Galloway's Protocol
A challenging read it was almost like reading a literary criticism with references to bureaucracy, societies and control. If he had mentioned the bourgeoisie it would have been complete.
Galloway begins by showing the similarities to the Classical Era. An era of violence and disciplinary control, to now with the removed violence but continued control, even calling it societies of imperial control. He indicates that the more technologies in place, the increase in power. Where I loose him briefly is in his comparison to Marx Capitalism and the examination of the commodity to then looking at production. While capitalism dictates that those with money, power, and production control are the ones who make decisions, what does it mean in a digital age to "descend into the hidden abode of production"? I understood that he was making a remark on who does not have the power by looking at third world labor, but then skips straight to programming languages, something that I do not associate with the sort degraded conditions for third world labor. Programming feels like a valuable skill, while the production of the device to hold that language is kept to others - Apple factories in China.
I love coding. What stood out in the article was the quote, "indeed, we must read the never ending stream of computer code as we ready any text (the former having yet to achieve recognition as a "natural language")".
Fluency and computer literacy I believe are essential skills.
In what appears to be a random conglomerate of information on the internet, is actually a highly structured environment. As Galloway insists the structure and protocols are everywhere. From the smallest part: images and links, then the CSS, HTML all under HTTP, talking to the TCP then the IP and then through physical barriers such as wireless, cables, etc. All regulated at every step by form, function, rules of coding, and on their way to the DNS and root servers.
Additional questions that I have unanswered are 1) his correlation with artificial intelligence (AI) and protocols 2)
biopolitics- technologies and knowledge, and 3) "protocol is to control societies as the panopticon is to disciplinary societies".
"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)"
