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projects/grs/index.html
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
<title>Software documentation as a form of care???</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>The problem with <br />software documentation</h1>
<img src="trolley.jpg" alt="" srcset="" />
<p>
Software comes from a really specific occidental cultural tradition. Software tends to
priviledge masculine, binary, exploitative and extractive practices. Software is
shrouded in technical obscurity. Software comes invisible, transparent, neutral.
Software models the world in order to control it.
</p>
<p>
To make software means not only to write code, but also to take a stance regarding this
trends. To make software means not only to write code, but also to create a context and
community around it.
</p>
<p>
Documentation is a space that interfaces the different actors around software. Software
documentation is a space with potential to renegotiate and reclaim given margins and
entry points. It is a chance to overwrite what is normalized, and let different
knowledges and voices participate in the discourse around software.
</p>
<p>
Documenting software is a complex practice. Documenting software is a process of
translation. Writing documentation it's more difficult than writing software itself. It
requires a lot of time and energy, and it involves many different skills: writing,
coding, knowing how to share and at which intensity. It's a collaborative practice that
could open to different voices.
</p>
<p>As a piece of code would write: I am documented, therefore I am.</p>
<p>
Coding is not just production of software, but also production of knowledge. A dialogue
between human and more-than-human actors. The guestlist of this conference of the bits
is often compiled by chance: the choice of a particular programming language, the coding
style, the development environment and ecosystem, the infrastructure that runs the code,
and so on, are the result of specific contingencies.
</p>
<p>
These contingencies are situated in precise contexts, and these contexts are different
one from another. Programming is not just sharing code, but sharing context. Programming
means to provide a point of view and a perspective to look at the world, before
attempting to get some grip onto it with a script. That's the reason why even if source
code, even when obfuscated, speaks for itself, it cannot always cast light around its
surroundings.
</p>
<p>
To make place for code turns to be a necessary act of care in the process of sharing
knowledge. This does not mean to constrain the usage of some piece of software, or
provide opinionated solutions or tutorials, but rather letting others know where does
this code come from, and where it would like to go.
</p>
<p>
Documentation is a way to produce narrations around software. To create a world for a
software to inhabit, to give it affordances and stretch what is possible to do or to
think with it. Documentation is a space for the political of software. It's a surface
that could host ideas in close contact with codes, letting them entangle and shape each
other.
</p>
<div class="pagebreak"></div>
<h1>The plan</h1>
<ul>
<li>
Focus on software documentation as an interface between code, users, developers,
communities, and the world.
</li>
<li>
Research how writing software documentation changes depending on the context and
actors involved.
</li>
<li>
Experiment with software documentation as a generative device to keep thinking
through code from different perspectives.
</li>
<li>
Explore software documentation as iterative process, as a format that grows and
shrinks through versioning and embrances branching to adapt to specific
environments.
</li>
<li>
Develop tools to facilitate rich software documentation. To assist and stimulate the
writing process with prompts and gently reminders that software documentation is a
form of care.
</li>
<li>
Question the nature of the documentation: what does it take for granted? For what
kind of public it is produced, and what kind of public does it produce? How does it
normalize the context around the software? What are its politics of access? How does
it create entry points and how does it gatekeep?
</li>
<li>
Try to infiltrate the industry of software development through documentation.
Attempt to expose their public to these questions in subtle ways. Offer entry points
and escape routes from the universal solution proposed by big corporates.
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

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projects/grs/style.css
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html,
body {
font-size: 21px;
line-height: 1.4;
}
h1 {
font-family: "Redaction 35";
line-height: 1;
}
img {
border: 1px solid currentColor;
max-width: 100%;
object-fit: contain;
}
hr {
break-before: always;
}
li {
margin-bottom: 24px;
}
@media print {
.pagebreak {
page-break-before: always;
} /* page-break-after works, as well */
}
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