Some notes from Galloway’s ‘How Control Exists After Decentralization‘

Protocol:

• are recommendations/rules/standards that govern the way technologies are used, implemented, adopted…etc
• contain information inside a ‘technically define wrapper’, and is somewhat impartial to the content
• it allows for control to emerge amongst diverse environment
• critics describe internet as being an unorderly and variable mass of information.

– one reason for this TCP/IP protocol’s ability for transmission of data from any computer to another; thus there is no hierarchical relationship.

– DNS is a database that locates website addresses (IPs) to a physical place. Since all DNS information is structured in a hierarchical fashion, it follows that most of the web must obey this structure in order to access the internet.

• Translation process example for www.rhizome.org:

  Root server receives request for access into www.rhizome.org and directs user to .org domain machine -> rhizome section -> www. machine

• Since root servers are at the top of the process, they have the control over existence of each branch
• Distributed network: each point isn’t connected to a central hub/node, it can establish communication with another node but they ‘must speak the same language’ ie. Protocol? – this is what defines connectivity
• No shared protocol = no network
• ‘Life becomes resistance to power when power takes life as its object’