Within the history of computing, the dichotomy between hardware and software has been stubbornly persistent. Yet the understanding of hardware as a mere offering of computational power, waiting to be used by software, is false. As networked devices become smaller, more personal, more intimate, more quotidian, more indistinguishable from daily life and the self alike, it is use value, not abstract potential, that drives the future of technological progress.

Software as Infrastructure is a project by e-flux Architecture as part of “Eyes of the City” at the 2019 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen).