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Abstract
The effects of software (code) on the spatial formation of everyday life are best understood through a theoretical framework that utilizes the concepts of technicity (the productive power of technology to make things happen) and transduction (the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices). Examples from the lives of three Londoners illustrate that code makes a difference to everyday life because its technicity alternatively modulates space through processes of transduction. Space needs to be theorized as ontogenetic, that is, understood as continually being brought into existence through transductive practices (practices that change the conditions under which space is (re)made). The nature of space transduced by code is detailed and illustrated with respect to domestic living, work, communication, transport, and consumption.
Notes
1. Software is said to “crash” when it ceases to function.
2. Ontogenesis refers to how something comes to be, as opposed to ontology, which refers to what something is.
3. Much of the infrastructure of the utilities has evolved over many decades as a patchwork of systems have been installed, upgraded, and interlinked. Their true extent and complexity remain largely hidden from public view (see CitationClayton 2000).
4. The fieldwork consisted of conducting detailed software and hardware audits for journeys taking place in local environments and across the city to work. Each of the routes was traced by both authors, and the location and type of coded object and infrastructure were documented in a field notebook, onto a 1:1250 scale map, and by taking photographs.
5. Details from Transport for London, http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/capitalcams/index.shtml (last accessed 30 July 2003).
6. Details from Congestion Charging fact sheets: Camera enforcement, Transport for London, http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/cc_fact_sheet_enforcement.shtml (last accessed 30 July 2003).