W10: W9 Readings – Galloway

So I accidentally wrote on the wrong readings last week… Here are my notes from the Galloway reading.

Galloway talks about centralised and decentralised network versus a distributed network.

We spoke in class about how the decentralised and, especially, centralised networked follow a system where radial nodes are connected to system or rigidly connected to each other via set “pathways” (as such).

But then there are distributed networked whereby each node is able to communicate with any other – which represents and ideological system of non-hierarchical protocol. This can often be used to interpret the internet as a more democratic media platform, but this is not always the case as often the smaller nodes feed into the same nodes, enabling them to have more power.

For example, many bloggers would like back to the bigger blogs or highly visited pages, figuring this gives them more credibility or somehow, by association, makes their work more relevant. But in fact this goes against the idea of the long-tail as it feeds into particular nodes of the network thus making them more powerful. As such, despite all the possibilities of a distributed network, the way we use it often feeds into a more hierarchical, centralised media platform.