Abstract

What is an imperial infrastructure ? The article briefly retraces the military, academic and commercial history of the Internet, to show how its logical constitution achieves the integration of the largest possible number of machines, networks and users. It then enquires into the fold whereby this normalizing device helps unleash an original form of activist social critique. The military principle of interoperability gives way to an unpredictable dynamics of free association, marked by the organizational figure of the swarm. But the Internet remains a control technology, overwhelmed or subverted by constituent powers