@ -232,3 +232,7 @@ Question the nature of the documentation: what does it take for granted? For wha
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I'm trying to learn how to approach complexity as an environment. How to stay complex without forcing the result being complicated, that is how to reduce complexity without loosing value. This usually happens when diverse actors participate in the process, when ideas and practices traverse through the software without being totally framed into it.
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2. There is no such thing as undocumented software, in the sense that if it's undocumented we cannot see it.
@ -155,27 +155,42 @@ These contingencies are situated in precise contexts. Programming then is not ju
More specifically, I would like to focus on software documentation as a surface for world-building.
The plan:
## Topological writing
> To make sense of multiplicity, we need to think and write in topological ways, discovering methods for laying out a space, for laying out spaces, and for defining paths to walk through these. _[John Law and Annemarie Mol, Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices]_
Since last year I'm prototyping writing machines in order to keep track of what happens around XPUB. Some examples are [this very section of the Soupboat](/soupboat/~kamo/) that is a way to document projects, the [Padliography](/soupboat/padliography/) that is a way to archive documents and links, the [xquisite branch](/soupboat/xquisite/draw/BUCockhPVwHxGARDhSMKgn) made during SI17 that is a branching take on the exquisite corpse game, etc. Probably to develop software is my strategy to get grip on the world. Every writing machine implies a different way to think about your contents. The plan is to develop something as well for this research process.
The topological way to think and write the thesis is to be find somewhere around:
- the list form used by LW in the Tractatus,
- the branching and merging pathways of version control systems, and
- the content aggregation approach of bookmarking tools such as are.na
The plan is to gather contents and curate them in a non-linear fashion, so instead of following the plan written above as a series of step, imagine to read it as a coral-like creature.
0. Coding Contingencies
1. **Coding Contingencies**
1. Context of software studies
2. There is no such thing as undocumented software, in the sense that if it's undocumented we cannot see it.
3. Documentation as an interface between different actors.
2. Documentation as an interface between the code, the user, the developer, and the world.
1. Documentation x Worlding
2. **Documentation as worlding**
1. Excerpts from [API Worlding](../api-worldbuilding/), versioned essay from Tiger Dingsun.
1. Excerpts from [API Worlding](../api-worldbuilding/), versioned essay from T. Dingsun.
2. When there is documentation
1. Who writes? Who reads?
2. Language, modes of address.
3. Neoliberal documentation
1. Language, modes of address.
2. Who writes? Who reads?
3. Unthinking neoliberal documentation
3. And when there is not
1. A way to reactivate/reclaim code?
1. A space to reactivate/reclaim/reorientate code?
2. Ways of writing, economies of knowledges
3. Practice proposals
@ -184,24 +199,12 @@ The plan:
1. Excerpts from documentations that world
2. Individuate approaches and angles
2. Different case studies read through strategies of 1.4.2
3. **Software as care**
1. Cases study
1. Cases study articulated through the points emerged from 2.4.2
1. Soupboat
2. 100R
3. Permacomputing
2. A list of devices to articulate software documentation as a form of care (project overview)
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## Topological writing
> To make sense of multiplicity, we need to think and write in topological ways, discovering methods for laying out a space, for laying out spaces, and for defining paths to walk through these. _[John Law and Annemarie Mol, Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices]_
A suitable form could be that of the feed that is: a structure to aggregate contents.
