ABSTRACT
Software’s philosophical implications are not only social and political but also metaphysical. Code channels human ingenuity and intention to produce a new, hybrid world — the cyborg world. It both creates and destroys distinctions, reworking our ontologies and therefore necessitating a revision of our politics. Code may both advance and counteract political imperatives: in this context, free software is not just a question of managing technology but of determining the contours of our selves and the politics we choose. Technology and politics become inseparable when technologized entities are political actors and objects of our political philosophy. A new political philosophy for this technological age must reflect the blurring of boundaries, and the new obscurities, that technology induces. The liberatory potential of free software lies in its potential to address both these effects.
