FCJ-128 A Programmable Platform? Drupal, Modularity, and the Future of the Web

Sent as a walking advertisement of Canada’s technology sector, I arrived in Argentina to help a women’s rights organization develop a new website. I began using the Drupal content management platform to construct the site. Its interface brought me into the rarified world of web programming. My experience provides a way of entry into the Drupal platform – a platform I believe is re-programmable. The paper introduces the concept of re-programmability as a processes by which users and code interact to alter software’s running code, and works out this concept through the case of Drupal and how its modular code can be re-programmed by its users. The paper utilizes the theory of transduction to flip the critique of web2.0 platforms on its head – focusing on the processes of becoming a platform, rather than the platform as a final state. This offers a new line of critique for web2.0 platforms, namely how they enact their re-programming.