The Philosophy of Software Code and Mediation in the Digital Age

The Philosophy of Software is a critical introduction to the subject of algorithms, code and software that introduces and engages with their social and philosophical implications. This book has been written to appeal not only to people interested in the subject but also to those from a non-technical background who want to know more about our softwarised societies. Indeed, software is a tangle or a knot, which ties together the physical and the computational, the material and the digital, into a comprehensive system for control and manipulation. However, software also exceeds our ability to place limits on its entanglement, and has entered
everyday life to an amazing degree in the 21st Century. From washing machines to central heating systems, to children's toys, television and video; the old mechanical world is being revolutionised by the silent logic of digital devices. It is time, therefore, to examine our algorithmic situation.

David M. Berry is Reader in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex and affiliated researcher at Institutt for Medier og Kommunikasjon (IMK), University of Oslo.

Acknowledgements
1. The Idea of Code
2. What is Code?
3. Reading and Writing Code
4. Running Code
5. Towards a Phenomenology of Computation
6. Real-Time Streams
Bibliography
Index