Software studies

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For the technical approaches to software, see Software engineering

Software studies is an academic research field which studies software systems and their cultural effects.

1 Overview
2 Examples
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Overview

Software studies is interdisciplinary, approaching software both as a technical artifact and from perspectives of the humanities and social sciences such as software history, software art criticism, software sociology, and cultural studies approaches to software.

Software studies is an emerging field. Recent firsts include the first published volume of essays (Matthew Fuller's "Software Studies: a Lexicon"),^[1] the first academic program (Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip-Fruin's "Software Studies Initiative" at U. California San Diego),^[2] and the first conference events (Software Studies Workshop 2006 and SoftWhere 2008).^[3]^[4]

While software studies approaches are often unlike the approaches of computer science or software engineering, which concern themselves primarily with software in information theory and in practical application, these fields all share emphasis on computer literacy, particularly in the areas of programming and source code. This emphasis on analyzing software sources and processes (rather than simply interfaces) often distinguishes software studies from academic studies of new media, which are usually restricted to discussions of interfaces and observable effects.

[edit] Examples

An example of the trend in software studies towards the analysis of source code is Mark Marino's manifesto "Critical Code Studies".^[5] Software studies approaches may involve not only reading but also writing code. An example is Noah Wardrip-Fruin's Expressive Processing,^[6] a book on software studies topics whose experimental online peer review was conducted using custom blog software developed with Institute for the Future of the Book^[7].