The exploit : a theory of networks / Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-180) and index.

On reading this book -- Proleogmenon: "we're tired of trees" -- Provisional response 1: political atomism (the Nietzschean argument) -- Provisional response 2: unilateralism versus multilateralism (the Foucauldian argument) -- Provisional response 3: ubiquity and universality (the Determinist argument) -- Provisional response 4: occultism and cryptography (the Nominalist argument) -- Nodes -- Technology (or theory) -- Theory (or technology) -- Protocol in computer networks -- Protocol in biological networks -- An encoded life -- Toward a political ontology of networks -- The defacement of enmity -- Biopolitics and protocol -- Life-resistance -- The exploit -- Counterprotocol -- Edges -- The datum of cura I -- The datum of cura II -- Sovereignty and biology I -- Sovereignty and biology II -- Abandoning the body politic -- The ghost in the network -- Birth of the algorithm -- Political animals -- Sovereignty and the state of emergency -- Fork bomb I -- Epidemic and endemic -- Network being -- Good viruses (simSARS I) -- Medical surveillance (simSARS II) -- Feedback versus interaction I -- Feedback versus interaction II -- Rhetorics of freedom -- A Google search for my body -- Divine metabolism -- Fork bomb II -- The paranormal and the pathological I -- The paranormal and the pathological II -- Universals of identification -- RFC001b: BMTP -- Fork bomb III -- Unknown unknowns -- Codification, not reification -- Tactics of nonexistence -- Disappearance; or, I've seen it all before -- Stop motion -- Pure metal -- The hypertrophy of matter (four definitions and one axiom) -- The user and the programmer -- Fork bomb IV -- Interface -- There is no content -- Trash, junk, spam -- Coda: bits and atoms -- Appendix: Notes for a liberated computer language -- Notes -- Index.

""The Exploit is that rare thing: a book with a clear grasp of how networks operate that also understands the political implications of this emerging form of power. It cuts through the nonsense about how 'free' and 'democratic' networks supposedly are, and it offers a rich analysis of how network protocols create a new kind of control. Essential reading for all theorists, artists, activists, techheads, and hackers of the Net." --McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto The network has become the core organizational structure for postmodern politics, culture, and life, replacing the modern era's hierarchical systems. From peer-to-peer file sharing and massive multiplayer online games to contagion vectors of digital or biological viruses and global affiliations of terrorist organizations, the network form has become so invasive that nearly every aspect of contemporary society can be located within it. Borrowing their title from the hacker term for a program that takes advantage of a flaw in a network system, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker challenge the widespread assumption that networks are inherently egalitarian. Instead, they contend that there exist new modes of control entirely native to networks, modes that are at once highly centralized and dispersed, corporate and subversive. In this provocative book-length essay, Galloway and Thacker argue that a whole new topology must be invented to resist and reshape the network form, one that is as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network is in relation to hierarchy. Alexander R. Galloway is associate professor of culture and communications at New York University and the author of Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006) and Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Eugene Thacker is associate professor of new media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Biomedia (Minnesota, 2004) and The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture."--Publisher description.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.