mark a load of essays, so I'll just have to continue lurking.
All the best,
Richard





Richard Hull, BSc, MSc, PhD
Sociology, Department of Human Sciences
And Centre for Research on Innovation, Culture and Technology (CRICT)
Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH
Tel: +44(0)1895 203112
Email: richard.hull@brunel.ac.uk
Mobile: +44 (0)776 433 1260
Mobile email: +447764331260@mmail.co.uk
My Home page at Brunel
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/hs/soccomstaff/hull.htm