the
ghost in the network: alexander galloway and eugene thacker
In
discussing the difference between the living and the nonliving, Aristotle points
to the phenomena of self-organized animation and motility as the key aspects of
a living thing. For Aristotle the "form-giving Soul" enables inanimate
matter to become a living organism. If life is animation, then animation is driven
by a final cause. But the cause is internal to the organism, not imposed from
without as with machines. Network science takes up this idea on the mathematical
plane, so that geometry is the soul of the network. Network science proposes that
heterogeneous network phenomena can be understood through the geometry of graph
theory, the mathematics of dots and lines. An interesting outcome of this is that
seemingly incongruous network phenomena can be grouped according to their similar
geometries. For instance the networks of AIDS, terrorist groups, or the economy
can be understood as having in common a particular pattern, a particular set of
relations between dots (nodes) and lines (edges). A given topological pattern
is what cultivates and sculpts information within networks. To in-form is thus
to give shape to matter (via organization or self-organization) through the instantiation
of form--a network hylomorphism.
But
further, the actualized being of the living network is also defined in political
terms. "No central node sits in the middle of the spider web, controlling
and monitoring every link and node. There is no single node whose removal could
break the web. A scale-free network is a web without a spider" [1]. Having-no-spider
is an observation about predatory hierarchy, or the supposed lack thereof, and
is therefore a deeply political observation. In order to make this unnerving jump-from
math (graph theory), to technology (the Internet), to politics ("a web without
a spider")--politics needs to be seen as following the necessary and "natural"
laws of mathematics; that is, networks need to be understood as "an unavoidable
consequence of their evolution" [2]. In network science, the "unavoidable
consequence" of networks often resembles something like neoliberal democracy,
but a democracy which naturally emerges according to the "power law"
of decentralized networks. Like so, their fates are twisted together.
rhetorics
of freedom
While
tactically valuable in the fight against proprietary software, open source is
ultimately flawed as a political program. Open source focuses on code in isolation.
It fetishizes all the wrong things: language, originality, source, the past, status.
To focus on inert, isolated code is to ignore code in its context, in its social
relation, in its real experience, or actual dynamic relations with other code
and other machines. Debugging never happens through reading the source code, only
through running the program. Better than open source would be open runtime which
would prize all the opposites: open articulation, open iterability, open practice,
open becoming.
But
this is also misleading and based in a rhetoric around the relative openness and
closedness of a technological system. The rhetoric goes something like this: technological
systems can either be closed or open. Closed systems are generally created by
either commercial or state interests-courts regulate technology, companies control
their proprietary technologies in the market place, and so on. Open systems, on
the other hand, are generally associated with the public and with freedom and
political transparency. Geert Lovink contrasts "closed systems based on profit
through control and scarcity" with "open, innovative standards situated
in the public domain" [3]. Later, in his elucidation of Castells, he writes
of the opposite, a "freedom hardwired into code" [4]. This gets to the
heart of the freedom rhetoric. If it's hardwired is it still freedom? Instead
of guaranteeing freedom, the act of "hardwiring" suggests a limitation
on freedom. And in fact that is precisely the case on the Internet where strict
universal standards of communication have been rolled out more widely and more
quickly than in any other medium throughout history. Lessig and many others rely
heavily on this rhetoric of freedom.
We
suggest that this opposition between closed and open is flawed. It unwittingly
perpetuates one of today's most insidious political myths, that the state and
capital are the two sole instigators of control. Instead of the open/closed opposition
we suggest the pairing physical/social. The so-called open logics of control,
those associated with (non proprietary) computer code or with the Internet protocols,
operate primarily using a physical model of control. For example, protocols interact
with each other by physically altering and amending lower protocological objects
(IP prefixes its header onto a TCP data object, which prefixes its header onto
an HTTP object, and so on). But on the other hand, the so-called closed logics
of state and commercial control operate primarily using a social model of control.
For, example, Microsoft's commercial prowess is renewed via the social activity
of market exchange. Or, using another example, Digital Rights Management licenses
establish a social relationship between producers and consumers, a social relationship
backed up by specific legal realities (DMCA). Viewed in this way, we find it self
evident that physical control (i.e. protocol) is equally powerful if not more
so than social control. Thus, we hope to show that if the topic at hand is one
of control, then the monikers of "open" and "closed" simply
further confuse the issue. Instead we would like to speak in terms of "alternatives
of control" whereby the controlling logic of both "open" and "closed"
systems is brought out into the light of day.
political
animals
Aristotle's
famous formulation of "man as a political animal" takes on new meanings
in light of contemporary studies of biological self-organization. For Aristotle,
the human being was first a living being, with the additional capacity for political
being. In this sense, biology becomes the presupposition for politics, just as
the human being's animal being serves as the basis for its political being. But
not all animals are alike. Deleuze distinguishes three types of animals: domestic
pets (Freudian, anthropomorphized Wolf-Man), animals in nature (the isolated species,
the lone wolf), and packs (multiplicities). It is this last type of animal--the
pack--which provides the most direct counter-point to Aristotle's formulation,
and which leads us to pose a question: If the human being is a political animal,
are there also animal politics? Ethnologists and entymologists would think so.
The ant colony and insect swarm has long been used in science fiction and horror
as the metaphor for the opposite of Western, liberal democracies. Even the language
used in biology still retains the remnants of sovereignty: the queen bee, the
drone. What, then, do we make of theories of biocomplexity and swarm intelligence,
which suggest that there is no "queen" but only a set of localized interactions
which self-organize into a whole swarm or colony? Is the "multitude"
a type of animal multiplicity? Such probes seem to suggest that Aristotle based
his formulation on the wrong kinds of animals. "You can't be one wolf,"
of course. "You're always eight or nine, six or seven" [5].
ad
hoc
Unplug from
the grid. Plug into your friends. Adhocracy will rule. Autonomy and security will
only happen when telecommunications operate around ad hoc networking. Syndicate
yourself to the locality.
+
+ +
[1] Albert-Laszlo
Barabasi, Linked (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2002), p. 221.
[2]
Ibid.
[3] Geert
Lovink, My First Recession (Rotterdam: V2, 2003), p. 14.
[4]
Ibid., p. 47.
[5]
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 29.
Republished
from Nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0505/msg00022.html
with permission of the authors.
