Software development would seem to be a quintessential example of today'sInternet-enabled "knowledge work"--a global profession not bound by the constraints ofgeography. In Coding Places, Yuri Takhteyev looks at the work of softwaredevelopers who inhabit two contexts: a geographical area--in this case, greater Rio de Janeiro--anda "world of practice," a global system of activities linked by shared meanings and jointpractice. The work of the Brazilian developers, Takhteyev discovers, reveals a paradox of the worldof software: it is both diffuse and sharply centralized. The world of software revolves around ahandful of places--in particular, the San Francisco Bay area--that exercise substantial control overboth the material and cultural elements of software production. Takhteyev shows how in this contextBrazilian software developers work to find their place in the world of software and to bring itsbenefits to their city. Takhteyev's study closely examines Lua, an open source programming languagedeveloped in Rio but used in such internationally popular products as World ofWarcraft and Angry Birds. He shows that Lua had to be separated fromits local origins on the periphery in order to achieve success abroad. The developers, Portuguesespeakers, used English in much of their work on Lua. By bringing to light the work that peripheralpractitioners must do to give software its seeming universality, Takhteyev offers a revealingperspective on the not-so-flat world of globalization.
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