Software as Hermeneutics : A Philosophical and Historical Study

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.

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.