kamo-soupbato/projects/thesis-outline/thesis-outline.md

categories	date	description	slug	title
GRS Writing Research	03/11/2022	Outline for the thesis	thesis-outline	Thesis Outline

Guidelines

What do you WANT to write?
What mode of address do you want to assume? How do you want your text to speak to the reader?
(this dictates the form: essayistic, academic, narrative, non-linier, script; diary; field report)
Be clear about HOW you want to tell your story.
Key issues you want to explore (what research questions do these lead to?)

Please think of only 3 key issues.

Once you identify these you can begin a chapter outline.

Discussion

Software documentation
Programming software

Struggling a lot finding a surface between people that develop software, use software, communities concerned find a place that speaks/connects those different worlds

User manual = documentation

Surface creates a world around it, creates barriers and possibilities

What is missing > world of documentation in software development, often just refers to technicalities, create a generous space to create community, different kind of policies/identities in software development

For project work on a kind of toolkit: a book of spells, recipes, set of tools and practice to think through software documentaiton

three main issues:
    1. materiality of software documentation (surfaces used to read it make it)
    2. the actors that participate in this idea of software documentation, roles in writing of software
    3. idea of economy around software documentation, exchanges that happen, economy of knowledge (knowledge in developing of codes,...) exchanges of different kind of knowledges, a space to reclaim the importance of voices, value of different voices, beside the technical beside meritopractical approach

    form:
        not sure want to write more?
        want to do the opposite of what is told
        explore the idea of list as a writing surface
        list are a big thing in programming as a structure, data structure, a lot of essays, articles that use code instead of writing (think these things are super-cringe) but would be interesting to abstract some things from code and use them as writing method
        use these kind of technics as a writing method
        template used in industry, offer different kind of approach about documentation and understand what do they say, what do they do
        idea writing as code

        example of that writing: ... replace words is writing
        find a meaningful way, critical way to use the writing machines

        >> do something that my mum could read
        how to make sense of it also for others

last year started to work with idea of versioning, take already existing text and change some words to re-orient the context > text about graphic design as world buiidling, took the text and replaced some words and became software as world building

make outlines to start
start with the structure
content is about structure

project proposal more narrative/theoretical
thesis more practical

about the form

• data structures (list, loop, conditional, tree) as writing machine
• automatic writing or developing tools to write
• haunted surfaces or how to re-enchant dry formats

about the contents

ecology of software documentation more zspecifically in the context of software programming

1. materiality

• what is written?
  • making space for the code in the world and viceversa
  • kind of language, intensity (level of details), accessibility
  • how is it structured?
• surfaces
  • reference
  • manual
  • forum
  • tutorial

2. actors involved

• who has to write it?
• who gets to read it?
• who is excluded?

3. economy around it

• value of documentation
• documentation work is work
• economy of different knowledges

--- ok v2 ---

mode of address

• write with a mix of diverse registry, in order to have several layers of accessibility

• something that my parents, that are outside this bubble, could understand

• imagine the tone of a discussion around a technical manual: how can we make it more accessible? how can we make it more clear? some jokes not 100% related. technicalities. how could it work for someone with a different background?

• imagine a list, so in a way both ultra-linear and non-linear narration

• develop a writing machine for this. a specific way to write the thesis. that could be (ideas):

  • tagging aesthetic:
    • a lot of short pieces tagged with different categories
    • that could be aggregated by topic, or chronologically or -z
  • sortable list

forms of the list

• a
  • b
  • c
  • ... (can grow)
• e
  • f
  • g

Coding Contingencies.

I want to write about worlding around software.

How do you chose a particular programming language, the coding style, the development environment and ecosystem, the infrastructure which runs the code, and so on? These are not just technical choices, but rather coding contingencies.

These contingencies are situated in precise contexts. Programming then is not just sharing code, but sharing context. It's 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.

More specifically, I would like to focus on software documentation as a surface for world-building.

The plan:

0. 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.

1. Documentation x Worlding

   1. Excerpts from API Worlding, versioned essay from Tiger Dingsun.

   2. When there is documentation

      1. Who writes? Who reads?
      2. Language, modes of address.
      3. Neoliberal documentation

   3. And when there is not

      1. A way to reactivate/reclaim code?
      2. Ways of writing, economies of knowledges
      3. Practice proposals

   4. Worlding through documentations mixtape

      1. Excerpts from documentations that world
      2. Individuate approaches and angles

2. Different case studies read through strategies of 1.4.2

   1. Cases study

      1. Soupboat
      2. 100R
      3. Permacomputing

   2. A list of devices to articulate software documentation as a form of care (project overview)

---

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.

• feed
• content aggregation
• multiple reading paths