txt/outline.md

title
Thesis outline

themes

worlding & software world building & situated software documentation as a surface for world building

worlding world building aesthetic approach a way to create loose yet coherent narrations

software situated software functional yet simbolic embedded in social contexts

reference https://ecotones.caveat.be/osp.html

could software documentation be a surface for world-building? world building and software? (exploration of coding contingencies)

what can practices of world building bring into the making of software? what are the relations between aesthetic and functionality? what could software benefit from process of world building?

0. coding contingencies
1. situated software and world building
2. documentation as an interface

could software documentation be a surface for world building?

participation in world building

sub relations between software and world building? writing documentation as a publishing practice? (more than technical writing, more than learning process, more than autorship)

• software is not an object in a vacuum

• it is embedded in contexts

• that project their narrations on the code

• technical, economical, cultural, creative, political

• these narrations orientate software in the world

• highlight certain aspects, hide others

• how to face these narrations

• sharing knowledge about software is sharing context

i.

I want to write about worlding around software.

How do you chose a particular programming language, a coding style, a development environment and ecosystem, an infrastructure where to run 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 providing 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.

ii.

semiotic triangle of graduation

The topological way to think and write (Law, Mol 2002) the thesis is to be found 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

At the moment I can see it as a feed with a tagging system. The plan is to gather contents and curate them in a non-linear fashion, so instead of following the index as a series of steps, imagine to read it as a coral-like creature, with materials forking and interfering with each other.

These contents will be a mix of diverse registry, from the essayistic to the technical to the anedoctic, in order to have several layers of accessibility. The consistency of the discourse will vary: some parts will be more narrative and some other more scattered.

iii.

Coding Contingencies
    Context of software studies
    Documentation as an interface between the code, the user, the developer, and the world.

Documentation as worlding

    Excerpts from API Worlding, versioned essay from T. Dingsun.

    When there is documentation
        Language, modes of address.
        Who writes? Who reads?

    And when there is not
        A space to reactivate/reclaim/reorientate code?
        Ways of writing, economies of knowledges
        Practice proposals

    Worlding through documentations mixtape
        Excerpts from documentations that world
        Individuate approaches and angles

Software as care

    Cases study articulated through the points emerged from 2.4.2
        Soupboat
        Hundred Rabbits, Tools ecosystem
        Permacomputing Wiki

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

Reference

100r.co. (n.d.). 100R — tools ecosystem. [online] Available at: https://100r.co/site/tools_ecosystem.html [Accessed 18 Nov. 2022].

Law, J. and Mol, A. (2002). Complexities social studies of knowledge practices. Durham: Duke University Press.

‌- permacomputing.net. (n.d.). permacomputing
. [online] Available at: https://permacomputing.net/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2022] .