A graduate seminar in cultural studies of science,
medicine and technology
Department of Communication,
The University of Memphis
Fall 2011
Dr. Marina Levina
In Network Culture, Terranova begins by discussing the “heterogeneous assemblage” of network culture. Terranova argues for the need to specifically and individually reflect on network culture because “they appear to us as a meshwork of overlapping cultural formations, of hybrid reinventions, cross-pollinations and singular variations” (p. 1-2). In particular, the interconnectedness of communication systems is not necessarily technological; rather, “it is a tendency of informational flows to spill over from whatever network they are circulating in and hence to escape the narrowness of the channel and to open up to a larger milieu” (p. 2). Terranova notes the change in observing what used to be called “media messages” – “the flow from a sender to a receiver,” is now countered by messages that “spread and interact, mix and mutate within a singular (and yet differentiated) informational plane” (p. 2). As information flows thru and from channels and mediums, and as it is decoded and recoded by local dynamics changes occur in its form – “it disappears or it propagates; it amplifies or inhibits the emergence of communalities and antagonisms” (p. 2). To reiterate, Terranova elaborates that the cultural production of meaning is mainly unattached from the larger informational processes that establish the dispersementof images and words, noises and affects across a hyperconnectedworld.
Terranova posits, “Are we then victims of an “informational explosion,” destructing humanity?" Terranova will argue that informational processes do not exhibit power of the ‘immaterial’ over the material; rather, because of an increase of history and annihilation of distances with an informational environment, this milieu is a “creative destruction” “composed of dynamic and shifting relations between such ‘massless flows’” that serves as productive movement “that releases (rather than simply inhibits) potentials for transformation” (p. 2-3, p. 8). Further, Terranova asserts that “a network culture is inseparable both from a kind of network physics (that is physical processes of differentiation and convergence, emergence and capture, openness and closure, and coding and overcoding) and a network politics (implying the existence of an active engagement with the dynamics of information flows” (p. 3).
In Chapters 1, Terranova begins to center her argument by first reworking the concept of information from the ideas that information “is the content of a communication;” and secondly, from the “notion that information is immaterial” (p. 3). Here, Terranova discusses three hypotheses from Claude E. Shannon’s (1948) essay in which he formed his mathematical definition of information: “information is defined by the relation of signal to noise; information is a statistical measure of the uncertainty or entropy of a system; information implies a nonlinear and nondeterministic relationship between the microscopic and the macroscopic levels of a physical system” (p. 9). Terranova stresses that these hypotheses also offer some other interesting corollaries – considerations – on informational cultures.
Proposition I: Information is what stands out from noise.
Corollary Ia: Within informational cultures, the struggle over meanings is subordinated to that over ‘media effects.’
Corollary Ib: The cultural politics of information involves a return to the minimum conditions of communication (the relation of signal to noise and the problem of making contact)
And secondly,
Proposition II: The transmission of information implies the communication and exclusion of probable alternatives.
Corollary II: Informational cultures challenge the coincidence of the real with the possible.
Here, Terranova argues:
“The communication of information thus implies the reduction of material processes to a closed system defined by the relation between the actual selection (the real) and the field of probabilities that it defines (the statistically probable). The relation between the real and the probable, however, also evokes the spectre of the improbable, the fluctuation and hence the virtual. As such, a cultural politics of information somehow resists the confinement of social change to a closed set mutually excluding and predetermined alternatives; and deploys an active engagement with the transformative potential of the virtual (that which is beyond measure)” (p.20).
The Internet in Network Time
In Chapter 2, Terranova uses the network example of the Internet to argue for the Internet as encompassing an active design technique “able to deal with the openness of systems – a neo-imperial electronic age – which is demonstrated “in phenomena such as blogging, mailing lists, and web rings” (p. 4). Here, Terranova stresses that communication technologies function beyond just linking different localities; more so, as we have briefly discussed when reading The Exploit, technologies “actively mould what they connect by creating new topological configurations and thus effectively contributing to the constitution of geopolitical entities such as cities and regions, or nations and empires” (p. 40). Because of the complex, interwoven features of the communication topology of Empire – such as aeroplanes, freight ships, television, cinema, computers and telephony, all these different systems correlate by converging in a hypernetwork, “a meshwork potentially connecting every point to every other point” (p. 41). Hence, the network is becoming less a description of a specific system, and more a phrase to define “the formation of a single and yet multidimensional information milieu – linked by the dynamics of information propagation and segmented by diverse modes and channels of circulation” (p. 41).
More specifically regarding the Internet, Terrenova asserts that if the Internet does appear as a key global communication technology, it is because, unlike other global communication technologies such as television, the Internet “has been conceived and evolved as a network of networks, or an internetwork, a topological formation that presents some challenging insights into the dynamics underlying the formation of a global network culture” (p. 41). Looking at the architecture of the Internet as a turning-point within the history of communication and using previous theories by Castells and Virilio, Terranova argues that space on the Internet is specifically in direct relation to its information architecture. Through the use of addresses and urls placed in a common address space, Terrenova argues that “we are to all effects referring to a specific address in this global, electronic map…which confirms the image of a distance between a world of information and a world of embodied and bounded locality” (p. 44). Thus, as mentioned in Terranova’s introduction, the Internet is highly homogeneous because “it can be entered at any point and each movement is in principle as likely as the next” (p. 44).
Furthermore, Terranova asks, “How can we reconcile the grid-like structure of electronic space with the dynamic features of the Internet, with the movements of information?...How do we explain chain mails and list serves, web logs and web rings, peer-to-peer networks and denial-of-service attacks?” (p. 49). Terranova argues the possibility that by contemplating the Internet through the concept of the grid, people might have “fallen into a classic metaphysical trap: that of reducing duration to movement, that is, of confusing time with space” (p. 50). And as far as the movements of information, Terranova observes that a slice of information spreading throughout the open space of the network “is not only a vector in search of a target, it is also a potential transformation of the spaced crossed that always leaves something behind – a new idea, a new affect (even an annoyance), a modification of the overall topology. Information is not simply transmitted from point A to point B: it propagates and by propagation it affects and modifies its milieu” (p. 51). Lastly, drawing from Hardt and Negri’s description of network power when discussing the Internet, Terrenova agrees that its imperial sovereignity is that “its space is always open…an active openness of network spatiality” (p. 62). In such space, all objects and devices can “be networked to the network of networks in a kind of ubiquitous computational landscape” (p. 63).
Questions for Contemplation: As stated above, Terranova observes that a slice of information spreading throughout the open space of the network “is not only a vector in search of a target, it is also a potential transformation of the spaced crossed that always leaves something behind – a new idea, a new affect (even an annoyance), a modification of the overall topology. Information is not simply transmitted from point A to point B: it propagates and by propagation it affects and modifies its milieu” (p.51).
We have discussed in class how information is transferred/exists in the network through websites such as 23and me and through banking systems. How else do you observe information being situated, managed, and transferred throughout the network? And secondly, how does Terranova's argument - from Chapters 1 and 2, concerning information theory influence how you might theorize the spacial activity of the network?
The section from Galloway and Thacker (Disappearance, or I've seen It All Before) about technological speed gave me the mental picture of quarterbacks throwing to a spot on the field before the receiver actually gets there. The quaterback is not actually throwing the ball to the receiver but to the point where he is expected to be in the future. With this image in mind while watching the Chiefs stink up the field on Sunday, this AT&T commercial was aired numerous times. I now have the line about putting videos on Facebook stuck in my head, but I think the commercial is good example of technology's speed affecting our realities.
The
authors discuss similarities between computer viruses and biological epidemics
within the context of how they are displayed. Forced to “care for the most
misanthropic agents of infection and disease, one must curate that which eludes
the cure” (p. 106) for if the disease was cured, there would be nothing left to
display. Therefore, the best curator would necessarily be the most careless,
the one incapable of exacerbating the virus. Caring for the virus vs. caring for those infected. The political
economy in the 1700s (see Ricardo, Smith, and Malthus) was based on a
correlation between the health of the population and the wealth of the country.
Today’s public health has moved toward the idea of caring for health information
and ensuring that “the biological bodies of the population correlate to the informatics
patterns on the screen” (p. 107). Statistics, rather than bodies, are central.
The
Datum of Cura II
Foucault notes
that curating entails a form of governance- caring for oneself would also benefit
others through self-transformation. Becoming the best individual you can be
will undoubtedly benefit society (so long as the best you can be is good- what
about people’s whose best still sucks?). Yet, self destruction is inherent with
self-transformation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/28/gustav-metzger-auto-destructive
. Liu calls this “viral aesthetics” where the distinction between production
and destruction are blurred. In the above link, an exhibit of Metzger’s work
involves the demolition of an automobile. Its destruction becomes the art. Curare (Latin for to care) is the point
where control and transformation intersect. “Is there a certain ‘carelessness’
to curare?” (p. 109)
Sovereignty
and Biology I
In politics, the body is often used as a
metaphor for political organization. For Plato, the primary threat to the body
politic was the move from concerns about justice to those “of wealth (oligarchy)
and concerns of appetites (democracy) (p. 109). The excess of these concerns
results is disease of the political body, similar to excess bile and phlegm in
the physical body. Lawmakers must work to avoid these symptoms altogether but
in the event they appear, should eradicate them “cells and all.” Our knowledge
of the physical body has changed since the time of Plato, so does this mean
that our understanding of the political body has also changed? Should it change?
Sovereignty
and Biology II
The model of sovereignty
proposed by Hobbes in Leviathan, where
citizens constitute the body and the sovereignty the head raises a fundamental
question of political thought: can a political collectivity exist without transferring
its rights to a supreme ruler? One of the ways that sovereignty maintains
political power is through the continual identification of biological threats.
In doing so, the sovereignty can justify enacting stronger controls over
citizens by protecting them from threats to the health of the population. The medicalization
of politics oversees the behaviors,
conduct, discourse, desires, etc. of biology occurs where discipline and
sovereignty meet, a place which challenges the between the good of the
individual and the good of the collective.
Abandoning
the Body Politic
The body politic
has two states: (1) Constitutive- where the body politic is assembled through
the “social contract” based on securing life (2) Dissolution- chaos, a return
to the “state of nature,” sovereignty of the people, the dark side of the
constitutive body. These two states feed into each through war. “Peace is waging a secret.” Abandoning the
body politic means deserting the military foundations of politics and also opening
the body to its own abandon. “What is left is an irremediable scattering, a
dissemination of ontological specks”
(p.111).
The
Ghost in the Network
Heterogeneous
network phenomena can be understood through the identification of commonalities
in shared particular patterns- “a set of relations between dots (nodes) and
lines (edges) (p. 112). Thus, organization gives shapes to matter and serves as
a means to inform (in-form). The living network can also be viewed in political
terms. There is not a central node that sits in the middle and
monitors/controls every link and node. A single node cannot break the web. A scale-free network is a web without a
spider. For politics to be viewed in a natural sense, networks need to be seen
as an unavoidable consequence of their evolution.
Birth
of the Algorithm
An algorithm
is a type of visible articulation of any given processor’s machinic grammar.
Political
Animals
Biology is a
prerequisite for politics (Aristotle). If the human being is a political
animal, are there also animal politics? Vocabularies of biology retain the
remnants of sovereignty: the queen bee, the drone. But, what about swarm
intelligence where there is no centralized power, but only an instance of
self-organization?
Sovereignty
and the State of Emergency
“Modern
sovereignty is based not on the right to impose laws but on the ability to
suspend the law, to claim a state of emergency” (p.115). Both sides in a state
of emergency rely on network management- either in destabilizing key nodes or
fortifying them.
Epidemic
and Endemic
The
distinction between emerging infectious disease and bioterrorism based on
cause: one was naturally occurring, and the other resulted from direct human
intervention has been muddled if not fully abandoned. In its place, the U.S.
government has developed an inclusive approach to biopolitics. Regardless of
the context, the role of the government is to alert and respond to biological
threats. What matters most is what is at stake, which is always, life itself.
To achieve this aim, “medical security” seeks “to protect the population,
defined as a biological and genetic entity, from any possible biological
threat, be it conventional war or death itself” (p.116). The biological threat
is always present.
Network
Being
Information networks are
often described as a “global village” or a “collective consciousness.” These
references to networks somehow being
alive bring up questions of what being actually means. The authors posit
two questions: At what point does the difference between “being” and “life”
implode? What would be the conditions for the nondistinction between “being”
and “life”? They recognize two problems with the distinctions: (1) Life
sciences are faced with anomalies where living organisms cross species barriers
and questions of what it means to be alive, as in the case of a virus. For
Heidegger, ‘life” and “being” are separate from but dependent upon each other. In
network science, however, the concept of “being” is arrived at from a privative
definition of “life.” In this sense, all networks form the same animal: a graph
or a network. In turn, network science can study all networks as the same type
of being. The impact of this view of network
being is confused. Does the experience of being in a network constitute
network phenomenology (where occurrences are shared)? Does it mean the
existence of properties that differ across networks? The only “life” that is
specific to networks is their “being” a network.
Good
Viruses (SimSARS I)
Network-based
strategies are being developed on all levels. Computer security uses network
solutions to address network threats in the world of online viruses. This
behind the scenes war is invisible to most users but is in constant motion. Similarly,
epidemiologists understand how infectious diseases are spread effectively through
a variety of networks. Public health agencies in turn, use these same networks
as instruments of awareness and prevention. Caution must be exercised in
utilizing these networks to avoid widespread panic or political hype. In the
post 9/11 United States, infectious disease and bioterrorism are inevitably
linked. In doing so, questions of a new biopolitical war or a new medical terror
are raised. “Good” viruses introduced to combat emerging infectious diseases
are administered through the same networks as the disease, but will only
succeed if its rate of infection is greater than the bad virus.
Medical
Surveillance (SimSARS II)
Developments
in medical surveillance are representative of the intensive nature of networks. The Center for Disease Control (CDC)
is working to develop “syndromic surveillance” where the goal is to implement a
real-time, nationwide system for detecting anomalies in public health data
which could signal a possible outbreak or bioterrorist attack. In this case, “an
information network is used to combat a biological network” (p. 121). Similar
the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network
works to insure that potential threats (either naturally occurring or
intentionally caused) are quickly verified and information shared through the
Network. Medical surveillance in itself is not problematic, but could become
controversial when what constitutes “health data” is disputed. “In the informatic
mode, disease is always virtual (p.
122) which creates a permanent state of emergency. Disease is always looming
but kept just out of reach.
Feedback
versus Interaction I
Two models
typify the evolution of two-way communication in mass media. In the first model
(feedback), information flows in one direction- from the public to the institution.
Two-way communication (interaction) is seen in the second model. Here
communication occurs within a system of communicative peers where each peer can
physically affect another.
Feedback
versus Interaction II
Feedback and
interaction also correspond to two different models of control. Feedback
corresponds to the cybernetic model of control where one party is always the
controlling party and the other is the controlled party (television, radio). Interaction
corresponds to a networked model of control where decision making occurs
multilaterally and simultaneously. The authors argue that “double the communication leads to double the control” (p. 124)
through surveillance, monitoring, biometrics, and gene therapy.
Rhetorics
of Freedom
Technological
systems can either be closed or open. Closed systems are generally created by
either commercial or state interests (profit through control and scarcity).
Open systems are generally associated with the public and political transparency
(innovative standards in the public domain). Rather than focus on the
opposition between open/closed, the authors examine alternative logics of control. Open control logics use an informatic
(material) mode of control, while closed logics use a social model of control.
From this perspective, informatic control is equally as powerful (if not more
so) than social control.
A
Google Search for My Body
One is either
online and accounted for or offline and still accounted for. The body becomes a
medium of constant locatability surrounded by personal network devices. For an example, think of how your Facebook page tracks your internet habits. How many people have disconnected the chat function on Facebook or other Instant Messengers because they do not want others to know they are online?
Divine
Metabolism
Life-forms are
not merely biological but include social, cultural, and political forms as
well, but not all of these have an equal claim on life. Networks are the site
where control works through the continual relation to life-form.
The
Paranormal and the Pathological I
Conceptions of
health and illness have changed from a quantitative approach (illness as a
deviation from the norm) which requires a return to balance to a qualitative
one (disease is a different state than health) where medicine’s role is to
treat symptoms of the disease. However, the third transition, “disease as error,”
is the most telling. In this conception, disease is viewed as an error in the
organism. It does not manifest itself in testimony from the patient or in signs
expressed on the body. Rather, the disease exists only in itself. It is
everywhere and nowhere. Disease is an informatic expression that must be mapped
and decoded.
The
Paranormal and the Pathological II
Because disease
can occur as a mass phenomenon, includes modes of transmission and contagion,
and exists between bodies, it is necessary to evaluate diseases as networks. If
the processes that lead to an outbreak have no center and are multicausal, how
can they be prevented? Epidemics are both medical situations and political
ones. If epidemics are networks, the problem of multiplicities in networks is
the tension between sovereignty and control. Compounding this problem is sovereignty
found in the supernatural.
Universals
of Identification
Once universal
standards of identification are agreed upon, real-time tracking technologies
will increase. Space will become rewindable and archivable; the world will exist
as a giant convenience store. See these videos about gunshot tracking technology to get an idea of what that world will look like or how it is made possible:
Molecular
biology laboratories employ (at least) two networks to encode, recode, and
decode biological information: the informatics network of the Internet and the
biological network. The Internet allows for uploading and downloading of
biological information and brings together databases, search engines, and
specialized hardware. The biological network occurs in-between DNA and an array
of other proteins.
Unknown
Unknowns
From Donald Rumsfeld:
“Because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some
things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t
know we don’t know.” The unknown unknowns bring forth visions of death, fear,
and terror, the end of humanity.
Codification,
Not Reification
The new concern
for political problems is the extraction of abstract code from objects. The
process of bioprospecting, whereby unique genes are harvested for their
informational value has reduced individuals to digital forms, ignoring their
lived reality. Today’s impoverished populations are expected to give up their
labor power as well as their bodily information. “The biomass, not social
relations, is today’s site of exploitation” (p.135).
Tactics
of Nonexistence
“The question of
nonexistence is this: how does one develop techniques and technologies to make
oneself unaccounted for?” (p.135). Nonexistence is tactical for anything that
wishes to avoid control.
Disappearance;
or, I’ve Seen It All Before
Disappearance
is the by-product of speed. As technology gets faster, one’s physical and
biological self disappears amid a plethora of files, photos, video, and a
variety of Net tracking data. Bey proposes that nomadism is the response to
speed. A “temporary autonomous zone” (TAZ) is a temporary space set-up to avoid
formal structural control. Move before the cultural and political mainstream
knows what happened.
Stop
Motion
“The
question of animation and the question of ‘life’ are often the same question”
(p.138). Graph theory begins from the classical division between node and edge and in doing soprivileges space over time, site over duration (p.139). Networks
can only be thought of in a different way if animation (movement) becomes
ontological or a universal right.
Pure
Metal
Cultural
constructionism focuses more on the way that gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity,
and class/status form, shape, and construct a self than with the innate self or
identity. The human subject is decentralized in the process. What about the
nonhuman? Regardless of views on the nonhuman (incorporating or discorporating),
it continues to be negatively defined. The human is always the starting point
for comparison. How then are nonhuman elements that run through or found within
humans classified?
The
Hypertrophy of Matter (Four Definitions and One Axiom)
Definition 1. Immanence- the process of exorbitance,
of desertion, of spreading out
Definition
2. Emptiness- the space between
things; an edge
Definition
3. Substance- the continual
by-product of the immanence and emptiness; a node
Definition
4. Indistinction- the quality of
relations in a network
Axiom
1- “Networks have as their central problematic, the fact that they prioritize
nodes at the same time as they exist through the precession of edges” (p.143)
The
User and the Programmer
“User” is a
synonym for “consumer.” Programmer is a synonym for “producer.” Most legal
prohibitions are migrating away from the user model (being) toward programmers
(doing). Anyone can be a programmer if he or she chooses. More and more threats
to programming are seen in everyday life. Future politics will focus on use
over expression.
Interface
The authors
define interface as “an artificial
structure of differentiation between two media” (p.144). Differentiation occurs
whenever a structure is added to raw data. Data does not appear fully formed
and whole but instead gets its shape from social and technical processes.
Interface is how dissimilar data forms interoperate.
There
is No Content
Content cannot
be separated from the technological vehicles of representation and conveyance
that facilitate it. “Meaning is a
data conversion” (p.145). There is not content, only data.
Trash,
Junk, Spam
Trash is the set
of all things that have been cast out of previous sets, all that which no
longer has use. Junk is the set of all things that are not of use at this
moment, but may be of use at some time, and certainly may have been of use in
the past. Spam is an exploit. “Spam signifies nothing yet is pure signification” (p.146).
CODA:
BITS AND ATOM
Networks are always exceptional, in the
sense that they are always related, however ambiguously, to sovereignty.
This ambiguity
informs contemporary discussions of networks. Hardt and Negri describe the
multitude as a “multiplicity of singularities,” a collective group that remains
heterogeneous (the one and the many, sovereignty and multitude). Virno
recognizes that the multitude does not clash with the One; it redefines it.
Unity is not the State; rather, it is language, intellect, communal faculties
of the human race. The fact that the multitude is not “One” is its greatest
strength, giving it flexibility that centralized organizations lack.
Contemporary
analyses of “multitude” share significant affinities with Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s
analysis of “netwar.” In this intersection, political allegiances of Left and
Right tend to blur into a strange, shared concern over the ability to control,
produce, and regulate networks.
According to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “netwar refers to an
emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of military
warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and
related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age”
(p.151). Netwar can be waged by ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actors as well as through
peaceful or violent measures. The diversity and complexity of netwar makes them
an emerging form of political action. It takes a network to fight a network.
Despite
their political differences, both the concept of the multitude and the concept
of netwars share a common methodological approach: that “the ‘unit of analysis’
is not so much the individual as it is the network in which the individual is
embedded.
The authors believe what is missing from Hardt and Negri
and from Arquilla and Ronfeldt is a “new
future of asymmetry” (p.152). Resistance IS asymmetry. Formal sameness may
bring reform, but formal incommensurability (having no common basis) breeds
revolution. “Open” or “free” networks exhibit power relations regardless of the
power held by the individuals who comprise them.
At
this point, we pause and pose a question: Is the multitude always “human”? Can
the multitude or netwars not be human and yet still be “political”? That is,
are individuated human subjects always the basic unit of composition in the
multitude? If not, the we must admit that forms such as the multitude, netwars,
and networks exhibit unhuman as well as human characteristics.
These questions relate to the nature of constituent power
in the age of networks. Not all networks are created equal and often display
asymmetrical power relationships. But if no one controls the network, how do we
account for such differences and asymmetrics?
Our
suggestion may at first seem perplexing. We suggest that the discussions over
the multitude, netwars, and networks are really discussions about the unhuman
within the human.
The word “unhuman”
does not mean against human or antihuman. Rather, the use of the term is
designed to ponder whether these emerging forms go far enough in comprehending
the portions of ourselves that are not fully human.
Difficult,
even frustrating, questions appear at this point. If no single human entity
controls the network in any total way, then can we assume that a network is not
controlled by humans in any total way? If humans are only a part of the
network, then how can we assume that the ultimate aim of the network is a set
of human-centered goals?
At both the
macro and micro levels, it is easy to recognize elements in networks that
inhibit total control or total knowledge—computer viruses, infectious diseases,
viral marketing or adware, unforeseen interpersonal connections on social
networks, and various other biological and man-made phenomena
In
fact, it is the very idea of “the total” that is both promised and yet
continually deferred in the “inhumanity” of networks, netwars, and even the
multitude.
Networks are
constituted by the tension between the agency of individuals within the network
and the abstract “whole.”
The
network is this combination of spreading out and overseeing, evasion and regulation.
It is the accident and the plan. In this sense, we see no difference between
the network that works too well and the network that always contains exploits.
Another
perspective, however does see a great difference between successful networks
and networks that fail. These differing viewpoints are part of the reason why
Internet viruses and infectious diseases evoke such fear and frustration. Networks
show us the unhuman in the inhuman and illustrate that individual human subjects
are not the basic unit of network constitution.
For
this reason, we propose something that is, at first, counterintuitive: to bring
our understanding of networks to the level of bits and atoms, to the level of
aggregate forms of organization that are material and unhuman, to a level that
shows us the unhuman in the human.
Networks operate through continuous connections and
disconnections, but at the same time, they continually posit a topology. They
are always taking shape but remain incomplete.
The
unhuman aspects of networks challenge us to think in an elemental fashion. The
elemental is, in this sense, the most basic and the most complex expression of
a network.
The central concern of networks is no longer the action
of individuals or nodes in the network. Instead what matters more is the action
throughout the network, a dispersal of action that requires us to think of
networks less in terms of nodes (information) and more in terms of edges (space)—or
even in terms other than the entire dichotomy of nodes and edges altogether. “In
a sense, therefore, our understanding of networks is all-too-human…” (p.157).
Discussion
Questions:
1.The videos of gunshot tracking give us
an idea of how surveillance can be incorporated into society. How could a
program such as this be used to track biological happenings? What type of
universals would have to be agreed upon?
2.On page 118, the authors assert that
network science “seeks a universal pattern that exists above and beyond the particulars
of any given network. For this reason, network science can study AIDS, terrorism,
and the Internet all as the same kind of being—a network.” What are the
similarities between biological and man-made networks? Are there differences?
“…protocol is an immanent expression of control . Heterogenous distributed power relations are the absolute essence of the Internet network or the genome network, not their fetters.” (54)
The network phenomenon has produced considerable discourse about the power of the network. What characterizes a network is its reducibility, or the ability for us to be able to grasp it. Networks are characterized by their fluidity, the ability to be in multiple places at the same time facilitating actions through protocols.Protocols emerge through complex relationships that are inclusive, encourage negotiation and openness (29). There are not top-down or bottom up commands but currents of communication and distribution that move among agents that connect and branch at the various edges. “Protological control challenges us to rethink critical and political action around a newer framework, that of multiagent, individuated nodes in a metastable network.” (30) The strength of the network relies on the free form of it. Fluidity trumps rigidity.
How these complex metastable networks operate can best be described by understanding the clusters. “From a graph theory perspective, networks can be said to display three basic characteristics: their organization into nodes and edges (dots and lines) their connectivity, and their topology. The same sets of entities can result in a centralized, rigidly organized network or in a distributed, highly flexible network” (32). Networks connect at the nodes and edges, but this control is regulated through modulation rather than manipulation.
In the network model power is expressed by the users or participants in the network. Networking becomes biopoliticized. The autonomy is expressed from within and without of the networks borders. The borders of networks are difficult to define. “The problem of “control” in networks is always doubled by two perspectives: one from within the network and one from without a network. Networks are, in this sense, the horizon of control.” (36) The difficulty of defining a network is integral to its very definition. Various parts fit together and are meshed through their web like connections. So how do you determine sovereignty with all of this flexibility? What are the conditions that make this possible? Nodes can be similar but not the same. Individuation implies the specific as well as the generic (37). Our various devices and digital personages are distinct yet fluid and rapidly changing. All of us meet in the cloud.
“…the question of individuating a network is really a problem of establishing conditions in which a network can exist at all. It is in other words, a problem of sovereignty.” (35)
How populations regulated and controlled in this model becomes the problem the new governmentality must address.To maximize the potential of human capital, biology or life itself must be fused with information technology to optimize productive activity. “Taken together, the two elements of biology and informatics serve to make biopolitical control more nuanced, and more effective”. (73) Information matters a great deal, how the probabilities of risk are managed and the potential disasters must be addressed, as viruses, both cyber and biological can spread at rapid or instantaneous rates because of the overlaps.
“Emerging infectious diseases such as SARS not only operate across different networks simultaneously but in so doing also transgress a number of boundaries. The lesson here is that network flexibility and robustness are consonant with the transgression of boundaries”. (91)
New opportunities emerge to resist, modify or transcend existing structures with the possibilities of technology. Similar to guerrilla warfare, resistance and action can come from places when least expected, or appear on all sides at once. Shapeless and faceless, new forms of attack and resistance take on the form of swarms. “A swarm attacks from all directions, and intermittently but consistently- it has no “front”, no battle line, no central point of vulnerability. It is dispersed, distributed, and yet in constant communication.” (66)
“A swarm attacks from all directions, and intermittently but consistently- it has no “front”, no battle line, no central point of vulnerability. It is dispersed, distributed, and yet in constant communication.” (66)
The impetus for change agents to adapt and transcend technology becomes more pronounced. It becomes advantageous to be steps ahead of the technology. Some wish to transcend biology itself through technology, optimizing human abilities, and using technology to engineer healthier people, making them more efficient and productive.
"There are two conditions 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…but push technology into a hypertrophic state, further than it was meant to go”. (96)
“Galloway and Thacker note the importance of coding, both in the conception of biosciences and technology as well as theory. “Today the very concept of the Human Genome Project, of genetically tailored pharmaceuticals or transgenics or GM foods, and of the ongoing preparedness against bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease, there is the notion of a genetic “code” that remains central to an understanding of “life” at the molecular level” (47-48). The network phenomenon encourages us to think technologically in order to unravel the capabilities and possibilities. Networks are technical and political must be able to theorize at the technical level…”to write theory means to write code.” (100)
Now for the QUESTIONS:
1.What example(s) can you cite that illustrate the fluid rapidly changing and flexible characteristics of the network? What are the biopolitical implications that make it a compelling object for examination?
2.How much does the sovereignty of the U.S. matter in the current geopolitical landscape? Can the U.S. continue its stance of unilateralism as a viable political position in the age of global interconnectivity?
Galloway and Thacker begin their discussion by introducing their good friend Geert Lovink, who has some interesting things to say about networks, the relationship of government to those networks and how power is exercised and distributed. Lovink challenges contemporary notions about the importance of networks and their relation to sovereign power. The two positions Galloway and Thacker extract from this conversation are this: either the geopolitical landscape changed drastically after the monumental events like 9/11 and the fall of the Soviet Union, or the millennial era is simply “more of the same” (2).
American Exceptionalism
The Western regime or if you will global empire must begin by dissecting the idea of “American Exceptionalism”, as America is an exception in global politics because of its unique position as a producer of technology and a “driving force” for the world culture and economy. In short, America is dominant and exceptional, and because of this fact, sovereignty still matters. So while many would challenge the idea that the sovereignty of nations still has the same impact in the age of ubiquitous information networks, others like Lovink feel that sovereignty is still the most important.
“Thus the idea of American exceptionalism is always refracted through two crucial lenses of modernity: rapid technological change that, today at least, centers around information networks, versus a continued expression of sovereignty alongside the emergence of these global networks. And these two lenses are of course the same two positions we started with: either everything is different or nothing is different” (G&T, 3)
Galloway and Thacker ask a few key questions that guide their inquiry:
Is America a sovereign power or a networked power?
Has sovereignty beaten back the once ascendant networked form?
Or has the network from invented a new form of sovereignty native to it?
The United States is in a position that wields great influence, but also makes it susceptible to extreme scrutiny. The U.S. while encouraging certain forms of mutlilateralism, have rejected others. In order to unravel the the current global geopolitical landscape, Galloway and Thacker begin with these queries:
First Query: What is the profile of the current geopolitical struggle? Is it a question of sovereign states fighting nonstate actors? Is it a question of centralized armies fighting decentralized guerrillas? Hierarchies fighting networks? Or is a new global dynamic on the horizon?
Second Query: Networks are important. But does the policy of American unilateralism provide a significant counterexample to the claim that power today is network based? Has a singular sovereignty won out in foreign affairs?
Provisional Responses to the Queries:
Political Atomism (The Nietzchean Argument)
The first provisional argument describes an American resistance to mutlilateralism where the United States repsonds to the global networked landscape by reasserting its soveriegnty. "Perhaps the global machinations of "Empire" have elicited an American ressentiment in the form of unilateralism, a nostalgia for the good old days of the Cold War, when war meant the continued preparation for a standoff between technologically advanced power blocs" (6).Galloway and Thacker contend that this response explains part of the phenomenon, but does not account for conflicts within and between networks.
Unilateralism versus Multilateralism (the Foucauldian Argument)
This argument focuses on the relationships between power/knowledge or what characterizes the nature of how this power is exercised. "...the Foucaludian analysis suggests that unilateralism must be understood as a network. This does not mean that it has no center, quite the opposite (8)". In short, power must become plural to be singular or the center of unilateralism is "constructed through its network properties" (9).
Ubiquity and Universality
(the Determinist Argument)
The determinist view explains that media determines political conditions. "For instance, from this viewpoint the networks of FedEx or AT&T are arguably more important than that of the United States in terms of global economies, communication, and consumerism. This argument- what we might call a determinist argument- states that to understand the political situation, it is necessary to understand the material and technical infrastructures that provide the context for political conflict"(10). The problem with a determinist argument is that it fails to account for the ubiquity of technology.
Occultism and Cryptography (the Nominalist Argument)
This approach deals with the difficulty of naming things or attempting to substitute a name for a larger group. “To name a network is to acknowledge a process of individuation (“the Internet”, al-Qaeda”), but it is also to acknowledge the multiplicity that inheres within every network (the internet as a meta-network of dissimilar subsets, “al-Qaeda” as a rallying cry for many different splinter groups). This is why developing an ontology of networks… is crucial to the current book and to our understanding of the shape that global politics will take in the near future.” (12)
Before we move to nodes we must first discuss a few more important concepts:
Symmetry or Asymmetry?
A “politics of symmetry” can be understood as two equal powers in conflict. This phenomenon is can easily be understood by examining examples like the Cold War, where the U.S. and Soviet Union were superpowers engaged conflict. Galloway and Thacker contend that a “politics of asymmetry” has replaced symmetrical conflicts. Asymmetrical conflicts involve grassroots or guerrilla type organizations in conflict with large centralized power centers.
The Global Single Command
When a “networked sovereign” flips the switch and sends a single command that can quickly matriculate through the network.
Stay tuned for part 2 which will include the questions...
THE EXPLOIT
“Many have further suggested that asymmetric conflict is in fact a historical response to the centralization of power. This type of asymmetric intervention, a political form bred into existence as the negative likeness of its antagonist, is the inspiration for the concept of “the exploit”, a resonant flaw designed to resist, threaten, and ultimately desert the dominant political diagram.” (21)
