923 B
Title: Introduction: Bot Logic Slug: 01-s4-introduction Date: 2020-11-01 12:00 Summary:
Bots as infrapunctures
Infrapuncture is a helpful term at a time when there is a lot of discussion around the political roles of automated agents in digital infrastructures.
Many online communities engage with bots, for example the editor community of English Wikipedia, which consists 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. So writing a bot implies not only to understand the API (Application Programming Inferface) of the platform, what determines the possibilities of interaction, but also the social norms established within the community of editors and users of Wikipedia.
And that's of course just one example. Bots act differently depending on the platform on which they are running.