The Question Concerning Software

Mondays, 4:15-6:15pm, 32-G707 (HCI Lounge)

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. We ask the question concerning technology when we ask what it is. Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question. One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human activity.

Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”

Software, entangled with society, challenges its own “merely instrumental, merely anthropological” definition. Software reveals itself in its dizzyingly high stakes in the digital age, and in the ourobouric chase of technology and culture that implicates all human activity. The design of software, then, takes on a correspondingly weighty role. It behooves us to inquire into the essence of software.

We will engage with a significant body of primary works in philosophy of design and technology in order to better understand and critique historical and contemporary currents of technological thought. We will analyze the social and political structures that interact dialectically with technology, investigate the phenomenology of information technology, and clarify the ethical questions that float heavily today. By contending with both software engineering doctrine and key philosophical works, we aim to develop our thinking, provide context for the current moment, and imagine the design discipline of the future.

For questioning is the piety of thought.

Ibid.