Rough Overview

I have written a number of summaries of my dissertation. Here is my most recent as of September 2011

My dissertation analyzes an ‘algorithmic communication’ where software controls information flows. The effect of algorithmic communication is what I call ‘transmissive control’: a type of control in transmission that produces and distributes temporalities in a medium.

My dissertation, entitled “The Eighth Layer: Time, Transmission, and Internet Routing”, studies how Internet routing algorithms enact a form of transmissive control by detecting certain traffic patterns, and managing their transmission according to set policies. In doing so, software creates a system of values based on access to temporalities – a concept referred to as a ‘temporal economy’. Internet Service Providers, such as Bell and Rogers, create temporal economies by tiering Internet speeds that customers pay to access, resulting in the ‘network neutrality’ controversy.

My investigation of Internet transmissive control and its ensuing temporal economies relies on three interconnecting cases. Algorithms embedded in the Internet, as the first case shows, route packets — the standard unit of information — through networks. A packet’s journey demonstrates how routing algorithms enact transmissive control and create a tiered temporal economy. This transmissive control, however, has its limits as shown in the second case of the Pirate Bay. The Swedish pro-piracy group eludes forms of transmissive control through peer-to-peer file sharing and, more recently, a virtual private network designed to cloak users’ traffic from watchful algorithms. Yet, the nature of this struggle and of networks themselves remains outside the public view, so the final case questions the feasibility of public research into the state of the Internet. This case pushes the boundaries of social science research by questioning how the public could participate in research through different software tools. Each case offers novel and innovative methods for the study of ‘algorithmic communication’, and for the broader study of software.

Download my Dissertation Proposal (PDF)