Quotes from Alexander R. Galloway

This book is about a diagram, a technology, and a management style. The

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, describes the DNS system as the "one centralized Achilles' heel by which {the Web} can all be brought down or controlled.

Like the rhizome, each node in a distributed network may establish direct communication with another node, without having to appeal to a hierarchical intermediary. Yet in order to initiate communication, the two nodes must speak the same language. This is why protocol is important. Shared

Dividuation would thus be the opposite: the dissolving of individual identity into distributed networks of information.

I hope to show in this book that it is through protocol that one must guide one's efforts, not against it.

What if philosophy is the problem, not the solution? What if the best response to philosophy is to cease doing it?

digitality entails a basic distinction, whether zeros and ones or some other set of discrete units—the four nucleobases of the genetic code or the twenty-six letters of the alphabet are just as digital as the base-two numeric encoding used in binary computers. Any digital medium will have a bed of genetically distinct elements. These elements form a homogeneous substrate from which constructions are built.

The goal is not to destroy technology in some neo-Luddite delusion but to push technology into a hypertrophic state, further than it is meant to go. (...) We must scale up, not unplug. Then, during the passage of technology into this injured, engorged, and unguarded condition, it will be sculpted anew into something better, something in closer agreement with the real wants and desires of its users.