In this chapter, we explore the variegated nature of software. In particular, we argue that a comprehension of software must appreciate two aspects of code; first, that code is a product of the world and second, that code does work in the world. Software as both product and process, we argue, needs to be understood within a framework that recognizes the contingent, relational, and situated nature of its development and use.

In this chapter we have detailed how we understand and conceptualize the nature of software. Code is an expression of how computation both capture the world within a system of thought (as algorithms and structures of capta) and a set of instructions that tell digital hardware and communication networks how to act in the world. For us, software needs to be theorized as both a contingent product of the world and a relational producer of the world. Software is written by programmers, individually and in teams, within diverse social, political, and economic contexts. The production of software unfolds — programming is performative and negotiated and code is mutable. Software possesses secondary agency that engenders it with high technicity. As such, software needs to be understood as an actant in the world — it augments, supplements, mediates, and regulates our lives and opens up new possibilities — but not in a deterministic way. Rather, software is afforded power by a network of contingencies that allows it do work in the world. Software transforms and reconfigures the world in relation to its own systems of thought. Thinking about software in these terms allows us to start to critically think through its nature and to consider where and how it works.