- Distortion and Genesis
As indicated in the first chapter, each layer of The Stack prioritizes the structural ideal of an independent technology, and like all other sufficient technologies, it generates its own integral accidents. In turn, each layer in conjunction with other layers of The Stack generates the interweaving and composite accidents of The Stack itself as a metatechnology. The logic of absolute communication for which any haecceity must appear to a common, commanding network platform is a utopian gathering of all into one (the first hint of totality and totalitarianism blurring). But in that guise, it is just that, a utopian projection of a master perspective from the heart of algorithmic capital, and like any other utopia, its purity in principle is also its fragility in practice. Consider the performance piece, Value Added (2012), by Nobutaka Aozaki, in which he takes a single can of Del Monte corn to multiple supermarkets and rebuys it over and over again. “ The single can of corn has been re-bought from 100 supermarkets for a total of \$107.42 (as of December 30, 2012). ” <sup>44</sup> The UPC barcode on the side of the can is a present-day ancestor of deep object addressability, but it can address not this one particular can of corn but can communicate only that the object in hand it is a member of the set “ Del Monte cans of corn. ” <sup>45</sup> Once the barcode is shown to a laser and then to an inventory database, its printed information is translated into a price, and the fact of its purchase in turn demands and activates its replacement through a supply chain from store shelf to farm and back again. Aozaki ’ s can is an archaic prototype of the deep address haecceity, and his simple maneuver to multiply its moment of addressable translation one hundred times over suggests at least two lessons. First, any haecceity can be addressed multiple times by interested addressing territories, each of which need not have any knowledge of the fact that others have already claimed this thing. Second, when in the future that universal object identifier is not a dumb barcode but an active online address and its resolver is something more ambient than a fixed-in-place laser scanner, then that haecceity ’ s identity can be spoofed as easily as any IP-networked computer can be today. In this regard, Aozaki ’ s work should be seen not only as a performance of repetition and ritual and the failure of the object to retain its official memory, but also as a smart object hack that doesn ’ t require any end-User software reprogramming. When IP-networked haecceities are not just anthropometric objects but also, for example, blood cells, pollen, oceanic wave formations, or abstract concepts, then hacking and spoofing their identity becomes much more provocative. We already have many Users online pretending to be other things, or forced by some exploit to mimic the appearance and value of other things on behalf of strange plots. Darknets allow for peer-to-peer sharing between devices without openly revealing their IP addresses and by actively obscuring addresses through the anonymizing rerouting of traffic. For the design brief of the Address layer, what is “ dark ” is any material that is connected to the rest of the world based on mischievous or accidental departure from its natural location or quality. As the saying can go, online no one knows that you are (not) a hurricane, a bee, an implanted organ, a crab nebula, a legal procedure for the packing of fish in the Solomon Islands, or a can of Del Monte corn, if you say that you are. By comparison, today ’ s DoS (denial of service) attacks on devices operating at the scale of the Internet of Things seem pedestrian. But DoS attacks on living tissue or on active concepts (!) suggests difficult new domains of cyberbiowarfare, either beyond the immediate scope of NSA/PLA privilege or as their next assignment. Both state and poststate security apparatuses already familiar with ruse surveillance and camouflage are drawn deeper into the viscous mire of networked performance.
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Address Layer