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# The Stack On Software and Sovereignty

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User Platform Value Platform economics provide for at least two forms of “ surpluses ” : platform surplus value and User platform value, which is characterized by how information entered into a platform is made more valuable for the User at little or no direct cost to that User. As an ideal model, Users will make tactical use of platform Interfaces to link existing systems (e.g., social, technical, informational, biological) and in doing so are incentivized to incorporate more of their own interests. Subsequent Users are incentivized to link their systems to benefit from the network effects set in motion by earlier Users, who in turn enjoy increasing network benefits as more User systems are incorporated over time. In principle, the platform itself realizes platform surplus value from this cycle.

Westphalian State The political model of sovereignty defined by the horizontal projection and loop topology of the modern nation-state political geography. “ Westphalian ” refers to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, symbolizing the formal consolidation of this sovereign geographic model. The model provided the modern unit of state sovereignty as interior to that geographic loop, and a geopolitics that would variously identify a balance of conflict between these units and a federalization of them into a particular form of cosmopolitanism. The nomos of the Cloud is characterized partially by a “ delamination ” of practical sovereignty from this grounding.

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Introduction

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The Nomos of the Cloud

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8. David Campbell, “ ITN vs. Living Marxism, ” Independent Television News, August 7, 1992.

9. Liquefaction and solidification overwrite and overwhelm one another, over and again. The introduction of the membrane-partition works against the capacity of sovereign movement, against its abilities, and the same holds true for walls internal to the city; inside its outer walls are inner walls, equally defeated. Does the suppression of violence support the civil society ostensibly protected from attack, or does it double in advance the attack, rendering the surface of the city in the image of its own projective violence, ceding to it in advance? The City to be governed can ’ t possibly know in advance whether and how the closing of a channel will work to stabilize or destabilize an intended civil equilibrium. If the content of the terrorist form is that there is no civilian space, then the content of counterterrorism is identical if inverted.

10. I would argue this framework of “ the political ” as articulated by Schmitt and developed by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, for example, is a stale and ineffective strategy for understanding the logics of power and design in our age of ecological precarity. Put differently, only a fool would tell you that the functional definition of the “ post-political ” looks like the Washington Consensus. As should be clear to the attentive reader, my rehearsal of Schmitt ’ s model in this chapter is in order to overwhelm it with catastrophic contradictions.

11. See also Stuart Elden ’ s work on the history of the concept of territory, especially The Birth of Territory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), as well as Elden, “ Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power, ” Political Geography 34 (May 2013): 35–51; Elden, “ The Geopolitics of   King Lear: Territory, Land, Earth, “   in   Law and Literature, 25: 2 (2013); and Elden, “ Chamayou ’ s Manhunts: From Territory to Space? ”   for   The Funambulist Papers: Volume 2  (Punctum Books, 2014).

12. Stewart Elden: “ Schmitt reminds us that the Greek word nemein, from which nomos is derived, means both ‘ to divide ’ and ‘ to pasture ’ (1997 [1950]: 40; 2003 [1950]: 70). Hannah Arendt has similarly noted the relation between ‘ law and hedge in the word nomos’ , stressing the relation between law and boundary line or zone, and pointing out that ‘ the Greek word for law, nomos, derives from nemein, which means to distribute, to possess (what has been distributed) and to dwell ’ (1958: 63 n. 62). The legal is thus tied directly to the land. As Schmitt continues: ‘ Nomos is the measure by which the ground and soil of the earth [ Grund und Boden der Erde] in a particular order is divided and situated; it is also the form of political, social, and religious order determined by this process. Here, measure, order, and form constitute a spatially concrete unity. (1997 [1950]: 40; 2003 [1950]: 70). ” See Elden, “ Reading Schmitt Geopolitically: Nomos, Territory and Gro ß raum, ” in Spatiality, Sovereignty, and Carl Schmitt: Geographies of the Nomos, ed. Stephen Legg (New York: Routledge, 2011), 91 – 105.

Schmitt himself defines it in more than one way. “ The Greek noun nomos derives from the verb nemein, and like the latter, has three meanings. Firstly, nemein is the equivalent of the German nehmen, to take. Hence nomos means seizure. As the Greek legein-logos corresponds to the German spechen-Sprache, so too, the German nehmen-Nahme corresponds to the Greek nemein-nomos. At first, it meant the seizure of land, and later it also meant the appropriation of the sea, much of which is part of our historical review here. In the industrial sector, one speaks of the appropriation of the means of production. The second meaning is the division and distribution of what was seized. Hence also the second sense of nomos, the basic division and repartition of the soil and the resulting ownership order. The third meaning is to tend, that is, to use, exploit, and turn to good account the partitioned land, to produce and to consume. Seizingdividing-tending in that sequence are the three fundamental notions of every concrete order. More about the meaning of nomos can be found in my book The Nomos of the Earth (1950). ” See Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea (1942) (Washington: Plutarch Press, 1997), 37.

Notes

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13. This ordering order of the State as the guarantor of sovereignty was also, at Westphalia in 1648 as elsewhere, a displacement and replacement of State religion as the ultimate provider of the law of the land. This moment in the invention of secularism was a geographic undertaking, and one that is under attack from the front and the rear at once. The Modern Nomos is fragmenting and perforating, it is distorted and deformed by both planetary computation, which produces new territories in its image, and by resurgent political theology which reconvenes pre-modern geo-jurisdictional domains.

14. Fredric Jameson, “ Notes on the Nomos, ” South Atlantic Quarterly 104, no. 2 (2005): 199–204.

15. “ He interestingly applies this to the growth of piracy at this time too: freedom of the sea vs. limits on land is another hallmark that starts to develop. Two different concepts of the sea begin to be posited: one by France, who finds the sea the common property of all, one by England, who finds the sea to be the property of no one — presaging, of course, future problems. Thus, a seemingly primordial opposition between land and sea (later on itself relativized and historicized) — between landed order and maritime lawlessness — fails, despite the Deleuzian overtones of smooth (maritime) versus striated or landed space, to generate any nostalgia for the nomadic, for gypsies or hunters and gatherers, as that utopian and Rousseauesque valorization of early social forms emerged from L é vi-Straussian structuralism. ” Ibid.

16. For example, Paul Virilio, Open Sky (London: Verso, 1997).

17. Jameson, “ Notes on the Nomos. ”

18. The new space predicates another addressability, just as another addressability predicates the new space.

19. The quote is from Alexander Dugin, a Russian, Eurasian-ultranationalist mystic-sociologistcrank.

20. “ Schmitt referred to ‘ a contemporary German philosopher — Heidegger — who had captured the significance of this Raumrevolution as a paradigm shift which promised to overcome the nihilism of empty space: ‘ Die Welt ist nicht im Raum, sondern der Raum is in der Welt ’ ( ‘ The world is not in space; rather, space is in the world ’ ). Even if these new representations of space had not yet been grasped in coherent conceptual form … . ” Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 2000), 244.

21. Ibid., 249.

22. Cornelia Vismann, “ Starting from Scratch: Concepts of Order in No Man ’ s Land, ” in War, Violence and the Modern Condition, ed. Bernd-R ü diger H ü ppauf (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 46.

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38. I paraphrase D ’ Arcy Thompson ’ s dictum, “ Form is a diagram of forces. ” See Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917).

39. Typical of this perspective is Jean-Luc Nancy, The Creation of the World, or Globalization (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002).

40. A particularly egregious example is Franco “ Bifo ” Berardi ’ s missive, Neuro-Totalitarianism in Technomaya Goog-Colonization of the Experience and Neuro-Plastic Alternative (Los Angeles: Semtiotext(e), and New York: Whitney Museum, 2014). His target is Google Glass, a piece of hardware that takes on black magic powers in his estimation. In the Interfaces chapter, I will discuss the dangers of augmented reality-based interfacial totalities to engender forms of cognitive totalitarianism, but this is not because they train attention on artificial images, negating our natural faculties of reason and experience (see also the Phaedrus, and Socrates ’ admonitions against the written word, 370 B.C., or the whole history of experimental cinema). Rather it is that augmented reality could mediate so well the sort of mythopoetic political Messianism that is the lifeblood of any lunatic fundamentalism: a stunted flame that he (and Tiqqun for that matter) tend with duly incoherent melancholia.

41. For examples of that perplexed melancholy see the works of Franco “ Bifo ” Berardi.

42. After having presented this research at the Winchester School of the Arts at University of Southampton in 2013, I have also had the pleasure of an ongoing discussion with Ryan Bishop about the uses and abuses of the term nomos. His own work on this, linking nomos to automation — as in “ auto nomous” — as another way that the policing of the inside and outside takes place, should be an key referent for those interested in the future of the concept.

43. I paraphrase my lecture and op-ed “ We Need to Talk about TED, ” 2013, http://www .theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted.

Platform and Stack, Model and Machine

1. Boris Groys, “ Form, ” Metahaven, Uncorporate Identity (Baden: Lars M ü ller, 2010), 262.

2. Quoted in http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/osi-the-internet-that-wasnt?utm \_source=feedburner & utm\_medium=feed & utm\_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE +Spectrum%29.

3. The contradictions between private ownership of platforms and how they do or do not make good on and public service or public interests is the focus of much Martin Kenney ’ s work. What he calls “ Platform Capitalism ” presents several challenges to conventional political science and organizational theory. See http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/webpages/kenney/writings/writings .html By contrast, David Theo Goldberg considers platforms as kind of world-projection and world-making. See his “ World as Platform ” essay at https://medium.com/genres-of-scholarly -knowledge-production/world-as-platform-da7f8a1f042e.

4. There are other available definitions, but far fewer that the ubiquity of the word platform would suggest. Annabelle Gower and Michael Cusumano write, “ In this paper we use the platform definition of Gawer and Cusumano: ‘ A foundation technology or set of components used beyond a single firm and that brings multiple parties together for a common purpose or to solve a common problem. ’ ” They also state that the value of the platform increases exponentially with more complementary products and services and more users. See their “ Defining Software Ecosystems: A Survey of Software Platforms and Business Network Governance, ” 2004, http:// slingerjansen.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/definingsecos.pdf.

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5. This discussion of platforms draws on an ongoing discussion with Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams, on their potential as technical models and model technologies. Singleton, “ On Craft and Being Crafty ” (PhD dissertation, Northumbria University, 2014); Singleton, “ The Long Con, ” in When Site Lost the Plot, ed. Robin Mackay (Urbanomic: Falmouth, 2015); Srnicek, “ Eyes of the State: Machine Thinking and the Production of Economic Knowledge ” (presented at the Incredible Machines conference, Vancouver, March 7–8, 2014); and Srnicek and Williams, Inventing the Future: Folk Politics and the Struggle for Postcapitalism (London: Verso, forthcoming).

6. For a nontechnical overview, see James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011), especially for a history of longitudinal demarcation, network synchronization, and time zones.

7. The history of notational systems deserves more than a few dissertations. In order to engineer his difference engine, Charles Babbage first had to invent a now long-forgotten notational system for how parts would be manufactured to make sure that one worker ’ s gesture would be compatible with that of another. Architects know Louis Kahn ’ s notational system to analyze and plan the movement of autonomous agents through pathways, used but once for his unrealized project to redesign automobile traffic flows in Philadelphia. His beautiful diagram of how cars might turn left and right hangs on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art in New York may prove to be a particularly breathtaking prototype for future shipping manifests.

8. See Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

9. “ Generative entrenchment ” comes from William Wimsatt ’ s philosophy of engineering. See his Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Thanks to Benedict Singleton and Reza Negarastani for the original reference.

10. See Srnicek, “ Eyes of the State. ”

11. For a Marxist perspective on this asymmetry, see Matteo Pasquinelli, “ Google ’ s PageRank Algorithm: A Diagram of Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the Common Intellect, ” in Deep Search, ed. Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (London: Transaction Publishers, 2009).

12. This example comes from conversations with Bruce Randolph Tizes.

13. The stack model referred to is the network protocol stack, but this is not the only form of a software/hardware stack. Memory stacks based on FIFO (first in – first out) are taught in basic data structures courses. Application programming stacks are central to how web applications are engineered. Any complex software system is built from layers of code designed to perform different low-level or high-level functions, from the operating system kernel, to system utilities, to core and application services, to applications themselves and the graphical user interfaces that translate human-cultural interest into machine-executable instruction and back again. In systems designed for a densely networked computing environment where groups of machines may be serving applications, accessing shared stores of data, and parsing data for distribution over the web to provide specific solutions, the programming architecture becomes more layered, more generic, and more modular. Programming stacks are sometimes an aligned combination of an operating system: a server, a database system, a programming and scripting language for the authoring of unique applications. For example, the LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP, or Python) is (was) a widely used, open source set of programming languages and related tools and libraries for building general-purpose web applications. (This generic structure allows programmers of code on one layer, the Python scripts, to rely on the code constructed at the other levels by other programmers, knowing that the entire system will work as planned. Available open source code written for one project may be repurposed for a particular project, and as we move up the stack, that code requires more specific programming for specific applications.) For all such programming stacks, layers divide the computational labor of input, processing, storage, and machine control in regular and predictable ways, and so the performance of one is dependent on the other.

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14. Le Corbusier ’ s Five Points include, first, supports, a grid of reinforced concrete load-bearing columns. Next, roof gardens that can be occupied, then the free-designed ground plan, with an absence of supporting walls. Next is the free design of the facade, separating the exterior from its structural function. Finally is a long horizontal window cut along the entire length of the facade, allowing all rooms to be lit equally. The building is reduced to five essential layers, each of which can be modified on its own, but all of which integrate into a preferred whole. Thanks to Josh Taron for making the initial link with stack models.

15. See also Rem Koolhaas, “ Bigness or the Problem of the Large, ” in S, M, L, XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995).

16. In terms of Benjaminian forms of violence, its force is simultaneously “ constituent ” and “ constituted. ”

17. See Galloway, “ The Poverty of Philosophy: Realism and Post-Fordism, ” Critical Inquiry 39 (2013): 347 – 366. Here we are amused to learn that “ capitalism ” uses computation to treat all things as interchangeable data, that certain kinds of “ realism ” define things according to a flat ontology, and so by analogical transfinite induction, mathematics is thought captured by capital. In some ways, we can mark flame wars between philosophical “ Marxists ” and “ realists ” in relation to past conflicts between historicists and structuralists, humanist Marxists and structuralfunctionalists, New Left and cybernetics, and so on. For one alliance, the agonistic telos of human history is more self-evident, and for another, history doesn ’ t even contain itself, let alone the world.

18. On “ basing and superstructuring, ” see Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic (London: Verso Press, 2010).

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19. Coming to mind, perhaps unfairly, are the declarations of confusion and outrage continuously forthcoming from J ü rgen Habermas.

20. For the original 1995 “ California Ideology ” essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, see http://www.alamut.com/subj/ideologies/pessimism/califIdeo\_I.html. For a characteristically misinformed contemporary take on Google, see Shoshanna Zuboff ’ s “ Dark Google ” in Frankfurther Allgemeine, April 30, 2014, http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/ shoshanna-zuboff-dark-google-12916679.html?printPagedArticle=true. For those unfamiliar, Survival Research Laboratories is a Bay Area-based “ industrial performing arts ” collective famous for its pyrotechnic displays of machinic mayhem and which might typify a DIY engineering ethic often associated with the “ California Ideology, ” whereas Page Mill Road in Palo Alto (and Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park) have housed important clusters of important Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

21. Nick Whitford-Dyer, “ Red Plenty Platforms, ” Culture Machine 14 (2013): 1 – 27, and Tiziana Terranova, “ Red Stack Attack! ” in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, ed. Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian (Falmouth, Cornwall: Urbanomic and Merve Verlag, 2014), 379 – 400, both make explicit connections between Spufford ’ s version of cybernetic planning, contemporary computing platforms, and my Stack thesis. Terranova considers how an alternative Stack could operate for far more communitarian economies, and Whitford-Dyer draws on the Address layer specifically to consider how that Red Plenty Platform/Red Stack might identify and index components of the economy it asked to calculate. As discussed below, parallel considerations about computational platforms and marginal cost are also coming from across the political spectrum, from bitcoin macroeconomics to Jeremy Rifkin ’ s “ Zero-Marginal Cost Society. ” See Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

22. Francis Spufford, Red Plenty (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2012).

23. From Whitford-Dyer, “ Red Plenty Platforms ” : “ It will, however, identify three cybernetic tendencies that point towards the ‘ higher ’ phase of communism: automation, copying and peerto-peer production … I am thinking tangentially about a metasystem in which the minimum amount of carbon has to be assembled to meet the desires and demands of all consumers because an existing inventory of objects can be instantaneously redistributed where it is needed. ” A parallel vision, minus the self-identified socialism and plus a lot of nanoscale molecular manufacturing, is Eric Drexler, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2013).

24. Eden Medina is the expert on Cybersin. See her “ Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende ’ s Chile, ” Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006): 571 – 606, and her book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende ’ s Chile (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).

25. This is ironic for several reasons, including that when General Pinochet later invited the Chicago Boys (the neoliberal economists associated with Milton Friedman at the University of

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