Re: <nettime> Software Takes Command (a new book by Lev Manovich)

[Søren Pold <pold@multimedia.au.dk>]

Looks like an interesting book, that effectively argues for the
establishing of software studies as a discipline and research field.
Interesting to follow what Lev Manovich and colleagues can do with
this at UCSD and with the book. However, a quick 'software-reading'
(using the "search" command) of Lev Manovich's book seems to suggest
that the (partly) non-US traditions of software studies, software art
and live coding, has disappeared almost entirely from view and the
perspective is now on (also important) computing pioneers such as
Kay/Goldberg, Ted Nelson etc. After all we've had software art debated
at festivals like Transmediale and Ars Electronica, it has had its
own dedicated festivals with the Read_me festivals and the Runme.org
where lots of software studies work has been discussed and published
by people like Florian Cramer, Inke Arns, Alex McLean, Adrian Ward,
Geoff Cox, Olga Goriunova, and journals like Neural and Mute (just
to mention some...). Only the key important work of Matthew Fuller,
and the Rotterdam workshop and lexicon he organized has made it into
the book and the a-list of researchers on page 8. Also the role of
art seems diminishing in the book - cf the speculation on the role
of art towards the end of the book. Perhaps these two observations
are related? Just like netart has a tendency to be forgot with the
web2.0 hype, perhaps software art will be forgotten, dead and buried,
when software studies become a 'serious' discipline studying to
'real' software? Or perhaps it is just related to the perspective and
strategy of the book? Well I look forward to reading the book and hope
it will further discussions and activities around software studies
(and software art!).

Cheers from the Olde World.

Soeren Pold

geert lovink skrev:
> Lev Manovich
> SOFTWARE TAKES COMMAND
>
> DOWNLOAD THE BOOK:
> PDF | no footnotes
> DOC | includes footnotes
>
> http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html
>
> VERSION:
> November 20, 2008.
>
> Please note that this version has not been proofread yet, and it is  
> also missing illustrations.
>
> Length: 82,071 Words (including footnotes).






#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org