[polynox]

I agree and you are correct that concept of legibility was central, however going from the text now I believe that James takes specific issue with joint combination of both the exercise of state authority as well as the blindness that is implied by high modernism. Starting on page 88:

> I believe that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements. The first is the aspiration to the administrative ordering of nature and society, ... The second element is the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state as an instrument for achieving those designs. The third element is a weakened or prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist those plans.

I believe my comment still stands, in responding to not the book but the author of the comment, in that framework I'm describing, assuming the thesis of the book is true, then the second element is not met by the mere publication of software. Rather it is the foisting of such software upon users that is the act of power or other covert means by which choice is restricted such as controlling the bounds of publication or else the centralizing nature of capital investment in software that by sheer bad luck it turns out that perhaps we just end up with a few pseudo monopolies because software as a capital expense is ... well, expensive to develop.