Grayson Nowak The Interface Effect (Alexander R.

Galloway) Chapter 2 Software and Ideology Thesis / Purpose Galloway intends to look underneath the interface and explore the ideological structure of software. Is software a functional analog of ideology, and if so, what are the implications? Methodology Structures his argument around Wendy Hui Kyong Chuns article On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge which believes that software is a functional analog to ideology. Along the way, Galloway cites Marx, Manovich, Kittler, Jameson, Gramsci, and others (many of which are cited throughout the book) for clarification purposes, and to draw deeper issues out of the problems he notes throughout. Brief Summary An Analog - The interface is ultimately something beyond the screen, namely a general technique of mediation evident at all levels; is also an allegorical device that can be used to find out more about culture (54). Do new media serve as a platform of ideological liberation as an enslaving apparatus of control? Is there a similarity in the constructions of ideology and software? Ideology is akin to Marxist history: reification of social practices and relations and the representation of them (56). Software does just this, mathematically, to its obvious limits; we recognize the inherent imperfection immediately, and can ignore it. Ideology is both a matter of ones experienced life and culture and a matter of critique of ones experiences. Ideology an antidote to philosophy and metaphysics or a threat to clear thinking? Ideology as an explanation of all alienation (a la original sin)? These two previous ideas synthesize into ideology becoming a system of total thought (57). Ideology is a problematic conceptual interface in which theoretical problems arise and are generated and sustained precisely as problems in themselves -> (Chun) software = ideology in code (58). Software requires programmers and users. In the modern, software driven culture industry, cultural and industrial have the same boundaries and potentially the same goals. The interface effect drives data to the world of ideas and machines to the world of technology (59). Software is an example

of technical transcoding without figuration, that nevertheless coexists with an exceedingly high level of ideological fetishism and misrecognition; we see the representations of data on our screens and know that they are not actual folders (etc), but we ignore this and treat them as if they were folders (etc). Following from Marx, there is a dialectic of technical transcoding and fetishistic abstraction (61). New media hide as much as they show (61). Software, as well as other mediating technologies, is a paradox; its design is to make itself invisible which proves itself visible making the process of invisibility impossible; this is like language (62). Software requires both reflection and obfuscation (64). That is Functional - Software is mechanical ideology (69). Code is the only language that is executable (70). There is tension between software and ideology, however; software, more like a machine, has inconsistencies with ideology, which is like a narrative (71). Problem solved by noting that software may have (with regard to code but also the process of code) a beginning, middle, and end (73). Software is both scriptural and executable. (73). Interfaces are thus manifest (as screens and keyboards), but also latent within software as the mediation between internal and external levels of interaction (74). The technological apparatus has a fundamental indeterminacy (abstraction) (74). Fetishizing software and software concepts does not reveal any inherent shortcomings in software. (Long quote on page 76 The point in the first place.) Key Concepts Ideology Software Functionality Visible vs. Visual Reflection (meta objects) Obfuscation (encapsulation and transcoding) Thoughts / Questions 54-58, 61, 64, 69-77 54-56, 58-77 55, 69 61-64 64-65, 69 65-69

Do you agree that software is a sort of functional analog of ideology? For those that are more versed in programming than the rest of us, is what Galloway says viable? Does he seem to understand programming when he discusses the differences between the visible and the visual? Is the future of digital media that of more disavowal (like with computer folders, etc?)? Is our interfacing with modern media pushing us further towards a more digital society? Is the digital solving the worlds problems (implied by the final large quote on 76), or is it making them worse? Is our interface with digital media helping or hurting us?