Software Studies - Lexicon

I've been reading Matthew Fullers book "Software Studies\ a Lexicon". It's a collection of essays witten by various authors gathered to form a sequence of 'speculative, expository and critical' enquiries into software from different perspectives namely: digital objects, languages and logical structures, in an attempt to uncover  (at various scales of interpretation) the 'stuff' of software.
"Software makes possible much of the contemporary world. This collection proposes an exercise in the rapid prototyping of transversal and critical approaches to such stuff.". Further, these ways of thinking leak out of the domain of logic and into the everyday world. They are useful then in determining what software is and "the many ways in which it exists, is experienced and is thought through"(pp1).

Chapter titles (or scales of interpretation):

algorithm
analog
button
class library
code
codecs
computing power
concurrent versions system
copy
data visualization
elegance
ethnocomputing
function
glitch
import / export
information
intelligence
interaction
interface
internationalization
interrupt
language
lists
loop
memory
obfuscated code
object orientation
perl
pixel
preferences
programmability
sonic algorithm
source code
system event sounds
text virus
timeline (sonic)
variable
weird languages

Scales of interpretation is a great phrase. It connects the actions of ourselves with machines (through software) with levels of visibility (abstraction - bit code to timeline which it is possible to traverse up and down). Some of the chapter titles are good thinking handles for my own ends too, which is nice. I produced my own list of keywords and made them look pretty here. Not quite how I envisaged - would be good if they were cast in concrete! Anyway, investigating words with dual meanings (i.e from different disciplines/ perspectives) is interesting and I have been thinking about different possible 'critical approaches' to software - material digital culture/ digital objects. Some articles (Brown and Latour) feature debate from archeology, which is interesting and worth following perhaps?

Book available as PDF here:
http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog/files/2010/02/softwarestudies.pdf