Means-End of Software

It has become common to replace a critical engagement of the graphical interface with what lies behind it: source code. Indeed, conventional interfaces tend to hide the workings of the computer and the complexity of its processes. In “There is no Software”, Friedrich Kittler claims: “We simply do not know what our writing does” (quoted in Druckery 332), referring to the ways that graphical interfaces largely dispense with the need for writing and hide the machine from its users. To Kittler, this is activated on the level of hardware, wherein “so-called protection software has been implemented in order to prevent ‘untrusted programs’ or ‘untrusted users’ from any access to the operating system’s kernel and input/output channels.”1 In such cases, the means are somewhat neglected for instrumental ends intent on implementing a certain degree of alienation from the production process. Part of the issue here lies in better expressing the processes that are running on a computer, and not least the relation between the writing, compiling and running of code, in order for the programmer and user to position themselves as an active part of the process.