Overview
- Offers the first historical-philosophical research on the origins of software
- Provides a rigorous definition of software
- Sheds light on all the transformations (imaginative, political, and social) that software conveys.
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About this book
This book claims that continental philosophy gives us a new understanding of digital technology, and software in particular; its main thesis being that software is like a text, so it involves a hermeneutic process. A hermeneutic understanding of software allows us to explain those aspects of software that escape a strictly technical definition, such as the relationship with the user, the human being, and the social and cultural transformations that software produces. The starting point of the book is the fracture between living experience and the code. In the first chapter, the author argues that the code is the origin of the digital experience, while remaining hidden, invisible. The second chapter explores how the software can be seen as a text in Ricoeur’s sense. Before being an algorithm, code or problem solving, software is an act of interpretation. The third chapter connects software to the history of writing, following Kittler’s suggestions. The fourth chapter unifies the two parts of the book, the historical and the theoretical, from a Kantian perspective. The central thesis is that software is a form of reflective judgment, namely, digital reflective judgement.
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Keywords
Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Luca M. Possati is a Researcher in Philosophy at the University of Porto, Portugal. His fields of investigation are Philosophy of Technology and Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of many studies in Phenomenology and the History of Philosophy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Software as Hermeneutics
Book Subtitle: A Philosophical and Historical Study
Authors: Luca M. Possati
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63610-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-63609-8Published: 25 June 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-63612-8Published: 26 June 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-63610-4Published: 24 June 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 193
Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Technology, Hermeneutics