The Durability of Software
Christopher Kelty, Seth Erickson · 2015
Software is neither material nor immaterial but durable, entrenched and scaffolded. In this article we suggest that services and software should be understood through the diverse forms of durability and temporality they take. We borrow concepts from evolution and development, but with a critical eye towards the diagnosis of value(s) and the need for constant maintenance. We look at examples from diverse cases— infrastructural software, military software, operating systems and file systems.