Towards a hermeneutic definition of software

Abstract

The paper intends to establish a comprehensive definition of software from a postphenomenological and hermeneutic point of view. It intends to show the contribution of continental philosophy to the study of new technologies. In section "Introduction: why do we need a comprehensive definition of software?," I underline the need for a philosophical analysis that can highlight the multifaceted and paradoxical nature of software. In section "Engineering in written form: the five criteria," starting from some remarks on the history of programming languages, I define a list of minimal requirements (five criteria) that something needs to meet to be qualified as software. All these requirements share two essential features: the written form and the effectiveness, that is, the need to be executed by a physical machine. In section "Software as text: a hermeneutic model," I focus on software as form of writing. I develop this idea by using Ricoeur's hermeneutic model. I claim that software is a type of text. In section "The grammatology of microprocessor," I focus on the second aforementioned feature: the effectiveness of software. I claim that this effectiveness is based on the analogy between electric circuitries and Boolean logic. Software is a writing and rewriting process that implies an interpretation on two levels, epistemological and ontological.

A Study of Technological Intentionality in C++ and Generative Adversarial Model: Phenomenological and Postphenomenological Perspectives

“…intentionality. As a result, the transformation from the code to the digital objects cannot be tackled by just addressing the 'translation' from the language of the programmer to the language generating the final object, as many contemporary researchers in the field of digital hermeneutics claim, because the program is an almost 'alive' entity which shapes and gives meaning to the process (Possati, 2020;Romele, 2020).…”