[Air-l] networks

[Christian Nelson]

This is right on. I would also suggest that this attack will probably
accelerate calls for organizations to become distributed networks with
regard to personnel as well with regard to computers--who wants to come in
to a central office location when such are a more attractive target. These
accelarated calls should also accelerate technology to make such personnel
distribution possible--video-conferencing technology and the like.
--Christian Nelson

"Prof. Andrejevic" wrote:

> Has anyone else on this list been struck by the parallel between the
> current portrait of de-centralized terrorist networks emerging in the
> media coverage and the organizational logic of distributed computer
> networks? Certainly both forms of networking emerged with a similar
> goal in mind: a resiliance to the forms of centralized large-scale
> attacks characteristic of warfare in the first half of the 20th
> century. Redundancy and de-centralization are defensive structures
> whose effectiveness is demonstrated by the fact (reported yesterday, I
> think) that despite the destruction of something like 10 percent of
> Manhattan's office space, suprisingly little data was lost. In the face
> of this kind of distributed networking, the type of military response
> envisioned by Bush/Cheney et alia seems disturbingly out of joint. Just
> as we wouldn't imagine that we could take down a network by hitting a
> node, so too does the goal of "taking out" Osama bin Laden seem more
> symbolic than effective (to the effect that it works to proliferate
> cells of resistance, it might even be read as counter-productive). I'm
> wondering if there's some way to use the commonly accepted discourse on
> computer networking to shed some light on the current debate over the
> appropriate U.S. response to the recent acts of terrorism.
>
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