Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Leonardo Series)

Alexander R. Galloway

ISBN 10: 0262072475 / ISBN 13: 9780262072472

Published by Mit Pr, 2004

About this Item

Ancien livre de bibliothèque avec équipements. Couverture différente. Edition 2004. Ammareal reverse jusqu'à 15% du prix net de cet article à des organisations caritatives. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Book Condition: Used, Good. Former library book. Different cover. Edition 2004. Ammareal gives back up to 15% of this item's net price to charity organizations.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Leonardo Series)
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262072475
• ISBN 13: 9780262072472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Bon

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Review

"A very valuable, very original, and very significant contribution to the field of media studies and cultural theory." - Tilman Baumgartel, media critic, author of net.art and net.art 2.0 - New Material towards Net Art"