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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 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.
Making a bot can also be a way to probe and understand potential forms of interventions, create new imaginaries or deflate existing hegemonic structures.
Before launching a bot into a digital environment, the bot maker needs find both a technical and a social entry point. Writing a bot does therefor not only imply technical knowledge about an API (Application Programming Inferface) 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. 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. And that's of course just one example. Bots act differently depending on the platform on which they are running.
By introducing this as bot logic, the aim is to highlight the sociality that shapes (or is shaped by) bots.