Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization by Alexander R. Galloway, MIT Press, $32.95, £21.95, ISBN 0262072475 Reviewed by Wendy M. Grossman
IF COMPUTER languages are so similar to natural languages, Alexander Galloway asks, why are they virtually ignored by linguists and literary critics? Perhaps, he suggests, because they see them as closed and determinate.
Setting out to fill the gap, Galloway distinguishes “protocol”, the rules and standards which are open and delineate the possible, from “the proprietary”, which is closed – for example the mysterious and unpublished inner workings of a program. Yet, he argues, the power of protocol makes…
