- tags
- #internet
Currently, there is a working group at the IETF studying decentralisation in the internet - Decentralisation of the Internet Research Group (DINRG).
According to its charter, its objectives include:
- tags
- #philosophy #internet
This is a note about an interesting article I just read, The New Control Society by Jon Askonas.
The core idea, that social control has moved from a ‘disciplinary’ model, where power is centralised, to a ‘protocol’ model of control, where power is decentralised, is not new at all. As the author mentions, one of the first, clearest articulations of this shift is found in Deleuze’s Postscript on the Societies of Control, but we can also see clear articulations of this concept in Alexander Galloway’s book Protocol (2004). The New York Times also had a recent story about the “Strange, Post-Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber”, which looks at how some of the Ted Kaczynski’s ideas relating to technological control have found advocates across the political spectrum. You could also say that some of Slavoj Zizek’s work is tangentially related. Although he doesn’t reference the idea of the ‘protocol’ as the mechanism of social reorganisation, he does frequently reference the shift in ideology from Soviet communism to ‘western’ capitalism, sometimes summarised by reference to Coca-Cola. Whereas in Soviet times you were commanded to ‘obey’, in capitalist times you are encouraged to ’enjoy!’.
- tags
- #internet
I was just reading a great post by Geoff Huston about the IPv6 transition.
In it he discusses the idea that the original 1980’s model of an internet with an end to end address space has been eclipsed by NAT techniques, CDNs, the increased importance of names over numbers, and so on.