The Abacus is often considered the great grandparent of modern computers, it dates back to at least ancient Sumer c 3000 BCE (Ifrah, 2001),
where it was likely used to calculate and manage grain stocks and other resources. As an instrument of resource management, the Abacus enabled
those who could use it to hold great power over those who could not; it was an early technocratic weapon of control.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was the first programmable digital computer.
Built in 1946 under contract for the US Army's ballistic research laboratory, ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables.
It was also used to study the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons (Rhodes, 1995). The Perceptron was a machine and algorithm designed to be capable of
recognizing images. It was invented in 1958 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory by Frank Rosenblatt. The Perceptron was funded by the United States
Office of Naval Research (Olazaran, 1996). It had an array of 400 photocells, randomly connected to its so-called mechanical "neurons" which could
"perceive" and "learn" patterns; this architecture would later be developed into contemporary neural networks and machine vision systems.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) finished in 1966, was the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control
and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite (Wikipedia, 2021). ARPANET was established and funded by the United States Department
of Defense as a high-speed communications system and distributed fail-safe for sensitive military research networks. This decentralized network was initially designed as a form of nuclear deterrence; by distributing the network across numerous servers spread around the country, the system would have been theoretically insulated from isolated nuclear attacks. ARPANET would eventually be handed over to private companies in the telecom and tech industries who would expand the network into our modern internet. These five technologies represent foundational steps in the development of our modern computational tools. Modern digital computing technologies were developed in conjunction with emerging technocratic ideologies. The Technocrats believed in the supposed superiority and "neutrality" in these technical systems. They believed that specialized "technicians" and "experts" (themselves) working with computational systems (their technology) would be better suited to govern than democratically elected representatives. It is important to remember that the digital computer, the internet, and even the now commonplace AI systems many of us use on a daily basis began as military technologies - they were military weapons before they were civilian tools. These technologies were developed with US military funding and direction, often by a handful of Ivy-league educated, technocratic white men. These men were working in isolated environments, often under threat of war, they were not concerned with democracy, rather, much like the early adopters of the Abacus, they were interested in control.
The founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom -- control has existed from the beginning. To grasp "Protocol" is to grasp the technical and the political dynamics of TCP/IP and DNS at the same
-- Alexander Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, 2004.
In his 2004 book Protocol, American writer Alexander Galloway attempts to describe the technical and ideological underpinnings of the modern Internet. To do so, Galloway focuses on two primary "protolocological"; systems TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and DNS (Domain Name System) that work together to form the technical foundation of the Internet, which Galloway calls Protocol. Galloway argues that Protocol theoretically and practically supports the actualization of what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze called Control Societies.
This infrastructure and set of procedures grows out of US government and military interests in developing high-technology communication capabilities (From ARPA to DARP to dot-coms)... On the one hand, TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) enables the Internet to create horizontal distributions of information from one computer to another. On the other, the DNS (Domain Name System) vertically stratifies that horizontal logic through a set of regulatory bodies that manage Internet addresses and names. Understanding these two dynamics in the Internet means understanding the essential ambivalence in the way power functions in control societies. (Galloway, p54)
Writing in response to French philosopher Michel Foucault's theories on the histories of power, Deleuze described their ideas of emerging forms of power and control in the digital age.
"The old sovereign societies worked with simple machines, levers, pulleys, clocks", they wrote, "but recent disciplinary societies were equipped with thermodynamic machines; control societies operate with a third generation of machines, with information technology and computers."
-- Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on Control Societies, 1990.
Galloway argues that Protocol produces an environment that is anonymous but descriptive, and that through the clustering of information and statistical analysis, high resolution information can be gleaned about individual, anonymous users.
On the Internet there is no reason to know the name of a particular user, only to know what that user likes, where they shop, where they live and so on. The clustering of descriptive information around a specific user becomes sufficient to explain the identity of that user. (Galloway, p69)
Galloway interprets this understanding of Protocol as consistent with Foucault's concept of Biopower, a core element of control societies which Galloway describes as
...the power to interpret material objects as information, to affect objects at the statistical or informational level, not at the level of individual content. (Galloway, p69)
In other words, it enables power to influence physical bodies or systems indirectly, via the information around or associated with those bodies. These abstract theories may seem implausible, but if one looks at the very real power and influence of companies such as Google, Facebook, or Cambridge Analytica, the immaterial nature of information and meta-data quickly becomes tangible.
Some have described the internet as humanity's greatest tool - but if recent American history has taught us anything, it might behove us to reconsider what one means by "great"- or rather, great for who?