Index

Contents
Series Foreword xi 
Acknowledgments xiii 
Credits xv Preface xvii

I The Models

Introduction 3

1.  A New Architecture? 3

2.  An Accidental Megastructure 8

3.  Blur and Accident 13

The Nomos of the Cloud 19

4.  Dividing Sovereignty 20

5.  Over (and under) the Line 23

6.  Land/Sea/Air/Cloud 28

7.  The Nomos of the Cloud? 31

8.  A Google Grossraum? 34

Platform and Stack, Model and Machine 41

9.  Platforms 41

10. How Platforms Work 46

11. Stack as Model 52

12. Stack as Political Machine 55

13. Stacks That Were and Might Have Been 58

14. The Stack We Have 61

15. The Layers of The Stack 66

II The Layers Earth Layer 75

16. Discovering or Inventing Computation? 76

17. Digestion 81

18. Geo-graphy and Geoaesthetics 83

19. From Global Surface to Planetary Skin 87

20. Smart Grid: Ouroboros 92

21. Sensing and Sovereignty; Polities of Supply and Effect 97

22. Designing for versus Designing with Emergencies 101

23. Designing the Earth Layer 105

Cloud Layer 109

24. Platform Geography 111

25. The First Sino-Google War of 2009 112

26. Cloud Infrastructure 115

27. Cloud Polis 119

28. Platform Wars 124

29. Facebook 125

30. Apple 128

31. Amazon 131

32. Google 134

33. Future Cloud Polis and Platforms 141

City Layer 147

34. Reversible Grids 149

35. City as Layer 151

36. Exposure and Control 155

37. Force Finding Function Finding Form 160

38. Envelope and Apparatus 163

59. Designing for Mixed Envelopes, Mixed Programs 168

40. Programs, Subjects, and Zombie Jurisdictions 172

41. Megastructure and Utopia 176

42. Platform Cities 183

Address Layer 191

43. Scale, Scope, and Structure 193

44. Deep Address 197

45. Objects in The Stack 200

46. Addressability and Technique 205

47. IPv6 207

48. Communication and Composition 210

49. Absolute Incommunication 212

50. Distortion and Genesis 214

Interface Layer 219

51. What Interfaces Are 220

52. Interfaces at Hand: From Object to Sign to Object 222

53. The Interface as Layer 228

54. Interfaces in The Stack 1: The Aesthetics of Logistics 230

55. Interfaces in The Stack 2: Apps and Programming the Space at Hand 236

56. Interfaces in The Stack 3: Theo-Interfaciality 239

57. Geoscapes: Interfaces Drawing Worlds 243

User Layer 251

58. Origins of the User 254

59. Finding the Universal User 256

60. Quantified Self and Its Mirror 260

61. Trace and Frame 265

62. Maximum User 267

63. Death of the User 271

64. Animal User 274

65. AI User 277

66. Machine User 279

67. From User-Centered Design to the Design of the User 284
III The Projects The Stack to Come 293

68. Seeing The Stack We Have, Stacks to Come 293

69. Earth Layer to Come: God Bows to Math; Will Leviathan? 300

70. Cloud Layer to Come: Cloud Feudalism and Its Discontents 307

71. City Layer to Come: Multiple Utopias and Rough Totality 320

72. Address Layer to Come: Platform-of-Platforms 327

73. Interface Layer to Come: Ambient Interface 337

74. User Layer to Come: Inventing Users 343

The Black Stack 351	.	• •

75. Angelus Novus Is Gone 351

76. The Stack and Its Others 355

77. Concluding Remarks on Design and The Black Stack 359

Glossary 367 
Notes 377 
Index 461