How does control exist after decentralization?
the move from the modern disciplinary societies to societies of imperial control.
The reason for my essay is this curious “descending into the hidden abode of production.” The hidden abode of production means many things in the age of Empire.
It means descending into the real conditions of Third World chip-making factories
populated by the “destitute, excluded, repressed, exploited—and yet living!” working poor (156), just as it means descending into the boardrooms of dotcom start-ups
At the core of networked computing technologies is the concept of protocol. A
computer protocol is a set of rules that govern networked relations. The protocols
that govern the Internet, for example, are contained in what are called Request For
Comments (or RFC) documents. They are the written definitions of the protocols and
policies of the Internet. The RFCs are managed by the Networking Division of the
University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI). They are
freely available to anyone wishing to build hardware or software that meets their
specifications. The ISI is itself under the directive of the Internet Engineering Task
Force, an international, technocratic community of network scientists, and the Internet
Society, an altruistic but equally technocratic organization that wishes “[t]o assure
the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people
throughout the world” (Internet Society)
Protocol: like rules of driving on a highway. Protocols are highly
formal—that is, they encapsulate information inside a technically defined wrapper
while remaining relatively indifferent to the content of the information.
"It is common for contemporary critics to describe the Internet as an unpredictable
mass of data, rhizomatic and lacking central organization. This position goes roughly
like this: since new communication technologies are based on the elimination of
centralized command and hierarchical control, it follows that we are witnessing a
general disappearance of control as such. This could not be further from the truth.
Empire does much to dispel this myth in the social and political arenas. Whereas
Empire is how political control exists under decentralization, protocol is how technological control exists under decentralization."
The address “www.rhizome.org” is parsed in reverse, starting with the “org.” Thus,
in theory, the root server receives a request from the user and directs the user to another machine that has authority over the “org” domain, which in turn directs the user
to another machine that has authority over the “rhizome” subsection, which in turn
returns the IP address for the specific machine known as “www.” This process of deriving an IP address from a domain name is called resolution.
A common protocol leads to network articulation, while incompatible protocols leads to network disarticulation. For example, two computers running the DNS addressing protocol will be able to communicate effectively with each other about network addresses. Sharing the DNS protocol allows them to be networked. However, the same computers will not be able to communicate with a foreign device running, for example, the NIS addressing protocol or the WINS protocol. Without a shared protocol, there is no network.
For example, a decentralized network is precisely what gives the Internet Protocol its effectivity as a dominant protocol. Or to take another example, the flimsy, cross-platform nature of HTML is precisely what gives it its power as a protocological standard. Like Empire, if protocol dared to centralize, or dared to hierarchize, or dared to essentialize, it would fail.
We turn now to Michel Foucault to derive one final quality of protocol: the special existence of protocol in the “privileged” physical media of bodies...?
But the effects of distributed networks and protocological control on the marxist liberatory project are massive indeed. As Deleuze remarked to Negri several years before Empire: "It’s true that, even before control societies are fully in place, forms of delinquency or resistance (two different things) are also appearing. Computer piracy and viruses, for example, will replace strikes and what the nineteenth century called “sabotage” . . . You ask whether control or communication societies will lead to forms of resistance that might reopen the way for a communism . . . The key thing may be to create vacuoles of noncommunication, circuit breakers, so we can elude control. (1990, 175)
Liliana Bounegru's explanation: "In understanding networks in terms of their protocols, by
drawing on Paul Baran, Galloway demonstrates that, unlike common conceptions, the
distributed network, the network diagram specific to the Internet, does not remove
forms of organization or control, is not anarchic, chaotic, or entirely rhizomatic, but it
creates novel structures of organization and control. Protocol coincides with this new
apparatus of control in the core argument and subtitle of Galloway’s book: “protocol
is how technological control exists after decentralization.”
It means descending into the real conditions of Third World chip-making factories
populated by the “destitute, excluded, repressed, exploited—and yet living!” working poor (156), just as it means descending into the boardrooms of dotcom start-ups
At the core of networked computing technologies is the concept of protocol. A
computer protocol is a set of rules that govern networked relations. The protocols
that govern the Internet, for example, are contained in what are called Request For
Comments (or RFC) documents. They are the written definitions of the protocols and
policies of the Internet. The RFCs are managed by the Networking Division of the
University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI). They are
freely available to anyone wishing to build hardware or software that meets their
specifications. The ISI is itself under the directive of the Internet Engineering Task
Force, an international, technocratic community of network scientists, and the Internet
Society, an altruistic but equally technocratic organization that wishes “[t]o assure
the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people
throughout the world” (Internet Society)
Protocol: like rules of driving on a highway. Protocols are highly
formal—that is, they encapsulate information inside a technically defined wrapper
while remaining relatively indifferent to the content of the information.
"It is common for contemporary critics to describe the Internet as an unpredictable
mass of data, rhizomatic and lacking central organization. This position goes roughly
like this: since new communication technologies are based on the elimination of
centralized command and hierarchical control, it follows that we are witnessing a
general disappearance of control as such. This could not be further from the truth.
Empire does much to dispel this myth in the social and political arenas. Whereas
Empire is how political control exists under decentralization, protocol is how technological control exists under decentralization."
The address “www.rhizome.org” is parsed in reverse, starting with the “org.” Thus,
in theory, the root server receives a request from the user and directs the user to another machine that has authority over the “org” domain, which in turn directs the user
to another machine that has authority over the “rhizome” subsection, which in turn
returns the IP address for the specific machine known as “www.” This process of deriving an IP address from a domain name is called resolution.
A common protocol leads to network articulation, while incompatible protocols leads to network disarticulation. For example, two computers running the DNS addressing protocol will be able to communicate effectively with each other about network addresses. Sharing the DNS protocol allows them to be networked. However, the same computers will not be able to communicate with a foreign device running, for example, the NIS addressing protocol or the WINS protocol. Without a shared protocol, there is no network.
For example, a decentralized network is precisely what gives the Internet Protocol its effectivity as a dominant protocol. Or to take another example, the flimsy, cross-platform nature of HTML is precisely what gives it its power as a protocological standard. Like Empire, if protocol dared to centralize, or dared to hierarchize, or dared to essentialize, it would fail.
We turn now to Michel Foucault to derive one final quality of protocol: the special existence of protocol in the “privileged” physical media of bodies...?
But the effects of distributed networks and protocological control on the marxist liberatory project are massive indeed. As Deleuze remarked to Negri several years before Empire: "It’s true that, even before control societies are fully in place, forms of delinquency or resistance (two different things) are also appearing. Computer piracy and viruses, for example, will replace strikes and what the nineteenth century called “sabotage” . . . You ask whether control or communication societies will lead to forms of resistance that might reopen the way for a communism . . . The key thing may be to create vacuoles of noncommunication, circuit breakers, so we can elude control. (1990, 175)
Liliana Bounegru's explanation: "In understanding networks in terms of their protocols, by
drawing on Paul Baran, Galloway demonstrates that, unlike common conceptions, the
distributed network, the network diagram specific to the Internet, does not remove
forms of organization or control, is not anarchic, chaotic, or entirely rhizomatic, but it
creates novel structures of organization and control. Protocol coincides with this new
apparatus of control in the core argument and subtitle of Galloway’s book: “protocol
is how technological control exists after decentralization.”
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