How to critically analyse software
Gordon Fletcher · 2026
Why a practical chapter at this point in the book? The earlier chapters argued that software is a made thing, an artefact whose histories, assumptions and affordances are shaping us even as we shape them ( Winner 1980 ; Manovich 2021 ), and this chapter turns that argument into a more practical method for analysis by bringing together material culture perspectives on artefacts, Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and socio-technical analyses inspired by science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theory ( Miller 1998 , Hodder et al. 1997 , Latour 1992). It also picks up on the earlier introduction of critical pathway analysis (CPA) as a pragmatic way to order influences and to reveal the choices that are always being made in the creation and use of software.