<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div>Hi</div><div><br></div><div>Trebor has asked me to introduce myself a number of times but I have just never found the opportunity. However with the general chorus of introductions I thought I would make an extra effort :-)</div><div><br></div><div>I am David Berry, based in the UK at Swansea University and my research is focussed around the concept of code, through notions developed through what is now being called 'software studies', but more particularly my work has engaged with Free/Libre and Open Source software. I recently published a monograph on FLOSS groups call <i>Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics Of Copyleft and Open Source </i>(Pluto 2008). I am extremely interested in concepts of the information society and how these relate to changes in the representation of and the means of production themselves, more concretely in changes in the notion of the commodity and its relation to labour-power. I am also looking at the nature of finance capital, especially its spectacular nature and its relation to technology and computability. My research spans the entire breadth of technology-related theory, including the philosophy of technology, phenomenology and actor-network theory (I am currently fascinated by Latour's rather interesting notion of the Plasma, for example). </div><div><br></div><div>In regard to the discussion I wonder if the focus on 'labour' needs to be unpacked with notions of the labour process, in addition to labour power itself, and the Marxian notion that 'moments are the elements of profit'. Certainly it is interesting to see the way in which Agile Programming and Extreme Programming, for example, concentrate on the spatial and temporal organisation of the programming process (both with a panoptic, or perhaps oligoptic (Latour), inflection) and the 'craft' dimension to programming increasingly under threat (one thinks here of UML/Z, and other mechanisms, mostly not completely successful, to deskill or automate elements of the process). Other important points in the rationalisation of programming include: modularity, code review/peer review, outsourcing of labour (even to open-source projects), and such like. Programming still takes time, and that time is being paid for somewhere, somehow, whether it be via a foundation, university, business entity or even by the individual themselves so we must not lose sight of the production and political economy of software/code but also the fact that the production of code is in someway also a consumption of other code (interesting to think of this in terms of Marx's depreciation model of machinery, but also linked to the notion of software aging). </div><div><br></div><div>Best</div><div><br></div><div>David</div><div><br></div><br><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>---</div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div>Dr. David M. Berry</div><div><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">Room 412</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">Media and Communications Department</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">School of Arts</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">University of Wales Swansea</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">Swansea</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">SA2 8PP</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 12, 9); ">Wales, UK</span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Web: <a href="http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/">http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#480C09"></font></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>