David A. Ross (2003), 'Radical Software Redux', http:///e/ross.html

Key to a historical understanding of the term software art is the link to the Radical Software journal published by the Raindance collective in the late 1960s and early 1970s (available as PDF downloads from http://www.radicalsoftware.org). A statement from issue one gives some idea of its project: 'Power is no longer measured in land, labour or capital, but by access to information and the means to disseminate it.' (Ross, 2003) The belief was that the proliferation of video hardware in particular might contribute to social transformation but operated at the level of software - to represent the radical use of the hardware. The rise of civil rights movement and a general mistrust of the communications media on offer required more independent and alternative media and cultural practices. Those associated with this project 'imagined a world in which the contest of ideas and values could take place freely and openly, outside of the existing institutional framework and in active opposition to the worldview constructed and maintained by broadcast commercial TV. They proposed not only a re-ordered power structure, but also a new information order in which the very idea of hierarchical power structure might be transformed or even eliminated.' (Ross, 2003) The journal was produced with utopian zeal laced with ecological concerns. Its current availability on the internet as PDF download is thoroughly in keeping with its 'hippy' ethos and publishing enterprises in the context of the public sphere. It was a journal designed in the spirit of social sculpture in which new technologies might be used for revolutionary purpose (it is the availability of the video portapak that inspires this view). In this sense, what is radical about software is that it acts upon hardware, and it is our collective responsibility to take action in this way to transform hardware into something radical.