The Movement of Software: Mapping Software Mineralization through Medianatures and its Politics
Rumen Rachev · Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) · 2014
This thesis deals with the material becomings of software, investigating the way software comes to being software and the agents which are participating in this becomings. Introducing the notion of ‗mineralization‘ as a conceptual tool, taken from Manuel DeLanda and applied in the context of software, the thesis investigates the material origin of software and the complex geo-political framework in which software is entangled with. Throughout this text, the main aim is not to situate software in one particular context or analyze one type of software, but rather work with a multi-layered perception of software, dealing with its multiplicities. Engaging with different scholars and scholarly fields of conceptualizing the materiality of software and the material connections of the digital, here software is mapped out not in relation to fixed spatio-temporal objects, or final forms as a ‗dead matter‘. Rather, software is taken as vibrant matter, which possesses certain fuzziness when it comes to the way it functions, as revealing and withdrawing constantly from human perception and its own being. This thesis begins with the premise that software operates as a black box, and that it brings into opaqueness the labor, materials and different agents which makes software. The notion of mineralization brings a new way for approaching conceptually the materialization of software and the way it actualizes itself through various assemblages.