protocol alexander r. galloway how control exists after decentralization Protocol leonardo Roger F. Malina, series editor The Visual Mind II, edited by Michele Emmer, 2004 Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency, Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala, 2003 Designing Information Technology, Richard Coyne, 1995 Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, Richard Coyne, 1999 Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, Ollivier Dyens, 2001 The Visual Mind, edited by Michele Emmer, 1994 The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, edited by Ken Goldberg, 2000 Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, 2003 Leonardo Almanac, edited by Craig Harris, 1994 In Search of Innovation: The Xerox PARC PAIR Project, edited by Craig Harris, 1999 Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia, Geert Lovink, 2002 The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 1999 Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 2003 The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, 2000 Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Anne Moser with Douglas MacLeod, 1996 Information Arts: A Survey of Art and Research at the Intersection of Art, Science, and Tech- nology, Stephen Wilson, 2002 Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization, Alexander R. Galloway, 2004 Protocol How Control Exists after Decentralization Alexander R. Galloway The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Garamond and Bell Gothic by Graphic Composition, Inc., and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Galloway, Alexander R., 1974– Protocol : how control exists after decentralization / Alexander R. Galloway. p. cm.—(Leonardo) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-07247-5 (alk. paper) 1. Computer networks—Security measures. 2. Computer networks—Manage- ment. 3. Computer network protocols. 4. Electronic data processing—Distrib- uted processing. I. Title II. Leonardo (Series) (Cambridge, Mass.) TK5105.59.G35 2004 005.8—dc22 2003060361 10987654321 For Fredric Jameson and Michael Hardt, my teachers Contents series foreword ix foreword: protocol is as protocol does by Eugene Thacker xi preface xxiii acknowledgments xxv IHow Control Exists after Decentralization 1 Introduction 2 1 Physical Media 28 2 Form 54 3 Power 80 II Failures of Protocol 117 4 Institutionalization 118 III Protocol Futures 145 5 Hacking 146 6Tactical Media 174 7 Internet Art 208 Conclusion 240 about the author 247 index 249 Series Foreword The cultural convergence of art, science, and technology provides ample op- portunity for artists to challenge the very notion of how art is produced and to call into question its subject matter and its function in society. The mis- sion of the Leonardo book series, published by The MIT Press, is to publish texts by artists, scientists, researchers, and scholars that present innovative discourse on the convergence of art, science, and technology. Envisioned as a catalyst for enterprise, research, and creative and scholarly experimentation, the book series enables diverse intellectual communities to explore common grounds of expertise. The Leonardo book series provides a context for the discussion of contemporary practice, ideas, and frameworks in this rapidly evolving arena where art and science connect. To find more information about Leonardo/ISAST and to order our pub- lications, go to Leonardo Online at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/ Leonardo/isast/leobooks.html> or send e-mail to <leonardobooks@mitpress. mit.edu>. Joel Slayton Chair, Leonardo Book Series Book Series Advisory Committee: Annick Bureaud, Pamela Grant Ryan, Craig Harris, Margaret Morse, Michael Punt, Douglas Sery, Allen Strange. Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (ISAST) Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technol- ogy, and the affiliated French organization Association Leonardo have two very simple goals: 1. to document and make known the work of artists, researchers, and scholars interested in the ways that the contemporary arts interact with sci- ence and technology, and 2. to create a forum and meeting places where artists, scientists, and engi- neers can meet, exchange ideas, and, where appropriate, collaborate. When the journal Leonardo was started some thirty-six years ago, these cre- ative disciplines existed in segregated institutional and social networks, a sit- uation dramatized at that time by the “Two Cultures” debates initiated by C. P. Snow. Today we live in a different time of cross-disciplinary ferment, collaboration and intellectual confrontation enabled by new hybrid organiza- tions, new funding sponsors, and the shared tools of computers and the In- ternet. Above all, new generations of artist-researchers and researcher-artists are now at work individually and in collaborative teams bridging the art, sci- ence, and technology disciplines. Perhaps in our lifetime we will see the emer- gence of “new Leonardos,” creative individuals or teams who will not only develop a meaningful art for our times but also drive new agendas in science and stimulate technological innovation that addresses today’s human needs. For more information on the activities of the Leonardo organizations and networks, please visit our Web site at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/Leonardo>. Roger F. Malina Chair, Leonardo/ISAST ISAST Board of Directors: Martin Anderson, Mark Resch, Ed Payne, Sonya Rapoport, Stephen Wilson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Joel Slayton, Penelope Finnie, Curtis Karnow, Mina Bissell, Beverly Reiser, Piero Scaruffi. Series Foreword x Foreword: Protocol Is as Protocol Does Eugene Thacker There’s a scene in the 1982 film Tron, in which Kevin Flynn, a computer pro- grammer by day and hacker by night, gets sucked into the digital world of computers. There he meets software programs, each with personalities and identities of their own, held hostage by the “MCP” or “Master Control Pro- gram,” a kind of despotic operating system that absorbs all software and all parts of the network into itself. One of the hostage programs named Tron, a security application leading a revolution against the MCP, asks Flynn about the mysteries of the world of “Users.” Flynn: I’m what you guys call a “User”... Tron: Well if you are a user, then everything you’ve done has been according to a plan, right? Flynn: (laughs) You wish... you guys know what it’s like, you keep on doing what it looks like you’re supposed to be doing, no matter how crazy it seems. Tron: That’s the way it is with programs, yes, but— Flynn: I hate to disappoint you pal, but most of the time that’s the way it is for users too... Tron was made by Disney Studios in the early 1980s as part of an attempt to reinvent itself for a new generation of potential consumers. In particular, Tron was indicative of a particular type of early 1980s culture, one in which “personal” computers were becoming more and more ubiquitous, along with a booming video game industry and an equally large, middle-class geek cul- ture to go with it. It was also a culture of perceived conflicts between com- puter mega-corporations and an emerging hacker subculture, both hatched in the midst of Reaganomics and the Japanese microelectronics boom. The list of gadgets spawned during this period has now entered the cultural mu- seum of dead technology: video game arcades, Atari home consoles, Casio synthesizers, Commodore home computers, floppy disks, laserdiscs, the Walk- man, and of course the neon lights of 1980s new wave music. It was from within this 1980s moment that William Gibson crafted the world of Neuro- mancer, and all of this is already making a comeback in the cultural nostalgia of “electroclash.” But more than being about fashion, the American middle-class youth culture Tron targeted was also one that existed during significant technolog- ical transformations, transformations we are still understanding today. The development of the personal computer, along with computer networks, has had a profound, stratified impact on the way in which social, political, and economic life is experienced. Recent discussions of the post-industrial soci- ety, the information society, the network society, disciplinary society, control society, informatization, scale-free networks, small worlds, and smart mobs are all ways of attempting to understand how social change is indissociable from technological development (research, design, use, distribution, market- ing, naturalization, consumption)—though not determined by it. This last point is crucial. If one is to foster an understanding and awareness of how the social and the political are not external to technology, then it is important to understand how the technological is in some sense isomorphic to the social and the political. This book—Protocol—points to one possible path for doing this. Through- out the discussions on power, control, and decentralization, Protocol consis- tently makes a case for a material understanding of technology. “Material” can be taken in all senses of the term, as an ontological category as well as a political and economic one. This type of materialist media studies shows how the question “how does it work?” is also the question “whom does it work for?” In short, the technical specs matter, ontologically and politically. As Galloway states here, “I attempt to read the never-ending stream of computer code as we read any text, decoding its structure of control.” But this is clearly not literary criticism. Nor is it semiotics—textual, visual, or otherwise. This is because computer code is always enacted. Code is a set of procedures, ac- tions, and practices, designed in particular ways to achieve particular ends in particular contexts.