[Air-l] networks

[Prof. Andrejevic]

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.