Hey!! It's Teddie again, welcome back. Today we're talking software.
When I hear the word software, it’s really hard to come up with any kind of tangible definition. I know of computer software, that it exists, and that I probably see it every day, but I couldn’t explain to you exactly what it is or where it might be hiding. I think of the tiny panels inside my phone, circuit boards glued together with tiny signals somehow wirelessly escaping my little interface and travelling around the world to deliver bits of information. Thankfully, in his book Software Takes Command Lev Manovich reveals that software isn’t the mystical fibre optic cables or hard drives; instead, it’s actually the thing that brings the hard-wired confusion of computer science to meet the real, living world — “the very grounds and ‘stuff’ of media design”, Manovich quotes a colleague. But not only is it “stuff”, it’s also the very thing that connects us to everything digital, from Google to Photoshop, Facebook to the compass app on your phone (that I know you never use). Ironically, something that people (myself included) know so little about is the only key to accessing the seemingly endless stream of information coming from the internet and other digital tools.
It’s for this exact reason, as Manovich points out, that software is constantly affecting and being affected by culture and society. Similar to the back and forth of art and literature, software is ever changing alongside cultural shifts in values and interests, serving as both a catalyst and a response to societal changes. But arguably unlike the arts, software reaches across the globe to impact billions of lives simultaneously, influencing a globalize society at the click of a button (or however it is the developers create software updates). It’s interesting to think about how a key driver of societal change is consciously being designed and redesigned for us consumers.
Although I can’t say it is the primary goal of software developers to generate large-scale societal shifts, I find it particularly interesting that they have that power to do so. Manovich describes, for example, a shift in privacy in the 2000s: “the boundary between “personal information” and “public information” has been reconfigured as people started to routinely place their media on media sharing sites, and also communicate with others on social networks.” When software introduces us to new (seemingly harmless) tools, such as an option to share a file, it can quickly take affect on society and, in this case, debase previously long-lasting values (such as that of privacy). A similar, more drastic effect came from the eruption of social media, as people were encouraged to spend more of their time sharing their lives rather than actually living them. Then, as Manovich mentions, these social affects can be taken advantage of; “By encouraging users to conduct larger parts of their social and cultural lives on their sites, these services can both sell more adds to more people and ensure the continuous growth of their user base.” Now, not only does a select community of people have a huge power over social and cultural change, but also they can enact changes that only they get rewarded for.
While software is far from the first or only thing initiating these cultural shifts, software is among the first to accept immediate feedback through engagement (and non-engagement) and human attention — while we can’t (or at least, don’t) dip our brushes into the drying paint of a Picasso to change its colours, we can engage with software to support or prevent its growth in the digital world. When we like a friend’s photo on Instagram, or click on an ad, we actively lay out a pattern of what software was successful and what wasn’t, not only through the type of interaction but also in whether we interact at all; and this data allows software to conform so tightly to common social and cultural values in a way that arts could never. In a similar way, engagement gives software an ‘insider access’ to human behaviour, giving it a power to shape the way we conduct our lives without even intending to. It’s interesting to think that something we know so little about knows and affects so much of the way we live.
*if you find these kinds of discussions interesting, I highly recommend watching “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix - it talks all about the role of the internet and globalization on the real world!
