User:Farrah Shakeel/annotated-bibliography/protocal

In this book, Galloway has divided the age of technology into three basic periods according to Control, giving a picture of hierarchy. These three keywords are: Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed network systems. Throughout his book, Galloway gives reference to two important writings/ideas:

1. Michael Foucault: Sovereign Society to Disciplinary Society

2. Gilles Deleuze: Postscript on Control Societies

Galloway's explanation of a Centralized system is where the network consists of a single power point (the host), and from there on all nodes are attached. This kind of hierarchy is that of from the very beginning of the Internet when all control and usage was in the hands of the military during/after WW2.

A Decentralized system on the other hand has several hosts, with its own set of satellite nodes, and these nodes do not communicate with other hosts. All communication is unidirectional. So this system also works on a tree-like mode, like the centralized system, but only within a single host, since there are several hosts existing. This form of system, unlike hierarchy, works on bureaucracy.

The third, and newest form of system is the Distributed system. This system is a very exciting one for Galloway, as it breaks all restriction of trees and nodes and hierarchy, and only focuses on "intelligent end point systems that are self-deterministic, allowing each endpoint system to communicate with any host it chooses". Thus all nodes are free to choose whatever direction it may want to connect itself to. In this system, the single most important word to remember is Protocol. Protocol is a system of management historically posterior to decentralization. It is a set of rules that every has to follow in order to be able to communicate with each other without the difficulty of reading each other's information, so as to give the system a uniformity.