{"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":315,"pdf_page":329,"physical_index":329,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6959e461dda85d91b46cf951b5e237eb95e6095b3127c553c17617f569b1bd93"},"chapter":"Fheck The Stack |On Software and Sovereignty Benjamin H. Bratton","content":"The trial balloon of an information technology free zone echoes remarks made in 2013 by Google CEO Larry Page during his Google I/O keynote speech, as he wondered aloud about a “ Google Island ” where we “ set aside a part of the world. … I think as tech nologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What ’ s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world. ” <sup>34</sup> Page compared his speculative temporary autonomous zone to Burning Man, a city that comes and goes on an annual cycle unlike an actual island, and so of only limited experimental significance and value. Page ’ s thought bubble presents more than few problems, even taken at face value (especially taken at face value). “ Without having to deploy it to the whole world ” implies that the island is a society-sized laboratory with all the standard measures in place to isolate and contain contaminants from entering or exiting. <sup>35</sup> Accordingly the test-bed can prototype the ideal software society within its formal boundary only if that border is enforced by draconian walls and firewalls. This purified closure would either validate or violate the inspiration for the island as a project, depending on your motivation. If it is not breached and remains a vacuum, then the findings will have diminished significance outside the artificially hermetic environment. If data or some other aspect of the Island microsociety were to leak out, or some of the outside world to link in, on a regular basis, as happened with Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert, then the experimental noninterference would be breached, to whatever significant or insignificant degree. If breached, then the island is really just one locus among many others in “ the whole world, ” one that may layer experiments one on another in dense concentration, but one that does what it does in direct (if filtered) relationship with other enclaves and camps. By the measure of Srinivasan ’ s admonitions, this is a mixed blessing, as the rarified testing grounds must still make sense of unprogrammable input from the normal outside, a concession that may disappoint some purists. On the other hand, his strenuous defense of exit must apply even to the utopias to which emigrants relocate, not just the ones from which they originated. People, data, carbon, air, and capital have to be able to leave Google Island for the principle and narrative to hold true. The only way to have it both ways is to solve for the closed totality of island and then “ deploy it to the whole world, ” where planetary boundaries drawn against outer space may provide the same closure as the island drawn against the ocean: to the make whole world into “ the island. ” The inclination toward that information universalism is more familiar to Google ’ s information cosmopolitanism project than it is to that of the strong secessionists.\n\nThere are other future scenarios to spin out from the leverage of this hypothetical fissure, and they all may really be a more polite way of describing the present from the comfort of a slightly off-stage futuristic perspective. If formal Westphalian political geography is to be further delinked from last-instance sovereignty, we could as easily imagine (if not as easily implement) a situation in which a state ’ s services are avail able to Users anywhere, according to their interests and choices, some determined by economic privileges, others by cultural and brand allegiances, others by whether they are simply a human or not. As Cloud platforms absorb state functions and states realize Cloud platform topologies and methods, The Stack does not necessarily privilege either in favor of the other. State and Cloud platforms may consolidate their competing and complementary services based on different strategies for protocol lock-in — some geographic, some constitutional, some by historical legacy, some contractual, some extractive, some by taxing premiums, some mere convention. For example, we may draw a scenario in which the European Union (or some quasi-state actor, perhaps a religious polity or a Cloud platform) offers far more secure and useful digital identity services than California, so those of us who are now California residents choose to be part of that platform instead of or as well as being Californians at other layers and other times, and effectively pay “ taxes ” to a state other than the one on our passports according to terms of service. In time, people from different locales might become more intertwined with the services and political conflicts of the EU than they are of their home nation, because it is the EU platform that is actually providing them a preferred secure economic and cultural identity, access to transactions, even education and other social services. Perhaps someone can choose to live under the EU platform ’ s data laws even if they mostly reside in Los Angeles, and perhaps, by the terms of a datatraffic encryption and securitization mutual nonaggression pact among platforms, no one can (or does) stop them. Perhaps they don ’ t even give up their US passports, because doing so wouldn ’ t really matter. In this scenario, some platform strategies would rely on interoperability among federated universal networks (maybe Google ’ s or maybe not), while others would entertain the advantages and suffer the disadvantages of closed loops (such as Iran ’ s continuously pending “ Halal Internet ” ). However, for our User from California, movement is still restricted. Perhaps the greater state services apparatus in China is part of a transnational bloc that for whatever reasons has been programmed to prevent interoperation with the EU platform. The walled garden topography becomes, once again, one of antagonistic fiefdoms and empires, but ones that are more agnostic as to the latitude and longitude coordinates of Users, citizens, clients, and members.\n\nThe Stack to Come\n\n315","previous_page":314,"next_page":316}