Software Studies: A Lexicon

Forty short entries by different authors, each defining a concept central to the cultural life of software: algorithm, code, interface, loop, variable, installation, and others. Fuller assembled contributors from media theory, computer science, art, and philosophy, producing a reference work that treats software neither as a purely technical domain nor as a metaphor but as a material practice with its own aesthetics and politics. The entries range from the historical — tracing the genealogy of specific programming constructs — to the speculative. The lexicon format works because it refuses a single grand theory and instead maps the field through multiple, sometimes contradictory perspectives. It effectively defined "software studies" as an academic discipline and remains the best entry point for anyone approaching software from the humanities.