The architecture of this model treats these overlapping layers, claims, and networks not as exceptions to the normal rule but as the basis of an emergent order. The Stack, as examined here, comprises six interdependent layers: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is considered on its own terms and as a dependent layer within a larger architecture, and each is drafted from the superimposed image of the geographic and computational machines we now inhabit and the ones we might yet make. Each layer is understood as a unique technology capable of generating its own kinds of integral accidents, which, perhaps counterintuitively, may ultimately bind that larger architecture into a more stable order. These layers are not just computational. As much as it is made from computational forms (multiplexed fiber-optic cables, data centers, databases, systems standards and protocols, urban-scale networks, embedded systems, universal addressing tables), The Stack is also composed of social, human, and concrete forces (energy sources, gestures, effects, self-interested maneuvers, dashboards, cities and streets, rooms and buildings, physical and virtual envelopes, empathies and enemies). These hard and soft systems intermingle and swap roles, some becoming relatively “ harder ” or “ softer ” according to seemingly arcane conditions. <sup>9</sup> The Stack comes from both equilibrium and emergence, one oscillating into the other in undeciphered and unaccounted-for rhythms, stabilizing and destabilizing the same component for sometimes mismatched purposes. What is its state condition, and, literally for governance, what kind of machine that is a state does it provide for?
Introduction
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