The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

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Nodes 95 True, in extreme cases such as bioterrorism, human agencies are involved in manufacturing, weaponizing, and disseminating lethal diseases. Or in instances of naturally occurring emerging infectious diseases, the decision to share information or to withhold it is regulated by individuals, groups, and institutions. In all these cases, we have legal, governmental, and ethical structures that clearly assign accountability to the persons involved. In other words, we have social structures to accommodate these instances; they fit into a certain paradigm of moral - juridical accountability. Our contention, however, is that in some ways they fit too neatly. This is precisely the core of the alarmism and anxiety that surround bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. While individuals, groups, or organizations may be responsible for “causing” emerging infectious diseases, it is notoriously difficult to predict the exact consequences of such decisions or to foresee the results of such actions. This is because emerging infectious diseases are not weapons like missiles, planes, or bombs; they are networks, and it is as networks that they function and as networks that they are controlled. Let us be clear on this point. From the perspective of network logic, the question is not whether there is a difference between computer viruses, bioterrorism, and emerging infectious diseases. On a number of points there are clear and obvious differences, and these differences have been addressed in direct, practical ways. Rather, the question is whether, despite their differences, computer viruses, bio - terrorism, and emerging infectious diseases share a common protocol, one that belongs to our current context of the society of control. What prompts us to pose the question in this way is the networked quality of all the previously addressed cases (e - mail worm, SARS, anthrax). It is as if once the biological agent is let loose, the question of agency (and with it, the question of accountability) becomes much more complex. The bioterrorist does not target a person, a group, or even a population. Rather, the bioterrorist exploits a layered and standardized network. In a similar way, a new disease such as SARS does not just repeat its cycle of infection; it mutates, and with its mutations come the opportunistic transgressions of borders of all kinds—
96 Nodes species borders, international borders, and the borders of ethnicity and culture. We should reiterate that protocological exploits (computer viruses, emerging infectious diseases, and so on) are politically ambivalent in their position within and among networks. While computer worms piggyback on the global standards of TCP/ IP and other Internet protocols, emerging infectious diseases operate on the protocols of biological control, gene expression, and cellular metabolism. Viruses and diseases are obviously not to be looked at as models for progressive political action. But it is precisely in their ambivalent politics that we see both the plasticity and the fragility of control in networks. There are as many lessons to be learned from the “failures” of networks as there are from their successes. Perhaps we can note that a network fails only when it works too well, when it provides too little room for change within its grand robustness, as the example of the computer virus illustrates. In this way, networks fail only when they succeed. Networks cultivate the flood, but the flood is what can take down the network. There are several lessons to be learned from the ambivalent, nonhuman examples of computer viruses, emerging infectious diseases, and bioterrorism. To begin with, action and agency (at both the ontological and the political level) will have to be rethought in the context of networks and protocological control. This in turn means reconsidering the relationship between causality and accountability. A single person may be legally accountable for setting loose a computer virus or biological agent, but it is a more complicated manner when one person is accused of all the downstream and indirect consequences of that original action. While the legal system may be good at accountability issues, it is less adept at handling what happens after the original event. Most often, the response is simply to shut down or blockade the network (quarantine, firewalls). Because network ef-
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The Exploit
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The Exploit A Theory of Networks Al
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Contents On Reading This Book vii P
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On Reading This Book It is our inte
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Prolegomenon “We’re Tired of Tr
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Prolegomenon 3 opportunities that t
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Prolegomenon 5 centralized armies f
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Prolegomenon 7 the other hand, the
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Prolegomenon 9 Following Foucault,
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Prolegomenon 11 Provisional Respons
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Prolegomenon 13 comes to thinking a
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Prolegomenon 15 grams, where ultima
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Prolegomenon 17 rorism in the same
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Prolegomenon 19 has nothing to do w
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Prolegomenon 21 sovereignty. In the
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PART I Nodes The quest for “unive
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Nodes Discourse surrounding network
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Nodes 27 Benkler, and others, posit
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Nodes 29 cols such as http, FTP, an
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Nodes 31 tify the political fissure
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Nodes 33 From the perspective of gr
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Nodes 35 Indeed, one of the argumen
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Nodes 37 works. Would it be enough
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Nodes 39 and “rule” lies. The n
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Nodes 41 modulating, in flux, alive
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Nodes 43 ning of the data object. F
Page 54 and 55: Nodes 45 number of top - level name
Page 56 and 57: Nodes 47 This process may be partia
Page 58 and 59: Nodes 49 Biotechnologies today have
Page 60 and 61: Nodes 51 be it in the living cell,
Page 62 and 63: Nodes 53 DNA computing demonstrates
Page 64 and 65: Nodes 55 greater the number of insi
Page 66 and 67: Nodes 57 more accurate or successfu
Page 68 and 69: Nodes 59 takes on new forms in the
Page 70 and 71: Nodes 61 and at all scales. Perhaps
Page 72 and 73: Nodes 63 many current network - bas
Page 74 and 75: Nodes 65 face because enmity is alw
Page 76 and 77: Nodes 67 As a concept, swarming der
Page 78 and 79: Nodes 69 Places where faces shouldn
Page 80 and 81: Nodes 71 at which “life itself
Page 82 and 83: Nodes 73 A crucial challenge is to
Page 84 and 85: Nodes 75 concern is not safety anym
Page 86 and 87: Nodes 77 is central in the developm
Page 88 and 89: itself on the side of life, and tur
Page 90 and 91: Nodes 81 Perhaps what is most instr
Page 92 and 93: Nodes 83 ever, the language of biol
Page 94 and 95: Nodes 85 computer’s normal MBR. E
Page 96 and 97: Nodes 87 amples of computer and bio
Page 98 and 99: Nodes 89 identify Lyme disease, the
Page 100 and 101: Nodes 91 Web sites, databases, and
Page 102 and 103: Nodes 93 to our bodies, which has t
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Page 108 and 109: Nodes 99 guarded condition, it will
Page 110 and 111: Nodes 101 Societies of Control . .
Page 112 and 113: PART II Edges —Well there it is.
Page 114 and 115: Edges The Datum of Cura I Imagine a
Page 116 and 117: Edges 107 In these visions of healt
Page 118 and 119: Edges 109 control it seeks to estab
Page 120 and 121: Edges 111 treatise: Machiavelli’s
Page 122 and 123: Edges 113 Joseph - Marie Jacquard h
Page 124 and 125: Edges 115 but that, in the guise of
Page 126 and 127: Edges 117 tension, duration, and in
Page 128 and 129: Edges 119 abstract, mathematical pr
Page 130 and 131: Edges 121 Consider current developm
Page 132 and 133: Edges 123 simply mean symmetrical c
Page 134 and 135: Edges 125 focuses on code in isolat
Page 136 and 137: Edges 127 player online games, and
Page 138 and 139: Edges 129 role of medicine is to re
Page 140 and 141: Edges 131 of the supernatural, a di
Page 142 and 143: Edges 133 proteins, processes that
Page 144 and 145: Edges 135 muted into quality,” wr
Page 146 and 147: Edges 137 which cannot be cast into
Page 148 and 149: Edges 139 the thing, a particular f
Page 150 and 151: Edges 141 If Latour gives us a para
Page 152 and 153: Edges 143 tion. Nondistinction effa
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Edges 145 from the technological ve
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Edges 147 spellings, grammatical er
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Coda: Bits and Atoms Networks are a
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Coda 151 robustness that centralize
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Coda 153 tributed network form, jus
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Coda 155 The point here is not that
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Coda 157 ignored, and the network i
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Appendix Notes for a Liberated Comp
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Appendix 161 infinity palimpsest po
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Appendix 163 singular unordered vit
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lose DEVICE mutate SEQUENCE narcole
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Notes Prolegomenon 1. For more on t
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Notes 169 7. Gilles Deleuze, Negoti
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Notes 171 clude GM foods, chemical
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Notes 173 bodies, the new nondiscip
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Notes 175 61. For a popular overvie
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Notes 177 22. On December 1, 2003
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Notes 179 6. Ibid., 2. 7. Ibid., 20
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Electronic Mediations Katherine Hay
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Index abandonment, 110- 11, 136 Abu
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Index 185 body politic, 109- 11 Boe
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Index 187 distributed network. See
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Index 189 Health and Human Services
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Index 191 Metzger, Gustav, 108 Mich
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Index 193 poltergeist, 161 populati
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Index 195 TCP/ IP. See Internet pro
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Alexander R. Galloway is assistant
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