Questioning "Protocol"
"Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization"
by Alex Galloway is an excellent book for those who are interested
in learning how the Internet works. Most books of this nature
cover only technical aspects, but this book tells the story
of the Internet from political, historical, economical, ideological,
and commercial perspectives. It also explores the subcultures
formed around the technology, like hackers and digital artists.
However, as you can probably tell from the title of the book,
these are not the primary concerns of the author, and this
is where my problems start…
Throughout the book, Galloway explains his notion of protocol
by extending the Western critical tradition (more specifically,
the French critical tradition) and its "periodization"
of Western history into the classical era, the modern era,
and the postmodern era. He aims to pick up where Foucault
and Deleuze left off, but from the perspective of a non-Westerner,
this strategy feels inappropriate as the basis for arguments
dealing with such global topics as the Internet, computers,
and protocol. If these modern technological phenomena are
best explained by the Western-male historical perspectives,
such as those of Marx, Deleuze, and Foucault, are we to assume
that the rest of the world had nothing to do with the current
technological state?
The task Galloway surely set himself was to understand the
globally distributed nature of the Internet and its supporting
technologies. How relevant could it be to approach this from
a strictly Western perspective and in terms of the "periodization"
of the West?
Ironically, Galloway shows in his use of Western Academic
protocol that when protocols become well-established, they
have a way of projecting authority. The American Constitution,
for instance, has an almost religious connotation for some
people. We tend to forget that protocols are not moral directives
or standards of value - which is when they become dangerous
and contradictory to the task in hand.
As well as academic protocol, Galloway also relies on gendered
protocol to substantiate his ideas and although he does credit
female contributors to the Internet in the section about Cyberfeminism,
they are those who have contributed to recognizable causes
of significant effects. They are women whom men can recognize
as great women.
Male minds see everything in terms of cause and effect. To
take credit for something means to be recognized for causing
certain effects. (This is what motivates tree-like bifurcation
of constitutive elements to reach the root, the ultimate cause.)
Thus, to be recognized in history as a significant figure,
one must strive in life to be the cause of a significant effect.
The last thing men want, therefore, is to do something that
cannot be recognized in terms of cause and effect. As far
as men are concerned, that is a woman's job. The East, being
the feminine counterpart of the West, took care of the unrecognizable
part of the Internet-unrecognizable at least in terms of individual
contributions. Theorists can only talk about what can be recognized,
so their only recourse is to talk about what Western men have
achieved. This in itself is relatively harmless so long as
they understand that their theories are nothing more than
science fiction. The trouble is that western academic males
never see these theories that way. Critical theories command
significant authority in Western societies, and emboldened
by that atmosphere, critical thinkers propose and even demand
actual social changes based on their science fiction.
However Galloway's binary divides don't stop there. He employs
a conventional analytical strategy in which he breaks the
Internet into its individual components (physical components
like various networking configurations; formal components
like record, object, protocol, browser, etc.; political components
like ICANN, ISO, IEEE; and sub-cultural components like hackers
and digital artists), and at the root of it, he finds protocol.
However, this discovery does not lead to any illuminating
conclusions or implications. It leaves me wondering what the
point of this complex tree structure is. Apparently, I am
not the only one to feel this. At the very end of the book,
he mentions how people respond to his ideas of protocol.
"People often ask me if I think protocol is good or
bad. But I'm not sure this is the best question to ask."
(p.245)
I too felt the urge to ask this question, not because every
argument needs to be defined in terms of good or bad, but
because the lack of motives for the arguments makes one want
to dig around for them. For topics like media and technology,
where we constantly analyze everything, analysis for the sake
of analysis does not seem so unnatural. We thus lose sight
of why we are analyzing it in the first place.
In contrast, if someone were to set up a dualism between
anti-Israel and anti-Semitism to explain his opinion that
criticizing the policies of Israel as a nation is not the
same as criticizing Jewish people, we immediately understand
his motive.
"... protocol is based on a contradiction between two
opposing machines, one machine that radically distributes
control into autonomous locales [TCP/IP], and another that
focuses control into rigidly defined hierarchies [DNS]."
(p.142)
Dualistic analysis, such as this one, comes up frequently
in the book. The use of dualism in itself does not trouble
me, but for it to have a meaning, I would want to know the
motive behind it. It is easy to arbitrarily choose a topic
and set up a dualistic analysis, but dualism for the sake
of dualism would not produce anything constructive.
Galloway often opposes "decentralization", "decentered",
"distributed", and "horizontal" against
"centralization" "centered", "hierarchical",
and "vertical". And, within each side, he uses the
words almost interchangeably. This becomes rather confusing.
For instance:
"... the reason why the Internet would withstand nuclear
attack is precisely because its internal protocols are the
enemy of bureaucracy, of rigid hierarchy, and of centralization."
(p.29)
"The emergence of distributed networks is part of a
larger shift in social life. The shift includes a movement
away from central bureaucracies and vertical hierarchies toward
a broad network of autonomous social actors." (p.33)
"The current global crisis is one between centralized,
hierarchical powers and distributed, horizontal networks."
(p.244)
"Distributed" and "decentralized" do
not mean the same thing as decentered or non-hierarchical.
We can decentralize a hierarchical structure, and in fact,
many corporations and government institutions do. Even if,
say, IBM decentralizes or distributes their physical operations
throughout the world (e.g., by outsourcing their customer
support to India), their power structure could still remain
hierarchical. A distributed network allows a hierarchical
power structure to be decentralized. It can, in fact, support
and enhance both hierarchical (vertical) and non-hierarchical
(horizontal) power structures.
And, "centered" does not necessarily mean hierarchical
either. An organization can be centered on a specific ideology,
and employ a non-hierarchical power structure. Both Catholics
and Quakers are ideologically centered on teachings of Christ,
but the former employs a hierarchical power structure, whereas
the latter employs a non-hierarchical one (a consensual structure).
In general, the East tends to be ideologically decentered
while being hierarchical in power structure. The West tends
to be less hierarchical in power structure, but highly centered
ideologically.
"This book addresses how control exists after decentralization,
that is, in specific places where decentralization is done
and gone and distribution has set in as the dominant network
diagram. Protocol is my answer for that. And ... protocol
not only installs control into a terrain that on its surface
appears actively to resist it, but in fact goes further to
create the most highly controlled mass media hitherto known."
(p.147)
"The founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom.
Control has existed from the beginning." (p.142)
Since freedom and control are two sides of the same coin,
it is neither here nor there to say that protocol is about
control. It is necessarily about both. Freedom is a specific
manifestation of control, and control, a specific manifestation
of freedom. Where there are no possibilities of control, there
is no freedom. And, where there are no possibilities of freedom,
there is no control. For instance, we do not think the movement
of the sun to be controlled because we do not understand what
it would mean for the Sun to have freedom of movement. Conversely,
if someone were to walk across a football field after the
game, no one would think to themselves how "free"
he is. If the rules that control the movements of the football
players are no longer applicable, the notion of freedom disappears
with it. The question of something being about freedom or
control, is analogous to the question of a glass being half
full or empty.
Thus, when Galloway asserts that "this book addresses
how control exists after decentralization", my response
is: How could it be otherwise? Decentralization is a specific
implementation of control, and therefore of freedom. Without
freedom and control as its necessary constituents, decentralization
as a concept would be meaningless.
I believe therefore that 'protocol' as a root, as a centering
concept for a thesis, is misplaced. In many of Galloway's
arguments, the use of the word "protocol" becomes
problematic. It is neither his own definition nor what he
considers a general definition, which leads to confusions.
Furthermore, he never makes a clear distinction between the
controlling power derived from protocols themselves and that
derived from the use of protocols. The two are quite different.
He seems to use "protocol" synonymously with the
Internet, "Protocol is a solution to the problem of hierarchy.
It is in many ways a historical advancement." (p.242)
but protocol is only one of the many components of the Internet.
Protocol by itself cannot be a solution to the "problem"
of hierarchy. For instance, some of the protocols used for
the Internet at various layers are concerned only with communication
between two points, and such protocols could not provide a
solution for said problem. The specific uses of protocols
for the Internet may be a "historical advancement",
but protocol itself is an old idea.
Likewise, the sentence: "Protocol is a system of distributed
management that facilitates peer-to-peer relationships between
autonomous entities." (p.243) would make more sense if
you replaced "protocol" with "the Internet".
The substitution should work, in principle, if protocol can
truly be interpreted as a root concept of the Internet (like
substituting "the unconscious" with a person in
a Freudian analysis), but in this case, they cannot be interchangeable
as protocol is only a subset, not a root cause of the Internet.
Where he says "Yet the success of protocol today as
a management style proves that the ruling elite is tired of
trees too." (p.242) he uses "protocol" to mean
non-hierarchical (decentered) management style. Protocol makes
possible any style of management. It is confusing to imply
that protocol specifically endorses non-hierarchical management
style. In a way, management style is a content of protocol,
and the latter does not limit the possibilities of the former.
"The ruling elite" may be in love with the use of
"protocol" because it allows them to make their
hierarchical structure more efficient and powerful.
In this manner, the use of the word "protocol"
feels forced throughout the book. It appears that Galloway
wanted to ground his arguments with a singular concept, but
the word "protocol" is not quite up to that task.
A Western mind tends to hold on to a centralizing concept
to build its arguments. Freud had a phase where he explained
everything in terms of sexuality. Notions such as the Unconscious,
Alienation, and Simulation have been used to conveniently
explain everything under the sun, and, the fact that they
can explain everything, is taken as the proof of their truthfulness.
Where Galloway went wrong, in my opinion, is his extension
of Foucault's periodization; from violence and bureaucracy
to "protocol" where he means self-regulating distributed
(democratic) control. It is confusing because protocol is
merely a tool that can be used for that style of control,
in the same way weapons are for violence, and institutions
are for bureaucracy. Protocol can even be used for both violence
and bureaucracy.
The two Galloways, Galloway the historian and Galloway the
cultural and literary critic, interject alternately, and this
switching back and forth is hard work for the reader. I would
imagine that to an audience who enjoys Galloway the historian,
the other Galloway is largely incomprehensible, unless they
are schooled in postmodern critical theory. Whilst it is difficult
to imagine that a reader who enjoys Galloway the cultural
critic not being well versed in matters raised in the historical
part of the book.
Because of all these disagreements, you might think that
I hated this book, but quite the contrary, as I love books
that make me think in my own way. The joy of reading critical
writing lies in the fact that there are so many ways you can
disagree with others. Digging into someone's thought process
is like solving a good puzzle. Critical writing for me is
the most fascinating form of science fiction both to read
and to write. For this reason, I would highly recommend this
book
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