SNOWDEN NET NEUTRALITY S INTERNET N O ARCHITECTURES I S I C SPRENGER E D - O S R C C I T I M I L O P The Politics of Micro-Decisions Digital Cultures Series Edited by Armin Beverungen, Irina Kaldrack, Martina Leeker, Sascha Simons, and Florian Sprenger A book series of the Digital Cultures Research Lab The Politics of Micro-Decisions: Edward Snowden, Net Neutrality, and the Architectures of the Internet Florian Sprenger Translated by Valentine A. Pakis With a Foreword by Christopher M. Kelty Bibliographical Information of the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche National bibliografie (German National Biblio­ graphy); detailed bibliographic information is available online at http://dnb.d­nb.de. Published by meson press, Hybrid Publishing Lab, Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg www.meson­press.com Design concept: Torsten Köchlin, Silke Krieg Cover Image: © Lily Wittenburg The print edition of this book is printed by Lightning Source, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. ISBN (Print): 978­3­95796­040­5 ISBN (PDF): 978­3­95796­041­2 ISBN (EPUB): 978­3­95796­042­9 DOI: 10.14619/005 The digital edition of this publication can be downloaded freely at: www.meson­press.com. This publication was funded by the “Nie dersächi sches Vor ab” pro gram of the Volks wa gen Foun da ti on, by the Minis­ try for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, and the EU major project Innovation Incubator Lüneburg. This Publication is licensed under the CC­BY­SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 Unported). To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­sa/4.0/ Contents 45 3c 2a a5 d4 31 40 00 40 fd 47 8b 32 74 05 05 51 13 91 26 11 Christopher M. Kelty Introduction 19 A Civil War on the Internet 22 Sociality and Technology 27 Control and Surveillance 33 End­to­End: The Architecture of Intermediacy 34 Transmission Traffic Jams 38 Deep Packet Inspection 45 “Collecting It All” 53 The End of the Internet 67 Flows Don’t Burst: Packet Switching and the Instantaneity of Transmission 73 Threats of Destruction 77 The Nodal Points of Decision­Making 82 The Immediacy of the Flow and the Interruption of Bursts 86 Electricity and Instantaneity 90 Perfect Switching 94 The Disconnection of Connection 100 Conclusion: Toward a Network Politics of Interruption 105 Acknowledgments 115 Works Cited 117