We need to experiment with formalizing the partial “ citizenships ” already at work in our multiple User identities, including the rights of the “ refugees ” that all of us will be at one time or another, as both state-ful and state-less persons. <sup>42</sup> We can draw some provisional principles; we can choose whom we share our time with but not whom we share our world with, and so the voice-versus-exit dichotomy is dangerously incomplete as a basic algorithm for platform geopolitics. First, without the ability to materially design and redesign the systems that we have, “ voice ” is just requesting others to take action. “ If you can ’ t open it, you don ’ t own it, ” and while you can voice all you want, if you can ’ t redesign it, it ’ s already at least partially broken (as they say). User-redesignable systems are both more resilient and more accountable: no “ voice ” then without also “ design. ” Second, a right of “ exit ” without sym metrical rights of “ entrance ” is an empty promise. The emigrants that Srinivasan spoke about not only left their home countries, they also entered a new one. If they had not been able to freely move to, as well as freely move from, the lesson and the example fall apart. “ Exit for all, entrance for some ” is a bunker mentality, a sovereign filtering decision camouflaged as something else. It is not practical or scalable and is antithetical to the cold, hard optimism of my thesis. <sup>43</sup> As a platform politics, it also goes against the “ robustness principle ” that John Postel wrote into an early draft of a TCP/IP specifications document: “ Be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you accept from others. ” <sup>44</sup> Lastly, the real futures of our Cloud polities will be determined by extreme accidents at least as much by the execution of plans, and the coexistence of opposites as much as by the curation of ideals, and so whereas we might normally contrast the envisioned “ clean future ” ( 2001: A Space Odyssey’ s airport lounges, or Gattaca’ s dress code) from the “ dirty future ” ( Blade Runner’ s streets of LA, or Mad Max’ s social contract of mayhem) as mutually exclusive, instead they actually depend on one other, each world drinking the wastewater of the other. It is utopia and dystopia, both at once. For every Cloud Polis, the reversibility of the utopian and the dystopian tracks with the reversibility of the enveloping line of interiority and exteriority. The normalized exception can protect or fight the asymmetries of exit and entrance whether the Interface’ s User intends it or not. As discussed below, this is true (truer in fact) when the lines and hinges of these reversible enclaves/camps overlap and coexist in volumetric space, in the same project, sharing the same envelope, in the same City layer. Accordingly, even identifying where exit and entrance take place is not always easy. 45
The Stack to Come
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