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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><?fontfamily><?param Arial Narrow>Just to geek out for a short moment: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>>The internet's "shape" is thus permanently in flux and
illogical<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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’.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>>It performs movement without encapsulation, without borders, and
with neither concrete interiors nor exteriors.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>>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<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Ren<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><a href="http://www.renreynolds.com/">www.renreynolds.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>terranova.blogs.com<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span
lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;mso-ansi-language:EN-US'>-----Original
Message-----<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>From:</span></b> air-l-admin@aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On Behalf Of </span></b>Jillana
Enteen<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> 03 February 2004 23:56<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> air-l@aoir.org<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> Re: [Air-l] Re: first
post (An Internet without Space)</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I second Michelle.<br>
<br>
Particularly when she writes: <br>
<?/fontfamily>Computer representations can also justify the<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>perpetuation of physical
but certainly not necessary or natural conditions<br>
by mirroring material circumstances. I believe that such spatial<br>
vernaculars are having a significant effect on our cultural situations. <br
style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<![if !supportLineBreakNewLine]><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<![endif]><?fontfamily><?param Arial Narrow><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<?/fontfamily>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:
12.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
<?fontfamily><?param Arial Narrow>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):<br>
<br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
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 <u>Cyberspace, Some Proposals</u>, 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 <u>The Virtual Community: <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Homesteading</span></b>
on the <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Electronic</span></b> <b><span
style='font-weight:bold'>Frontier</span></b></u> [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. <br>
<br>
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). <br>
<br>
<?/fontfamily>best wishes,<br>
jillana<br>
Jillana Enteen<br>
jillana@jillana.net<br>
http://jillana.net<br>
<br>
On </span></font><st1:date Month="2" Day="3" Year="2004">Feb 3, 2004</st1:date>,
at <st1:time Hour="12" Minute="25">12:25 PM</st1:time>, Michele White wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:
12.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Dear Colleagues,<br>
<br>
I am resistant to the continued use of the term "space" and spatial<br>
metaphors when writing about the Internet and related technologies. In<br>
fact, part of my ongoing research practice is to address this issue. I<br>
believe that the employment of such terms as "space" and
"cyberspace" in<br>
popular and academic writings about the computer and Internet technologies<br>
makes it seem like representations are a kind of material environment.<br>
This writing repeats and even enhances design strategies that describe<br>
synchronous settings as "rooms," Internet maps that produce
unnecessary<br>
and fictive geographies, and programming that makes users' progression<br>
through sites seem like bodily movement. Such visceral renderings<br>
discourage critical interventions into Internet representations because<br>
sites seem tangible. The conflation of space-producing discourses with<br>
user investment in particular sites and identities threatens to make<br>
stereotypes "real." The represented bodies of Internet settings are<br>
"fleshed out" because there seems to be an environment that can
support<br>
varied bodily processes. Computer representations can also justify the<br>
perpetuation of physical but certainly not necessary or natural conditions<br>
by mirroring material circumstances. I believe that such spatial<br>
vernaculars are having a significant effect on our cultural situations. I<br>
also continue to ponder other ways that we can write about and experience<br>
technologies. I would be interested in continuing such a dialog.<br>
<br>
All my best,<br>
Michele<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Air-l mailing list<br>
Air-l@aoir.org<br>
http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l<br style='mso-special-character:
line-break'>
<![if !supportLineBreakNewLine]><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<![endif]><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Jillana Enteen<br>
jillana@jillana.net<br>
http://jillana.net<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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