Title: Introduction: Bot Logic
Slug: 01-s4-introduction
Date: 2020-11-01 12:00
Summary: Bots as computational infrapunctures.

*Infrapuncture* is a helpful term at a time when there is a lot of discussion around the political roles of automated agents in communication platforms. Making a bot can be a way to probe and understand potential forms of interventions, create new imaginaries or deflate existing hegemonic structures. 

A bot is however always relying on the technical restrictions and possibilities of interaction defined by the infrastructure. In order to run a bot, a technical understanding of this infrastructure is therfor required. The API (Application Programming Inferface) is an important entry point here. This technical framework provides a programming interface to communicate with a system. The API can be understood as a *door protocol* that is designed by the owner of an infrastructure, which eventually defines the technical imaginary of a platform.

Before launching a bot into a digital environment, the bot maker does not only need to find a technical entry point, but also a social one. Writing a bot does not only imply technical knowledge about an API of a platform, it also implies a thorough understanding of what determines the possibilities of interaction and the social norms established within a social environment.

By introducing *bot logic*, the aim of this section is to highlight the sociality that shapes (or is shaped by) bots.

<!-- The editor community of English Wikipedia consists, for example, of both humans and bots. The interactions between them go beyond the maintenance of Wikipedia. Instead, affective relations are formed wherein the bots are anthropomorphised. In the case of Wikipedia, it means that a bot maker needs to develop an understanding of the social dynamics of the community of editors and users of Wikipedia, in order to make a bot that is embedded well into the community. The understanding of Wikipedia's social dynamics are crucial in order to make a bot that can interact with the work of multiple individuals that edit Wikipedia, ranging from first-time editors, dedicated editors, groups coming together during edit-a-thon or different kind of trolls. And that's of course just one example. Bots act differently depending on the platform on which they are running. -->

<!-- While deconstructing infrastructures in order to find the points of stress, harm or hurt, the undoing is as important as the doing. Deconstruction can happen simultaneously to construction and in fact this is the strength of accupuncture: it does not work on its own. -->