What is the relationship between software and ideology?
In a formal sense, computers understood as comprising software and hardware are ideology machines. They fulfill almost every formal definition of ideology we have, thus revealing the paucity of our understanding of ideology. Consider, for instance, the commonsense (Marxist) notion of ideology as false consciousness, as some false interpretative apparatus that veils one’s vision, but that can be torn asunder. The movie The Matrix expresses this view succinctly. In The Matrix, humans are literally duped by software; software produces an insidious “residual self-image” (a kind of false consciousness) that prevents humans from seeing the real, which is (á Jean Baudrillard) a desert. Not coincidently, The Matrix is a filmic representation of computer networks, for only cinema could visualize digital media as false consciousness so compellingly. Through this representation, cinema displaces its own metaphoric relationship to ideology and Plato’s cave.34 To accept cinema’s imaginings as accur
