[Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet without Space)

Wed Feb 4 15:31:31 PST 2004

Just to geek out for a short moment: 

>The internet's "shape" is thus permanently in flux and illogical

I don't see why it's illogical. At the gross level (1) the algorithms
used use perfectly logical route calculations, (2) while a given route
may not be the theoretical optimal at any given time updating routing
tables in 'real time' would create so much 'meta' traffic (For the geeks
- I'm referring to BGP traffic here) that actual transit time would be
way below the practical optimal. Moreover when you look at the
sub-structure of the internet i.e. within a given Autonomous System
(AS), then you tend to find a matrix of static routes formed with
protocols such as ATM over which (or within which - yikes now I'm at it)
IP sits, this allows for quite a lot of optimisation and what is known
in the industry as 'traffic shaping'.

Also at a higher level of abstraction the net is a simple three layer
system with Tier 1 backbone providers (that peer with each other), Tier
2 providers (who buy transit from Tier 1's and peer with each other) and
Tier 3 providers (that tend only to buy transit). 

>It performs movement without encapsulation, without borders, and with
neither concrete interiors nor exteriors.

This depends on what level of abstraction you are talking about - at the
engineering level (which is where things seem to be pitched here) the
internet depends on protocol encapsulation. 

>Since the nodes in a message switching system act independently in
processing the messages and there are no preset routes between nodes,
the nodes can adapt to changing conditions by picking the route that is
best at any moment

Well, no. Switching occurs within an AS but this is why different
protocols are used to control it. AS hops are routed - the Internet uses
both, often at the same time.

It's also worth remembering that the DNS system, which is fundamental to
internet routing (at a higher level in the protocol stack), is strictly
hierarchical and the root servers sit within very secure concrete
buildings, turn them off and good bye internet. 

Or to put this all another way, the way I understand it, is that while
basic technical descriptions of net talk about its chaotic / self
healing nature, at the engineering level it is actually made up of a set
of Autonomous Zones that are highly ordered. But any description very
much depends on what level of abstraction you are talking about. 

Ren
www.renreynolds.com <http://www.renreynolds.com/> 
terranova.blogs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-admin at aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin at aoir.org] On Behalf Of
Jillana Enteen
Sent: 03 February 2004 23:56
To: air-l at aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet without Space)

I second Michelle.

Particularly when she writes: 
Computer representations can also justify the
perpetuation of physical but certainly not necessary or natural
conditions
by mirroring material circumstances. I believe that such spatial
vernaculars are having a significant effect on our cultural situations. 

I'm currently working on an essay about this topic, so I'll quote a
brief couple of paragraphs that outline my argument: (Please don't quote
without my permission and proper citational credit):

In its current state, the internet may be understood as a dynamic,
shifting network of computers and other electronic signal receptors
transmitting and/or receiving bits of digital information. Popular
conceptions of the Internet, however, depict this exchange of
information as delimiting virtual space. Privileging certain conceptions
of cyberspace over others is not a 'disinterested' aesthetic strategy;
the envisioning of space, like all forms of rhetoric, inscribes
particular relations of power (Foucault, 1979; Soja, 1989; Davis, 1992).
In this brief essay, I argue that current procedures for identifying the
location of electronic data, Uniform Resource Locators in particular,
situate the internet and the World Wide Web (www) as geographically
based systems with corresponding geopolitical reference points in the
physical world. Rather than recognizing the networks formed through
on-line data exchange, the prevailing archeology of the I\internet and
World Wide Web ties individuals, not to mention data, to physical
locations. 
Space is relevant to the internet when considering that vast sequences
of binary code are physically stored on hard drives and other
containers. It is the transfer of information, however, that
fundamentally characterizes the internet; connections between computers
are initiated. Code is exchanged. Data summoned. These connections are
rarely direct or one-to-one; a request for data by a user at a computer
will initiate responses from an unpredictable number of other computers
and information exchange portals in order to complete a process as
simple as viewing a text document or a personal home page. Janet Abatte
relates the reliance of the internet on packet switching; "Since the
nodes in a message switching system act independently in processing the
messages and there are no preset routes between nodes, the nodes can
adapt to changing conditions by picking the route that is best at any
moment" (Abatte 1999, 13). In fact, "best" routes are often
miscalculated based on previous paths of exchange, so predictions based
on efficiency or availability cannot chart actual data transmission. The
internet's "shape" is thus permanently in flux and illogical. It
performs movement without encapsulation, without borders, and with
neither concrete interiors nor exteriors.
So why continue to think about the internet as space? Journalist
accounts, versions of computer-mediated communication in popular
culture, and foundational tracts by new media theorists such as Michael
Benedikt and Howard Rheingold. Each employs architectural and
territorial metaphors (Benedikt 1993) (Rheingold 1993). In Cyberspace,
Some Proposals, Michael Benedikt compiles a series of essays that
endorse the spatiality of electronic exchanges. Benedikt's own
contribution envisions connectivity as another form of architecture,
providing complex graphs and metaphors about movement in space and
fields. In the same collection, Marcos Novak defines cyberspace in this
same collection as "a completely spatialized visualization of all
information in global information processing systems" (Novak 1993,
225-254). Still considered a visionary, Howard Rheingold refers to the
internet as a frontier. As the title of Howard Rheingold's influential
1993 and recently reissued text The Virtual Community: Homesteading on
the Electronic Frontier [emphasis mine] suggests, Rheingold redeployed
America's sense of entitlement and masculinist spirit of conquest that
was outlined in manifest destiny and redeployed by NASA to garner
popular support for the space program, a rational that had
correspondingly fueled exploration, domination and colonial exploitation
by European nations. These images of colonization rescript territorial
incursion as an invasion at the expense of whom/whatever pre-existed.
These spatial metaphors translate into social subjugation. 

Much has been made of the affects of mapping on subjugation in terms of
the colonial project. Neil Smith and Cindi Katz report: "In so far as
mapping involves exploration, selection, definition, generalization and
translation of data, it assumes a range of social cum representational
powers, . . .the power to map can be closely entwined with the power of
conquest and social control" (Smith and Katz, 70). In addition, Anne
McClintock's account of the genealogies of imperialism reveals the
historical precedence and will to dominate inherent in the project of
mapping (McClintock 1995, 23). She writes: "The map is a technology of
knowledge that professes to capture the truth about a place in pure,
scientific form, operating under the guise of scientific exactitude and
promising to retrieve and reproduce nature exactly as it is. As such, it
is also a technology of possession, promising that those with the
capacity to make such perfect representations must also have the right
of territorial control" (27-8). 

best wishes,
jillana
Jillana Enteen
jillana at jillana.net
http://jillana.net

On Feb 3, 2004, at 12:25 PM, Michele White wrote:
Dear Colleagues,

I am resistant to the continued use of the term "space" and spatial
metaphors when writing about the Internet and related technologies. In
fact, part of my ongoing research practice is to address this issue. I
believe that the employment of such terms as "space" and "cyberspace" in
popular and academic writings about the computer and Internet
technologies
makes it seem like representations are a kind of material environment.
This writing repeats and even enhances design strategies that describe
synchronous settings as "rooms," Internet maps that produce unnecessary
and fictive geographies, and programming that makes users' progression
through sites seem like bodily movement. Such visceral renderings
discourage critical interventions into Internet representations because
sites seem tangible. The conflation of space-producing discourses with
user investment in particular sites and identities threatens to make
stereotypes "real." The represented bodies of Internet settings are
"fleshed out" because there seems to be an environment that can support
varied bodily processes. Computer representations can also justify the
perpetuation of physical but certainly not necessary or natural
conditions
by mirroring material circumstances. I believe that such spatial
vernaculars are having a significant effect on our cultural situations.
I
also continue to ponder other ways that we can write about and
experience
technologies. I would be interested in continuing such a dialog.

All my best,
Michele

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Jillana Enteen
jillana at jillana.net
http://jillana.net
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