The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

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of the supernatural, a divine or demonic sovereignty. Popular interpretations
of epidemics throughout history often make appeals to the
supernatural: the plague is a sign of divine retribution (for the colonized),
a sign of divine providence (for the colonizer), a harbinger of
the apocalypse, a punishment of the hubris of humanity, even
mystified in modern times as the “revenge of nature.” Such representations
are not limited to biological epidemics; in the network society,
they are also found in informational - biological hybrids: the
“metro phage,” the “gray goo” problem of nanotech, the “infocalypse,”
and so on. Such narratives and representations can be seen as
attempts to recentralize the question of sovereignty in networks. But
in this case, sovereignty is scaled up to the level of the divine or demonic,
an agency that may be identified but remains unknowable
and decidedly nonhuman. It is as if to say, “there is no one in control,
except at an order we cannot fathom.” A question of theology,
to be sure.
Universals of Identification
Request for Comments (RFC) number 793 states one of the most fun -
da mental principles of networking: “Be conservative in what you do,
be liberal in what you accept from others.” As a political program,
this means that communications protocols are technologies of conservative
absorption. They are algorithms for translating the liberal into
the conservative. And today the world’s adoption of universal communications
protocols is nearing completion, just as the rigid austerity
measures of neoliberal capitalism have absorbed all global markets.
Armand Mattelart wrote that the modern era was the era of universal
standards of communication. The current century will be the era of
universal standards of identification. In the same way that universals
of communication were levied to solve crises in global command and
control, the future’s universals of identification will solve today’s crises
of locatability and identification. The problem of the criminal complement
is that they can’t be found. “To know them is to eliminate
them,” says the counterinsurgency leader in The Battle of Algiers. The
invention of universals of identification, the ability to locate physically
and identify all things at all times, will solve that problem. In