Fwd: <nettime> The Limits of Networking

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Alexander Galloway <[email protected]>
> Date: Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:08:51 AM America/New_York
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: <nettime> The Limits of Networking
> Reply-To: Alexander Galloway <[email protected]>
>
> THE LIMITS OF NETWORKING
> A reply to Lovink and Schneider's "Notes on the State of Networking"
>
> by Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker
>
>
> The question we aim to explore here is: what is the principle of
> political
> organization or control that stitches a network together? Writers like
> Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have helped answer this question in the
> socio-political sphere using the concept of "Empire." Like a network,
> Empire is not reducible to any single state power, nor does it follow
> an
> architecture of pyramidal hierarchy. Empire is fluid, flexible,
> dynamic,
> and far-reaching. In that sense, the concept of Empire helps us
> greatly to
> begin thinking about political organization in networks. But like
> Lovink
> and Schneider, we are concerned that no one has yet adequately answered
> this question for the technological sphere of bits and atoms.
>
> To this end, the principle of political control we suggest is most
> helpful
> for thinking about technological networks is "protocol," a word derived
> from computer science but which resonates in the life sciences as well.
> Protocol abounds in techno-culture. It is a totalizing control
> apparatus
> that guides both the technical and political formation of computer
> networks, biological systems and other media. Put simply, protocols are
> all the conventional rules and standards that govern relationships
> within
> networks. Quite often these relationships come in the form of
> communication between two or more computers, but "relationships within
> networks" can also refer to purely biological processes as in the
> systemic
> phenomenon of gene expression. Thus by "networks" we want to refer to
> any
> system of interrelationality, whether biological or informatic,
> organic or
> inorganic, technical or natural–with the ultimate goal of undoing the
> polar restrictiveness of these pairings.
>
> In computer networks, science professionals have, over the years,
> drafted
> hundreds of protocols to govern email, web pages, and so on, plus many
> other standards for technologies rarely seen by human eyes. The first
> protocols for computer networks were written in 1969 by Steve Crocker
> and
> others. If networks are the structures that connect people, then
> protocols
> are the rules that make sure the connections actually work.
>
> Likewise, molecular biotechnology research frequently makes use of
> protocol to configure biological life as a network phenomenon, be it in
> gene expression networks, metabolic networks, or the circuitry of cell
> signaling pathways. In such instances, the biological and the
> informatic
> become increasingly enmeshed in hybrid systems that are more than
> biological: proprietary genome databases, DNA chips for medical
> diagnostics, and real-time detection systems for biowarfare agents.
> Protocol is twofold; it is both an apparatus that facilitates networks
> and
> also a logic that governs how things are done within that apparatus.
>
> From the large technological discourse of white papers, memos, and
> manuals, we can derive some of the basic qualities of the apparatus of
> organization which we here call protocol:
>
> + protocol facilitates relationships between interconnected, but
> autonomous, entities;
>
> + protocol's virtues include robustness, contingency, interoperability,
> flexibility, and heterogeneity;
>
> + a goal of protocol is to accommodate everything, no matter what
> source
> or destination, no matter what originary definition or identity;
>
> + while protocol is universal, it is always achieved through
> negotiation
> (meaning that in the future protocol can and will be different).
>
> + protocol is a system for maintaining organization and control in
> networks;
>
> We agree wholeheartedly with Lovink and Schneider's observation that
> "networks are the emerging form of organization of our time." And we
> agree
> that, due to this emerging form of organization, "networking has lost
> its
> mysterious and subversive character."
>
> Yet they also note that, despite being the site of control and
> organization, networks are also the very medium of freedom, if only a
> provisional or piecemeal liberation. They write that networking is able
> "to free the user from the bonds of locality and identity." And later
> they
> describe networking as "a syncope of power."
>
> In this sense, Lovink and Schneider posit power as the opposite of
> networking, as the force that restricts networking and thus restricts
> individual freedom:
>
> "Power responds to the pressure of increasing mobility and
> communications of the multitudes with attempts to regulate them in
> the framework of traditional regimes that cannot be abandoned, but
> need to be reconfigured from scratch and recompiled against the
> networking paradigm: borders and property, labour and recreation,
> education and entertainment industries undergo radical
> transformations."
>
> Our point of departure is this: Lovink and Schneider's "Info-Empire"
> should not be defined in terms of either corporate or state power, what
> they call "the corruption of state sovereignty." Instead it must be
> defined at the level of the medium itself. (Otherwise we are no longer
> talking about Info-Empire but about the more familiar topics of
> corporate
> greed, fascism, or what have you.) Informatic control is something
> different and thus it must be defined differently. It must be defined
> via
> the actual technologies of control that are contained within networks,
> not
> the content carried by those networks, or the intentionality of the
> people
> using them. This position resonates with the "media archaeology"
> approach
> mentioned in Lovink's recent nettime interview with Wolfgang Ernst.
> This
> is why we propose the basic principles of protocol above.
>
> Networks are often seen to be advantageous in political struggles, for
> there is presumed to be something about the structure of networks that
> enables forms of resistance to take place against more centralized
> power
> structures. The characteristics of multiple sites of locality,
> many-to-many communications channels, and a self-organizing capacity
> (local actions, global results) are some of the aspects that are cited
> as
> part of the network structure. Indeed, analysis of computer virus
> attacks,
> distributed political protests, and other forms of what John Arquilla
> and
> David Ronfeldt call "netwar" all mention these aspects of networks.
>
> But we find it curious that networks in this characterization are
> rarely
> contextualized–or rendered historical, archaeological. On the one
> hand,
> the centralized structure of "Empire" is assumed to emerge out of a
> long
> history of economically-driven imperialism and colonialism. On the
> other
> hand, the various "networks" which resist Empire seem to suddenly
> appear
> out of nowhere, despite the fact that the technologies which constitute
> these networks are themselves rooted in governmental, military, and
> commercial developments. We need only remind ourselves of the military
> backdrop of WWII mainframe computing and the Cold War context of
> ARPAnet,
> to suggest that networks are not ahistorical entities.
>
> Thus, in many current political discussions, networks are seen as the
> new
> paradigm of social and political organization. The reason is that
> networks
> exhibit a set of properties that distinguishes them from more
> centralized
> power structures. These properties are often taken to be merely
> abstract,
> formal aspects of the network–which is itself characterized as a kind
> of
> meta-structure. We see this in "pop science" books discussing
> complexity
> and network science, as well as in the political discourse of "netwars"
> and so forth. What we end up with is a *metaphysics of networks*. The
> network, then, appears as a universal signifier of political
> resistance,
> be it in Chiapas, Seattle, Geneva, or online. What we question is not
> the
> network concept itself, for, as a number of network examples show, they
> can indeed be effective modes of political struggle. What we do
> question
> is the undue and exclusive reliance on the metaphysics of the network,
> as
> if this ahistorical concept legitimizes itself merely by existing.
>
> An engaged, political understanding of networks will not only pay
> attention to networks generally, but to networks specifically. If there
> are no networks in general, then there are also no general networks.
> (Marx: "If there is no production in general, then there is no general
> production.") Networks can be engaged with at the general level, but
> they
> always need to be qualified–and we mean this in technical as well as
> socio-political terms. The discourse surrounding "Empire" has been very
> good at contextualizing globalization; it has not done so well at
> contextualizing "the movement," "the multitude," or "networks" (which
> are
> arguably, three different concepts).
>
> Biological or computational, the network is always configured by its
> protocols. We stress this integrative approach because we cannot
> afford to
> view "information" naively as solely immaterial. Negri notes that "all
> politics is biopolitics," and to this, we would add that all networks
> are
> not only biopolitical but biotechnical networks. Protocological
> control in
> networks is as much about networks as *living networks* as it is about
> the
> materiality of informatics.
>
> Thus we are quite interested in a understanding of political change
> within
> networks. What follows might be thought of as a series of challenges
> for
> "counterprotocological practice," designed for anyone wishing
> progressive
> change inside of biotechnical networks.
>
> First, oppositional practices will have to focus not on a static map of
> one-to-one relationships, but a dynamic diagram of many-to-many
> relationships. This is a nearly insurmountable task. These practices
> will
> have to attend to many-to-many relationships without making the
> dangerous
> mistake of thinking that many-to-many means total or universal. There
> will
> be no universals for life. This means that the counterprotocols of
> current
> networks will be pliant and vigorous where existing protocols are
> flexible
> and robust. They will attend to the tensions and contradictions within
> such systems, such as the contradiction between rigid control implicit
> in
> network protocols and the liberal ideologies that underpin them.
> Counterprotocological practice will not avoid downtime. It will restart
> often.
>
> The second point is about tactics. In reality, counterprotocological
> practice is not "counter" anything! Saying that politics is an act of
> "resistance" was never true, except for the most literal
> interpretation of
> conservatism. We must search-and-replace all occurrences of
> "resistance"
> with "impulsion" or perhaps "thrust." Thus the concept of resistance in
> politics should be superceded by the concept of hypertrophy.
> Resistance is
> a Clausewitzian mentality; the strategy of maneuvers teaches us instead
> that the best way to beat an enemy is to become a better enemy. One
> must
> push through to the other side, rather than drag one's heels. There are
> two directions for political change: resistance implies a desire for
> stasis or retrograde motion, but hypertrophy is the desire for pushing
> beyond. The goal is not to destroy technology in some neoluddite
> delusion,
> but to push technology into a hypertrophic state, further than it is
> meant
> to go. We must scale up, not unplug. Then, during the passage of
> technology into this injured, engorged, and unguarded condition, it
> will
> be sculpted anew into something better, something in closer agreement
> with
> the real wants and desires of its users.
>
> The third point has to do with structure. Because networks are
> (technically) predicated on creating possible communications between
> nodes, oppositional practices will have to focus less on the
> characteristics of the nodes, and more on the quality of the
> interactions
> between nodes. In this sense the node-edge distinction will break down.
> Nodes will be constructed as a byproduct of the creation of edges, and
> edges will be a precondition for the inclusion of nodes in the network.
> Conveyances are key. From the oppositional perspective, nodes are
> nothing
> but dilated or relaxed edges, while edges are constricted,
> hyper-kinetic
> nodes. Nodes may be composed of clustering edges, while edges may be
> extended nodes.
>
> Using various protocols as their operational standards, networks tend
> to
> combine large masses of different elements under a single umbrella. The
> fourth point we offer, then, deals with motion: counterprotocol
> practices
> can capitalize on the homogeneity found in networks to resonate far and
> wide with little effort. Again, the point is not to do away with
> standards
> or the process of standardization altogether, for there is no imaginary
> zone of non-standardization, no zero-place where there is a ghostly,
> pure
> flow of only edges. Protocological control works through inherent
> tensions, and as such, counterprotocol practices can be understood as
> tactical implementations and intensifications of protocological
> control.
>
>
>
>
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