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At one point in his book on protocol, Alexander Galloway takes a moment to impress upon the reader the importance of one particular protocol: DNS (Domain Name System). DNS is the distributed system that transforms the web addresses that we humans type into our web browsers into IP addresses, the four numbers that designate the physical location of the information requested. What impresses Galloway about this system is its scope. Every single web domain, regardless of content or place, has a number that DNS can retrieve for you. In his words, “it is the actual construction of a single, exhaustive index for all things. It is the encyclopedia of mankind...” (50)

But I believe that Galloway goes too far in his praise of DNS. He declares the protocol to be “the most heroic of human projects...DNS is not simply a translation language, it is language” (50). An impressive method of organizing information, yes. But DNS is not language. Language is more than just a table of one-to-one correspondences. If it was, human speech would be limited to a set of predetermined phrases. However, I can write a sentence that has never been written before (such as “the perplexed purple penguin drove John Bolton to the movie theater last night”) and any native English speakers will comprehend. This is because languages are infinitely productive. DNS, however impressive its vocabulary may be, is not.