Intervening Infrastructures: Ad Hoc Networking and Liberated Computer Language. An Interview with Alexander R. Galloway

Abstract

Following a first wave of interventions that employed the style hackers have used since the 1960s —intervening in networks by mirroring their technology— a second wave is now engaged in questioning the needs and use of networks, claiming to re-think them through a perspective of withdrawal. One option for other kinds of networks may be “ad hoc networking,” altering the structures, politics, and economics of commercial platforms as well as the pure functionality of algorithms. Instead of doing unpaid work, which we all do as users of the Internet, thoughtless about our data-behavior, a space of imagination and invention should be opened to enable creative possibilities.