David M. Berry - The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age

Writing remains to me an unusual practice that transforms my experience of the world whilst under the spell of writing. This book has had a particularly intensive birth, written as it is in the middle of the academic year and with everyday life swirling around it with all the attendant distractions. It has emerged from a number of related research themes that continue to guide my work and are focused on the challenge to thinking that is posed by technology. This work has been influenced, inspired, guided and challenged by such a plethora of authors that it is not possible to list them all here. However, I feel that they are all flowing in different modulations and intensities through the text that follows. I pass on this text in the hope that future readers will find something interesting in a subject I continue to find deeply fascinating.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nikki Cooper, the Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict, Power, and Empire, and the Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH) at Swansea University for funding the workshop, The Computational Turn, which explored key issues around software. Thanks also to N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich and the other participants at this workshop who enthusiastically discussed many of the themes pertinent to this book in a rigorous and critical setting. I would also like to thank the many people who gave comments and suggestions to the text as it developed. In particular, were presented at the New Materialisms and Digital Culture: An International Symposium on Contemporary Arts, Media and Cultural Theory at Anglia Ruskin University, and I would like to thank Jussi Parikka and Milla Tiainen for their invitation. I would also like to make a special note of thanks to Trine Bjrkmann Berry for reading and correcting early drafts of the chapters.

This book would not have been possible without the support and generosity of a great number of friends and colleagues at Swansea University who were always available to discuss subjects I found interesting. In particular, Claes Belfrage and Christian De Cock and the participants in the Cultural Political Economy research group, who may not realise that many of the ideas in the book were also aired there. I would also like to thank students on the MA Digital Media and my PhD students: Faustin Chongombe, Leighton Evans, Mostyn Jones, and Sian Rees for their useful contributions and discussions over the course of the year. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Trine, and my children Helene, Henrik Isak, and Hedda Emilie, for waiting patiently, seemingly forever, to go to the beach.

DMB
Swansea, July 2010

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