Alex Galloway seems to be dealing with an idealized model of how protocols on the web actually end up working. His book wants to elevate the term "protocol" to something like the Foucaultian "discourse" — a big brush to paint broad strokes with. He looks to the decentralized nature of control as evidence that the protocol is democratically formed.
But wait a minute, doesn't that argument work even better for governments (even repressive, authoritarian ones)? The rules are decentralized, spread out through every police officer in every precinct, and every judge in every courtroom across the country. To participate in the events and offices of the government, you must abide by the rules, imposing the control upon yourself. At least in a democracy, the people who make the laws are elected by popular vote. In the monopoly of the web, the W3C makes the rules, and Microsoft is free to embrace them or reject them as it sees fit. If Microsoft chooses not to implement a portion of the protocol, then that portion is effectively dead in the water. Where's my voice in that conversation? I didn't vote for Bill Gates to decide the future of the web, and I don't believe that my passive use of his technologies is really influential on his decisions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment