Socioplastics 11906 The Software Ended, Its Categories Remained
A software system may occupy one technical interface while its procedures migrate into wider institutional practice. A fieldworker begins describing locations through database options; an administrator reorganises responsibilities around a dashboard; a resident learns which words make a problem actionable. AutomationDiffusion names the spread of automated categories, defaults and decision procedures into routines beyond the screen. Adrian Mackenzie studies software and technological mediation. Evgeny Morozov critiques technological solutionism and the political promises attached to digital tools. Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting’s Possible Bodies project investigates how bodies are rendered through computational and cultural systems. Their work helps trace how technical classifications become part of ordinary descriptions, workflows and institutional expectations. A project could follow one automated system from interface design into daily use. Researchers would compare its categories with staff language, decision records, public forms and the ways residents describe their needs. They could identify which habits began with the system and which were already present, while documenting how the categories changed as people adapted them. This evidence would show how software’s influence persists through repeated human practices. AutomationDiffusion directs attention to the afterlife of computational procedures. It helps institutions review whether a system’s categories still shape decisions after the software has been replaced or withdrawn. The marker treats automation as a relation among code, people, procedures and material environments. Mapping that relation can support revision of the forms and routines through which decisions continue to be made. It also helps staff and affected communities distinguish inherited habits from current policy and identify where new procedures are needed.
REFERENCES
Mackenzie, A. (2006) Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. New York: Peter Lang.
Morozov, E. (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: PublicAffairs.
Rocha, J. and Snelting, F. (2017) Possible Bodies. Ongoing collaborative research project.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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