Here are two broad questions that this week’s readings brought up for me.
1) Who has authority in software studies – Is it possible for a scholar to account for “the software layer” without the ability to read code? I.e. can there be cultural criticism within a software studies framework that takes into account that software/code is structuring our encounters with a cultural text/object, but only describes this from a user perspective? What about code studies? What is blackboxed if the logic of code is read from the interface rather than from the code itself? Could one make Terranova’s politically liberatory reading of algorithms without knowing code?
2) What would happen if we re-described Dodge and Kitchin’s “code-space” as “media architecture”, enabling us to draw together the checkout counter with earlier spaces, like cinema, the slide lecture, or Churchill’s map room? How is the topological space they seem to argue is specific to contemporary digital-technology-structured spaces related to or antithetical to these earlier architectures?

Here are two broad questions that this week’s readings brought up for me.
1) Who has authority in software studies – Is it possible for a scholar to account for “the software layer” without the ability to read code? I.e. can there be cultural criticism within a software studies framework that takes into account that software/code is structuring our encounters with a cultural text/object, but only describes this from a user perspective? What about code studies? What is blackboxed if the logic of code is read from the interface rather than from the code itself? Could one make Terranova’s politically liberatory reading of algorithms without knowing code?
2) What would happen if we re-described Dodge and Kitchin’s “code-space” as “media architecture”, enabling us to draw together the checkout counter with earlier spaces, like cinema, the slide lecture, or Churchill’s map room? How is the topological space they seem to argue is specific to contemporary digital-technology-structured spaces related to or antithetical to these earlier architectures?