The Stack On Software and Sovereignty

Fheck The Stack |On Software and Sovereignty Benjamin H. Bratton

The Stack

Software Studies

Matthew Fuller, Lev Manovich, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, editors

Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies,

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2009

Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life,

Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, 2011

Programmed Visions: Software and Memory,

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2011

Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression,

Geoff Cox and Alex McLean, 2012

10 PRINT CHR\$(205.5+RND(1));: GOTO 10,

Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter, 2012

The Imaginary App,

Paul D. Miller and Svitlana Matviyenko, 2014

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty,

Benjamin H. Bratton, 2015

The Stack

On Software and Sovereignty

Benjamin H. Bratton

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in ITC Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Cover design by Metahaven.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN: 978-0-262-02957-5

For Lucien, and his world.

Contents

Series Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Credits xv
Preface xvii
I The Models
Introduction 3

1. A New Architecture? 3
2. An Accidental Megastructure 8
3. Blur and Accident 13

The Nomos of the Cloud 19

1. Dividing Sovereignty 20
2. Over (and under) the Line 23
3. Land/Sea/Air/Cloud 28
4. The Nomos of the Cloud? 31
5. A Google Grossraum? 34

Platform and Stack, Model and Machine 41

1. Platforms 41
2. How Platforms Work 46
3. Stack as Model 52
4. Stack as Political Machine 55
5. Stacks That Were and Might Have Been 58

1. The Layers of The Stack 66

II The Layers

Earth Layer 75

1. Discovering or Inventing Computation? 76
2. Digestion 81
3. Geo-graphy and Geoaesthetics 83
4. From Global Surface to Planetary Skin 87
5. Smart Grid: Ouroboros 92
6. Sensing and Sovereignty; Polities of Supply and Effect 97
7. Designing for versus Designing with Emergencies 101
8. Designing the Earth Layer 105

Cloud Layer 109

1. Platform Geography 111
2. The First Sino-Google War of 2009 112
3. Cloud Infrastructure 115
4. Cloud Polis 119
5. Platform Wars 124
6. Facebook 125
7. Apple 128
8. Amazon 131
9. Google 134
10. Future Cloud Polis and Platforms 141

City Layer 147

1. Reversible Grids 149
2. City as Layer 151
3. Exposure and Control 155
4. Force Finding Function Finding Form 160
5. Envelope and Apparatus 163
6. Designing for Mixed Envelopes, Mixed Programs 168

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Contents

Contents

1. Programs, Subjects, and Zombie Jurisdictions 172

1. Megastructure and Utopia 176

1. Platform Cities 183

Address Layer 191

1. Scale, Scope, and Structure 193

1. Deep Address 197

1. Objects in The Stack 200

1. Addressability and Technique 205

1. IPv6 207

1. Communication and Composition 210

1. Absolute Incommunication 212

1. Distortion and Genesis 214

Interface Layer 219

1. What Interfaces Are 220

1. Interfaces at Hand: From Object to Sign to Object 222

1. The Interface as Layer 228

1. Interfaces in The Stack 1: The Aesthetics of Logistics 230

1. Interfaces in The Stack 2: Apps and Programming the Space at Hand 236

1. Interfaces in The Stack 3: Theo-Interfaciality 239

1. Geoscapes: Interfaces Drawing Worlds 243

User Layer 251

1. Origins of the User 254

1. Finding the Universal User 256

1. Quantified Self and Its Mirror 260

1. Trace and Frame 265

1. Maximum User 267

1. Death of the User 271

1. Animal User 274

1. AI User 277

1. Machine User 279

1. From User-Centered Design to the Design of the User 284

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