(Out of) Control Demons: Software Agents, Complexity Theory and the Revolution in Military Affairs

Roderick, Ian

doi:10.1353/tae.2007.0070

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…A new metaphor ofers a way to stress the agency and the power of these algorithms in expressing the Internet. Demons -a term dating back to computer hackers at MIT in the 1960s -anthropomorphize the processes of algorithms as supernatural beasts forever toiling at (Hookway, 1999;Roderick, 2007). Computer program mers at MIT in the early 1960s jokingly named the software running on their computers as brethren of Maxwell's demon (Raymond, 1996).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internet Routing Algorithms, Transmission and Time: Toward a Concept of Transmisive Control

McKelvey¹

2021

Preprint

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This dissertation develops the concept of transmissive control to explore the consequences of changes in Internet routing for communication online. Where transmission often denotes an act of exchanging information between sender and receiver, transmissive control theorizes transmission as the production and assignment of common times or temporalities between components of a communication system. Transmissive control functions both operationally according to how computational algorithms route Internet data (known as packets) and systematically according to how patterns in these operations express temporalities of coordination and control. Transmissive control questions how algorithms transmit packets and how transmission expresses valuable temporalities within the Internet. The concept of transmissive control developed as a response to advanced Internet routing algorithms that have greater awareness of packets and more capacity to intervene during transmission. The temporality of the Internet is changing due to these algorithms. Where transmissive control has been made possible by the Internet’s core asynchronous design that allows for many diferent temporalities to be simultaneous (such as real-time networks or time-sharing networks), this diversity has taxed the resources of the Internet infrastructure as well as the business models of most Internet Service Providers (ISPs). To bring the temporality of the Internet back under control, ISPs and other network administrators have turned to transmissive control to better manage their resources. Their activities shift the Internet from an asynchronous temporality to a poly-chronous temporality where network administrators set and manage the times of the Internet. Where this turn to traffic management has often been framed as a debate over the neutrality of the Internet, the dissertation re-orientates the debate around transmissive control. Tactics by the anti-copyright Pirate Bay and Internet transparency projects illustrate potential political and policy responses to transmissive control. The former seeks to elude its control where the latter seeks to expose its operation. These components as well as the operation of transmissive control will be developed through a series of metaphors from the film Inception, the demons of Pandemonium, the novel Moby-Dick and the film Stalker. Each metaphor cooperate to provide a comprehensive discussion of transmissive control.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internet Routing Algorithms, Transmission and Time: Toward a Concept of Transmisive Control

McKelvey¹

2021

Preprint

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“…Although Hoskins and O'Loughlin (2010: 17) are a little unusual in dating the rise of complexity to the start of the twenty-first century and explaining its appearance as an effect of new communications technologies, their work is clearly part of this larger intellectual shift. Others have discussed how complexity theory helps us to understand developments in Western foreign policy and military strategy (Lawson 2014;O'Kane 2006;Roderick 2007), often with the suggestion that Western states might learn from terrorist organisations who are more at home in a complex world (Bousquet 2012). Hoskins and O'Loughlin (2010: 8-9, 12) make a similar suggestion, and argue that states and 'Big Media' organizations need to adapt to a world of complexity rather than hanging on to outmoded linear ideas about managing communications (2010: 85).…”

Section: The Challenge Of Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorising media/state relations and power

Hammond¹

2016

Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security

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Mil-bot Fetishism: The Pataphysics of Military Robots

Roderick¹

2010

TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

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This paper begins by identifying a tendency in the mass media to represent military robotics in a manner that endows the devices with a degree of automation and agency that is actually beyond the technology. Military robot fetishism is not simply based upon an irrational or mistaken belief about the real capacities of the robots but, instead, their fetish value stems from their positive valuation according to a code of functionality (Baudrillard) that rests upon the risk-transfer labour of the robot. Acting as (Western) soldier surrogates, the promise of the military robot is one of casualty reduction but asymmetrically so. This fetishism arises, as Mulvey proposes, out of the difficulty of representing military reality— namely that waging war has not become a scientifically guided rational-antiseptic enterprise but continues to be a gruesome and violent activity. The fetishization of military robots can be attributed to the need to ameliorate a reality that is politically difficult for western governments and their militaries. In this context, military robotics becomes a science of imaginary technical solutions to the problem of war legitimation. The promotion of military robot fetishism in the mass media means that the military robot as fetish comes to circulate within both martial and civilian lifeworlds, re-legitimizing warfare and affording further militarization of civic life.

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(Out of) Control Demons: Software Agents, Complexity Theory and the Revolution in Military Affairs

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Internet Routing Algorithms, Transmission and Time: Toward a Concept of Transmisive Control

Internet Routing Algorithms, Transmission and Time: Toward a Concept of Transmisive Control

Theorising media/state relations and power

Mil-bot Fetishism: The Pataphysics of Military Robots

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