% "The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation is the obsessive fantasy
% of optimization turned on its head and stuck to the ceiling of a self-reflecting
% elevator. It is the ultimate book, with almost 300 pages of dos and don'ts, of
% forgotten histories and un-inevitable futures, of mindful agile actions and
% improvisational service architectures, of any and all things that you can and
% cannot imagine needing in a techno-galaxy."     
% ☆☆☆☆☆☆

% TOCITEM: Introduction T:4

**The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation**

> I am less interested in the critical practice of reflection,
> of showing once-again that the emperor has no clothes, than in
> finding a way to diffract critical inquiry in order to make
> difference patterns in a more worldly way.
> [@haraway:1996:witness]

A spectre is haunting the galaxy. It is not revolutionary [@marx:1848:cmanifesto], it is not just another global scale vulnerability either [@meltdown:2018:spectre17]. No matter where you happen to be, with your phone or watched over by a passing satellite, software daemons are running somewhere in the background. Look! There they are, staring right back at you. Software's entanglement in the everyday appears complete, but is it really? Let's look more closely.

We find ourselves in a universe built on the 1990s revival of a 1960s dream: software as a service (SaaS) [@haigh:2001:soft60], a framework in which the _use_ of software has increasingly been knitted into the _production_ of software. While the rhetoric, rights, and procedures that proliferate in this universe suggest that software production and consumption constitute separate realms, this knitting together radically alters the operative role of software in society. The corresponding shifts ripple across galaxies, through social structures, working conditions, and trans-universal logistics. It results in a profusion of apparatuses that aspire to be seamless while optimizing and monetizing individual and collective flows of information in line with the interests of a handful of actors. The diffusion of software services affects individuals and communities in the form of intensified identity shaping and self-management. It also transforms the public by capturing institutions and common use infrastructures in supercharged start-up visions or the inertia of tech giants. As more and more software centralizes data flows in _cloud services_, effectively collapsing all societal spheres into the same processing logic, their service oriented architectures come to blur the last traces of the thin line that separates bio- from necro-politics.[@hu:2015:prehistory]

And so software spins its web around us. As it twists we turn, trying to take some distance, only to realize that we are too well tangled in its gooey net. Caught upside down and dangling[^]{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTZhrwR7CoE} we ask: How can we interact, respond to, and think with software? What approaches can we use to recognize the agency of different actors, their ways of working, and their politics? What methods of observation are conducive to critical inquiry and affirmative discord? How can we resurface software and find sites where its infrastructures are reconfiguring the everyday? How can we take stock of the ways software is always at work, especially where it is designed to disappear?

Overloaded by all these questions, vexed by constant pop-ups and push notifications, a fantasy takes shape: Let's smash our devices with a sledge hammer, throw them out, retreat off grid and out of sight, and live happy software-free lives. But this fantasy cannot hold, nor can it hold us. While 'disconnection' seems to be the latest luxury-item for tech-billionaires -- the same gang that profits from the extension of connectivity -- for most human and non-human inhabitants of this galaxy unplugging is not an option. Even those that experienced the joy that comes from catapulting a smart device across the street know that the liberating feeling that follows does not last. We need a better option: one that lets us poke and push back at the daemons that insist on saturating our time and surrounding our environment.

In June 2017 we gathered with a group of Software Curious Persons (% REFREF: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/observatory.guide.everyonescp) in Brussels for six days at the Techno-Galactic Software Observatory[^]{The Techno-Galactic Software was a worksession organised by Constant. http://constantvzw.org/site/-The-Technogalactic-Software-Observatory-.html}. There we engaged in the observation of the multiple scales of software, the industries and communities that produce it and their devastatingly relational political economies. While clutching at our computers and keyboards, we picked up the word _observation_, turning it over and around. We brought it right up to our noses and then held it outstretched to get a better look at the term's colonial and positivist legacy. Observation, and the enabling of it through intensive data-centric feedback mechanisms, is part of the cybernetic spells that underpin the present day software production-consumption complex. Holding the pain and the promise of our limitations, of our situated point of view, we synced our breath to the rhythm of our software and, with an agile sun salutation, began to explore the possibilities of engagement with software's implications. "Excuse me, do you know where to find the Techno-Galactic Walk-in Clinic?"

The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation was collectively produced as an outcome of this temporary Observatory. The methods tried and tested there were collected and compiled in this guide. Although our modest acts of witnessing are incomplete and ongoing, through this kind of collective ghost-hunting we found some ways for being in, around, through, and with software.

This guide invites you to experiment with ways to stay with the trouble of software. In it you will find a set of practical and impractical tools for the tactical (mis)use of software, empowering and enabling users to resist embedded paradigms and assumptions. It is a collection of methods for approaching software, experiencing its myths and realities, its risks and benefits. Drawing on theories of software and computation developed in the wilderness of academia and through rigorously undisciplined research, we grounded our methods in hands-on exercises and experiments that you can now try at home. These methods were developed in and inspired by the context of software production, hacker culture, software studies, computer science research, Free Software communities, privacy activism, and artistic practice. Exploring and cross-contaminating ways of looking from these different milieus, we realised that reading is not enough. Software is not just text, formats are always already in execution, code produces its own normative perspective and depth of field. 

Observation is one potential beginning -- a way to turn engagement into tickling. Come join us at the edge of the universe, on the metro platform, at your kitchen table or at your next biometric identification, as we mark and measure critical distances from and entanglements with the seemingly endless software systems that surround us.


## Invitation to The Walk-in Clinic, June 2017:

> Do you suffer from the disappearance of your software into the cloud,
> feel oppressed by unequal user privilege, or experience the torment of
> software-ransom of any sort?
> Bring your devices and interfaces to the World Trade Center!
> With the help of a clear and in-depth session, at the Techno-Galactic
> Walk-In Clinic we guarantee immediate results.
> The  Walk-In Clinic provides free hands-on observations to software
> curious  people of all kinds. A wide range of professional and amateur 
> practitioners will provide you with Software-as-a-Critique-as-a-Service
> on the spot. Available services range from immediate interface critique, 
> collaborative code inspection, data dowsing, various forms of network
> analyses, unusability testing, identification of unknown viruses,
> risk assessment, opening of black-boxes and more.
> Free software observations provided.
> Last intake at 16:45.

% On the following pages:
% Software as a Critique as a Service (SaaCaaS) Directory
% and intake forms for Software Curious People (SCP)

% TEXIN: \vfill

% PDF: http://observatory.constantvzw.org/documents/2017_techno_galactic_Poster_films_A2_V2.pdf I W:.95
% INFO: Announcing the Walk-in Clinic. Poster design: Harrisson

% PDF: http://observatory.constantvzw.org/documents/masterlist_twosides_NEU.pdf 2 1x1
% INFO: Software as a Critique as a Service (SaaCaaS) Directory
% PDF: http://observatory.constantvzw.org/documents/masterlist_twosides_NEU.pdf 1 1x1
% INFO: Software as a Critique as a Service (SaaCaaS) Directory


(% CARLINSAYS: I would suggest switching the order of these pages so the intake form is first and the list of services poster is second. It also seems important to make sure that the two page list of services poster for the clinic is printed on pages that are facing each other. If they are already set to do that then maybe nix my suggestion of moving the intake form up, but if they are not then that would be one way to shift the pages to make that happen.)