The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

Description

What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales — from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self — quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image?In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton proposes that these different genres of computation — smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation — can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us. In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling — not only computational forms but also social, human, and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks,” in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention. The Stack is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Interweaving the continental, urban, and perceptual scales, it shows how we can better build, dwell within, communicate with, and govern our worlds.thestack.org

Part I The Models
Chapter 1. A New Architecture?
Chapter 2. An Accidental Megastructure
Chapter 3. Blur and Accident
Chapter 4. Dividing Sovereignty
Chapter 5. Over (and under) the Line
Chapter 6. Land/Sea/Air/Cloud
Chapter 7. The Nomos of the Cloud?
Chapter 8. A Google Grossraum ?
Chapter 9. Platforms
Chapter 10. How Platforms Work
Chapter 11. Stack as Model
Chapter 12. Stack as Political Machine
Chapter 13. Stacks That Were and Might Have Been
Chapter 14. The Stack We Have
Chapter 15. The Layers of The Stack

Part II The Layers
Chapter 16. Discovering or Inventing Computation?
Chapter 17. Digestion
Chapter 18. Geo-graphy and Geoaesthetics
Chapter 19. From Global Surface to Planetary Skin
Chapter 20. Smart Grid: Ouroboros
Chapter 21. Sensing and Sovereignty; Polities of Supply and Effect
Chapter 22. Designing for versus Designing with Emergencies
Chapter 23. Designing the Earth Layer
Chapter 24. Platform Geography
Chapter 25. The First Sino-Google War of 2009
Chapter 26. Cloud Infrastructure
Chapter 27. Cloud Polis
Chapter 28. Platform Wars
Chapter 29. Facebook
Chapter 30. Apple
Chapter 31. Amazon
Chapter 32. Google
Chapter 33. Future Cloud Polis and Platforms
Chapter 34. Reversible Grids
Chapter 35. City as Layer
Chapter 36. Exposure and Control
Chapter 37. Force Finding Function Finding Form
Chapter 38. Envelope and Apparatus
Chapter 39. Designing for Mixed Envelopes, Mixed Programs
Chapter 40. Programs, Subjects, and Zombie Jurisdictions
Chapter 41. Megastructure and Utopia
Chapter 42. Platform Cities
Chapter 43. Scale, Scope, and Structure
Chapter 44. Deep Address
Chapter 45. Objects in The Stack
Chapter 46. Addressability and Technique
Chapter 47. IPv6
Chapter 48. Communication and Composition
Chapter 49. Absolute Incommunication
Chapter 50. Distortion and Genesis
Chapter 51. What Interfaces Are
Chapter 52. Interfaces at Hand: From Object to Sign to Object
Chapter 53. The Interface as Layer
Chapter 54. Interfaces in The Stack 1: The Aesthetics of Logistics
Chapter 55. Interfaces in The Stack 2: Apps and Programming the Space at Hand
Chapter 56. Interfaces in the Stack 3: Theo-Interfaciality
Chapter 57. Geoscapes: Interfaces Drawing Worlds
Chapter 58. Origins of the User
Chapter 59. Finding the Universal User
Chapter 60. Quantified Self and Its Mirror
Chapter 61. Trace and Frame
Chapter 62. Maximum User
Chapter 63. Death of the User
Chapter 64. Animal User
Chapter 65. AI User
Chapter 66. Machine User
Chapter 67. From User-Centered Design to the Design of the User

Part III The Projects
Chapter 68. Seeing The Stack We Have, Stacks to Come
Chapter 69. Earth Layer to Come: God Bows to Math; Will Leviathan?9
Chapter 70. Cloud Layer to Come: Cloud Feudalism and Its Discontents
Chapter 71. City Layer to Come: Multiple Utopias and Rough Totality
Chapter 72. Address Layer to Come: Platform-of-Platforms
Chapter 73. Interface Layer to Come: Ambient Interface
Chapter 74. User Layer to Come: Inventing Users
Chapter 75. Angelus Novus Is Gone
Chapter 76. The Stack and Its Others
Chapter 77. Concluding Remarks on Design and The Black Stack

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