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(5 reviews)
Author: Alexander R. Galloway
ISBN : 0262072475
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Format: PDF, EPUB
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Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol, Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible. He does this by treating the computer as a textual medium that is based on a technological language, code. Code, he argues, can be subject to the same kind of cultural and literary analysis as any natural language; computer languages have their own syntax, grammar, communities, and cultures. Instead of relying on established theoretical approaches, Galloway finds a new way to write about digital media, drawing on his backgrounds in computer programming and critical theory. "Discipline-hopping is a necessity when it comes to complicated socio-technical topics like protocol," he writes in the preface.
Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion—hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art—which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture. Written for a nontechnical audience, Protocol serves as a necessary counterpoint to the wildly utopian visions of the Net that were so widespread in earlier days.
Direct download links available for Free Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (Leonardo Books) [Hardcover]
- Series: Leonardo Books
- Hardcover: 286 pages
- Publisher: The MIT Press (April 1, 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0262072475
- ISBN-13: 978-0262072472
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Free Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization
Galloway is a triple threat: he's fluent in the esoteric dialects of poststructuralist theory, Internet geekspeak, and network aesthetics. There are plenty of books that try to tackle the art and politics of the Internet age from one of these angles, and a handful that try two--but if you're looking for a three-dimensional treatment of the subject, this is the book for you.
Protocol's subtitle, How Control Exists after Decentralization, gives away Galloway's intention in writing this book, which is to steer a path between the "media are chains" intonations of broadcast media critics and the "networks make us free" hype of Internet evangelists. The fact that he's trying to erect a new theory in this uncharted territory makes this book a valuable contribution to the field.
Sometimes I think he loses his path along the way, as when he veers afield from his focus on networks to apply his ideas to an abstract "biopolitics" or to propose an aesthetic interpretation of Marx. None of these efforts is misguided or irrelevant, and academics with heads in the clouds will probably love these parts. Personally, however, I find Protocol most useful not when it connects one theory to another, but when it connects a theory to a specific technical specification. When Galloway pulls A Thousand Plateaus of the shelf to reveal the politics underlying the Internet's fundamental TCP/IP protocols, he's not just showing off his booklearning--he's upgrading Deleuze and Guattari's theory for use in the field, so we can apply their radical philosophy to the email and chat applications we design and deploy.
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