An Ode To Galloway

In Protocol, Alexander R. Galloway describes a system of power online (based around Foucault’s biopower) that is based in a more or less solid understanding of the technology itself. That is, unlike a lot of technological theorists, Galloway has a pretty good idea of how computers and the internet work and starts from there–and thus I say Hallelujah.Why does that excite me? Well, to be honest, I’m a bit miffed when I read people theorizing the Internet or computers that really don’t know how they work. Especially when said people are then used in pedagogy to suggest why we should use certain technologies in our classrooms (no, I’m not going to name names here!). I don’t think you need to know how to build a computer to teach with them (though it doesn’t hurt when they crash and burn in the middle of your course, of course) but I think a certain working knowledge should be required to make statements of “This is how it is.” Thus, Galloway’s abillity to tie together “this is how it is” with “this is why that is” is a breath of fresh air. No more general statements about how this seems to be the case, tons of statements of “this is how the internet is actually ran, and it does make a difference.”  Furthermore, a study of the protocols of how the internet is held together (formed, designed, redesigned, and controlled) admits that there is a system of control on networks. Too many theories suggest that there is no such thing, that hooking a bunch of computers together will magically form a network where everybody has the same power. That’s simply not true. Galloway says that resistance to control has to change from discipline to biopower to protocol. Hence, hackers are different from the people who have previously resisted power. He cites some hackers that claim that they don’t really work in groups, that they are nomadic, that most of the truly famous ones have worked alone. They tend to be anti-corporate, and so on. Maybe it’s only in the past couple of years, but I’m not so sure that hacking is still exactly what Galloway and even others describe. There was a time when there was some valor to hacking into somebody else’s system, these days it’s hard to say if there’s an valor to it at all. Why? Well, for one thing, the proliferation of online “tools” for hacking have made it pretty simple to launch broad scale campaigns without truly having to have the ability to write these tools oneself. And that’s not to say that it isn’t still considered cool or funny to be anti-corporate, but these tools are also often turned on private individuals as well. While there might be a certain amount of valor (and yes, lulz) in attacking Walmart’s website or the church of scientology, is there any valor in other attacks? Is there anything redeemable (except technological prowess) in attacking an epileptic website? Yes, the latest medium scale hacking attack was reported by Wired. Over Easter weekend, an epileptic support message board was attacked by a group using tactics similar to Anonymous. They posted javascripted messages that would flash and cause seizures in members of the group that viewed them. Clearly, this isn’t cool (yeah that’s a pretty big understatement). While it would definitely represent a breakdown of protocol and control, Anonymous themselves are saying the attack wasn’t them (and they do a pretty good job of claiming things they’ve done, despite all the blame it on Ebaum’s stuff). They’re blaming it on the Scientologists, and meanwhile, the message board itself is trying to stop discussion of it and move on. In any case, it was very refreshing to find a theorist who not only believes that control exists online, but that it is very rigid and created in such a way that decisions were made about the way things were going to be (rather than them just somehow magically coming into being). I believe that one of the ways technology studies is bound to develop in the future is going to be more theory like this–based in reality, contextualized, and real.