Alex R. Galloway (2004) _Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization_, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. add to code: [done this bit] As much as code can be expressive, it also provides the textual link between computers and critical theory, according to Alex Galloway (2004) - through the combination of natural and artificial language and hence can be examined as part of a continued critical discourse that draws upon literary theory. [/to here] add to cybernetics section: There is a misconception that the Internet is somehow out of control or inherently anarchic. On the contrary, control is now expressed in terms of distributed networks, no longer centralised or decentralised - alluding to the three network models indicated by Paul Baran in 1964 (Barab‡si 2002: 145). Deleuze describes this period after the disciplinary societies as 'societies of control' modelled on the third wave of computerised machines (Galloway 2004: 3). Galloway aims to give detail to this by describing the development of networked computing, the Unix operating system and in turn TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). In this way, he takes the concept of the protocol as 'a set of recommendations and rules that outline specific technical standards'. This is taken to be more than just a metaphor, although clearly it is a compelling one all the same, suggesting correct or proper behaviour or social practices. Similarly computers in a network agree technical standards of action such that the protocols 'govern' usage at the level of code: 'protocol is a technique for achieving voluntary regulation within a contingent environment' as Galloway puts it (2004: 7). Voluntary regulation is a particularly successful mode of control alluding to concepts like hegemony from critical theory. Protocols thus operate as a distributed management system coding packets of information, documents and communication. Extending this to curating, Kurator.org asks: 'If the assumption is made that traditional curating follows a centralised network model, then what is the position of the curator within a distributed network model?' (Krysa & Sedek 2005) [note: This description of a distributed management system as curating lies behind the _Kurator.org_ project as a distributed curatorial system for open source code - using protocols for different ends than centralised/decentralised and proprietary interests. The artist-prgrammer characterisation is extended to that of the curator-programmer, and/or software art to software curation.] The crucial issue is how power is articulated in a distributed model and how this might be redistributed. This is not to say that control is bad of course and certainly protocols have no vested interest in themselves. The problem lies in the fact that standards are set according to certain ruling interests - it is a political issue. Peer to peer networks are one obvious example of principles based on a different set of social practices. This is largely nonhierarchical in structure conforming to the way TCP/IP connects one machine to others, but is also subject to DNS information stored in a decentralised databases but organised in hierarchical, inverted tree-structures. At the top of the tree are a relatively small number of 'root' servers, mostly in USA, Europe and Japan, that exert control over the lower branches. The technical detail reveals the operations of 'control societies' fraught with political contradictions (rather like the 'free market'). The potential remains to use protocols for resistance to certain forms of control evident in much cultural practice on the internet. The cracks are arguably more evident than in other systems of control. Forms of resistance were evident but in the current control society, Deleuze suggests that: 'Computer piracy and viruses, for example, will replace strikes and what the nineteenth century called "sabotage" ("clogging" the machine).' (1990c; there is a note here to the understanding of 'sabot' in sabotage as a worker's wooden clog.] In this light, Galloway focusses attention on code in parallel to the way in which Marx focussed on the internal structure of the commodity in the context of industrial production (2004: 20). Whereas Galloway, following in the tradition of Deleuze and others emphases the paradigm shift, my aim is to draw these approaches somewhat closer in identifying the internal contradictions in code itself or at least to see the networked complexity in dialectical terms. Ironically, the (centralised) Unix command line shell might be a good way in to this resistant practice. periodisations (add to history section and Mandel's model or keep here and refer back): Deleuze also acknowledges distinct periodisations that relate to machines (in his 'Postscript on Control Societies', from _Negotiations_, referred to in Galloway 2004: 22). Clearly networked computers correspond to what Deleuze calls control societies. This also relates to Friedrich Kittler's comparison of 1800 and 1900 to reveal two contrasting regimes of knowledge or the ways in which data is selected, stored, and processed - from a 'kingdom of sense' based on understanding and meaning to one of pattern based on images and algorithms - what he calls 'discourse networks'. By way of contrast: 'The discourse network of 1800 played the game of not being a discourse network and pretended to be the inwardness and voice of Man; in 1900 a type of writing assumes power that does not conform to traditional writing systems but rather radicalizes the technology of writing in general.' (Kittler 1990: 212) In Galloway's terms, the contemporary corollary for the internet and the society of control is exemplified by Hardt and Negri's _Empire_ that neatly was published in 2000. Clearly Paul Baran's three characterisations of centralised, decentralised and distributed networks offer a useful analogy for systems of control. In the context of my argument, these periodisations are not distinct but in dynamic relation (in the spirit of historical materialism). This is further evident from any close reading of the nonhierachical and hierarchical complex structures at work in the network society that demonstrate contradictions over control and feedback.