{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title":"The Stack On Software and Sovereignty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780262029575","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","uuid":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title":"The Stack On Software and Sovereignty","normalized_title":"thestackonsoftwareandsovereignty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780262029575","isbns":["9780262029575"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":517,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/The%20Stack%20On%20Software%20and%20Sovereignty","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/search"},"page":{"printed_page":179,"pdf_page":195,"physical_index":195,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b24f2dbdb611d5ef2da0e80e40d7c62f3fd5093fbeea38bb3776bc099d1421f1"},"chapter":"Fheck The Stack |On Software and Sovereignty Benjamin H. Bratton","content":"The composite megastructural form of the City layer of The Stack (composite in the interweaving of physical and informational infrastructures in a given site, as well as in the differential integration and disintegration of continental urban sites) is, in some ways, a realization of Apollo-era architectural mega-utopianism (total envelope, universal interfacial grids, superimposition of quasi-sovereign layers) and in other senses an almost complete inversion of it (regularization of production and consumption cycles strong filtering of individual mobility, intensive capitalization of every encounter and gesture). We can see aspects of these utopian projects in the City layer today and recog nize their evil doppelgangers as well. This is possible perhaps because The Stack works as both a control mechanism and a means to open up and flatten access, providing one because it provides the other, and so it is not surprising, then, that it would discover the legacy of utopian megastructures through this very reversibility. For example, Fox conn is the largest private employer in China and assembles much of the human-scale digital electronics equipment that connects urban society to The Stack. Its largest fac tory city, in Longhua, Shenzhen, situates an estimated 300,000 employee residents in a massive live-work complex. It is a megastructure by sheer architectural scale and social totalization, and one could also say that Foxconn is an island and therefore prone to both utopian and (as has been more the case) dystopian imaginations. Along the spectrum of platform openness versus closure, Foxconn ’ s regimented cycle of life passing from one phase to another, perhaps until death, places it at the end of a dotted line leading through Voluntary Prisoners to the present, each the prototype for the other. Its factory floor is responsible for the physical assembly of much of the world ’ s consumer devices, laptops, smart phones, and as these are the essential physical interfaces between Users in motion and the recombinant landscapes they strategize, it is also a savage realization of Archigram ’ s Plug-In City (1968) and Computer City (1966). We see Superstudio ’ s fabulous Continuous Monument realized by Global Crossing ’ s massive deployment of transoceanic fiber optics during the dot-com frenzy in the late 1990s. Superstudio ’ s was successful as a project but unbuilt; the telecom ’ s was built but busted its investors. We can measure No-Stop City in the compulsive speed of ambulatory urban computing and the interfacial city without beginning, end, or middle. We imagine Cedric Price ’ s Fun Palace (1961) turned inside out by North Korean stadium pageants where the audience itself is the media content, but instead of free to play, each actor is instead rendered into disciplined pixel within a larger choreography of the spectacular image. We could mark an ancestral trace from Yona Friedman ’ s La Ville Spatiale to the new Asian smart cities such as New Songdo City ( “ a ubiquitous city, ” says its brochure) in South Korea ’ s Incheon development, or see Paolo Soleri ’ s Arcology as a first pass at Masdar, the massive “ green ” smart city in Abu Dhabi. (Both\n\nCity Layer\n\n179","previous_page":178,"next_page":180}