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3. Hello worlding
The third section is focused on worlding, and the relation between code, documentation practices and political aesthetic.
Here documentation is seen as a surface that could host principles in close contact with algorithms, letting them entangle and shape each other. A way to orientate our instruments towards "non-extractive relationships, but in the meantime, being accountable for the ones they are complicit with." (A Wishlist for Trans*feminist Servers, 2022)
References for technology and worlding: Trans*feminist Servers, Zach Blas, Tiger Ding Sun, James Bridle, Soon and Cox, Richard Gabriel.
Case studies: The soupboat. Avantwhatever.net. Queer Motto API. The Screenless Office. The uxn ecosystem. list wip
Going with the flows
There could be several approaches for making worlds around software. Here are some keywords to refer to the kind of flow these worlding practices activate. To reclaim is to get something back: something that was stolen, or taken away, or lost, or forgotten. To reenchant means to intercept and reorientate towards different directions. To readjust a process, or to move for a different purpose. To reassure serves as prompt to keep going. It helps making meaning together, and refresh ideas. It offers way to register choices, keep track and share what has been done so far.
These labels are open and loose, overlapping and not mutually exclusive, temporary and on the move. They are meant to change, to expire fast, and going bad even faster: they require continuous treatments and repeated efforts. That's why I'm naming them all after the re prefix: to aknowledge their being in progress, second hand again, already contaminated. Borrowed by friends and foes, that had borrowed themselves from someone else. One should diffidate of these categories because they're instable. Nonetheless, they offer ways to visualize different strategies to create worlds around software.
reclaim take back
reenchant intercept
reassure keep going
reclaim renegotiate, recuperate, remember, refuse, reactivate
reenchant redirect, rebirth, reboot, rebrand, redeem
reassure refrain, refresh, regret, reaffirm, register, readme
reclaim
There seems to be a risk in reducing sociality around software to a conflict between "friends and foes": a risk to reproduce forms of exclusion and violence typical of the IT world. To just swap good and bad, and offer clean solutions.
Try instead to apply Chantal Mouffle's concept of agonistic politics to software development, intended as struggle between different hegemonic projects.
How can documentation create new spaces around code? Where new spaces means spaces for who are excluded.
Think about the works around queerying technologies, from Zach Blass to Trans\*feminist servers, to Queerying UNIX, to 360 degrees of proximity, the Queer motto API.
Think about projects related to accessibility, and space built by and for people with diverse ability. Alt-text poetry could be a good starting point.
Think about the efforts to create safe spaces to learn.
reenchant
Reenchanting code cannot be just a process of rebranding. Cannot be just a matter of changing the visual identity of the documentation, or washing it green or pink or black, or to capitalize on the inclusion of minorities.
Re-enchanting code means to create new narrations around software. As the artist James Bridle writes trying to untangle the complex social and environmental implications of digital computation: "Technology is not mere tool making and tool use: it is the making of metaphors". (James Bridle, 2018) These metaphors, like code documentation, influence the way we think and use our tools.
Example:Master-slave examples on version control software documentation. See [BitKeeper](https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/HOWTO. ask#L223)Example:The military term deploy adopted by CI/CD systems such as the one on GitLab.Example:The naming of group of servers as fleet on AWS documentation, a term referring to naval formation, again with military connotation.
These metaphors orient code in the world. They reinforce, highlight and validate certain practices. A fleet implies centralized control, a swarm implies direct influences between participants, a federation implies certain degrees of independence, etc.
Nanni Moretti was slapping people in the face to remark the importance of words and their usage. In the movie Palombella Rossa, the main character suffered from memory loss after a car accident, and every dialogue was a precious handhold to find back his lost identity. His struggle was less concerning the correct usage of italian language, and more related to the conceiled history in every word. A missing link between literal meaning of a term, and its broader traditions of uses, misuses, and transformations. The difference between talking and talking within a context.
To re-enchant code then means not only to find & replace terms throughout the documentation, but to re-trace genealogies, to intercept and re-orient narrations, and offer a redemption arc to those projects that were abandoned. To re-enchant code means to coat new systems of meanings around it.
A good example is the work of documentation around the Uxn ecosystem, a personal computing stack initiated by the 100 Rabbits collective.
To meet their needs for a portable and lightweight infrastructure, and reduce the energy consumption of their digital tools (in order to live and work on a wind & solar powered sailboat)
The two of them live on a sailboat since, mostly offline and mostly offgrid.
To meet their needs for a portable and lightweight infrastructure they progressively moved away from the industry-standard toolchain
... Weathering software winter --> plan-9 and esolangs seen through the lens of permacomputing
from personal project to broader community
see sejo vga introduction to uxn programming
see different implementation of uxn
The same with DuskOS, a small operative system that reactivate the ancient programming language Forth within ecological perspectives
Reassure
We tend to put ourselves in difficult situations. By aknowledging complex problems, we aknowledge also the impossibility for simple solutions.
It would be easier to believe in technosolutionism: to think that issues such as biased algorithms or discrimination in IT could simply be solved by installing a new product, or updating our software to the last version, or writing code documentation following a new innovative framework.
But then what are we doing? If all these efforts to write documentation are not revolutionary, if they don't bear solutions, it they tackle minimal portions of major and systemic issues. Where is the twist in this idea of code documentation as publishing practice?
Three sources that could be explored here relate to an alternative to the model of technosolutionism
- the plot of her undoing - saidiya hartman - the undoing of the plot
- federico campagna - technics and magic - taqiyya, kitman and secret - education vs initiation
- a way of saying from bergamo dialect about fire and embers
documentation to keep going, to reassure, to bond