ABSTRACT
This chapter formulates a conceptual perspective on software, starting from an attempt to situate the book in relation to existing takes on the subject. It then moves to a presentation and appropriation of Simondon’s philosophy of technology, which reserves a central place to technical creation and evolution. Here, we find an understanding of technicity as a domain of life that constitutes its own substance and regularity, whilst remaining a fundamental form of human gesture. Simondon’s inductive view, which frames technology as multitude of technical objects rather than idealized techne, grounds the conceptual and analytical apparatus then brought to the analysis of algorithmic techniques.
