ABSTRACT
NSA-O-Matic is a piece of software that generates names of fictional US NSA (National Security Agency) surveillance systems by compounding names of actually existing devices, protocols and standards. We know from the files released by Edward Snowden something of the existence of sprawling cyber-security systems such as XKEY, TREASUREMAP, SKYNET and so forth (CJFE 2015), all of which might be broadly understood as knowledge infrastructures. The Snowden revelations, in all their confusing variety, attest to a combinatorial expansion. The humour of NSA-O-Matic derives partly from the disparity between the existence of a seemingly technically far-fetched juxtaposition – USB hardware that deanonymises communications satellites? – and our still somewhat inchoate and stunned awareness of tendrils growing into every aspect of contemporary communications (wireless routers, Skype conversations, network hubs, mobile phone conversations, social media, email messages, etc.). The public assurances extracted from US government figures such as General Keith Alexander or Senator Dianne Feinstein only emphasise the threadbare democratic mandate for the existence of such systems. The combinatorial expansion is not unique to the NSA or government
intelligence agencies of a similar ilk. The sheer variety of channels, devices, standards, modalities, platforms, scales of operation and levels of interdependency challenges knowledge of infrastructure. At least in relation to networked communication and knowledge, our sense of scale and opacity owes much to names in combination. NSA-O-Matic spoofs putative
infrastructures. It compounds names to evoke opacity and depth. While important efforts are being made to map the connections between NSA ‘programs’ named in the Snowden documents and specific communications and computing devices that many of us use daily (Guardian News 2015), the sheer litany of systems, platforms and elements that surface in these documents defy easy analysis. Yet this abundance imbues infrastructures with much of their structural depth, flexibility, power and fragility. If we stay close to the combinatorial play of NSA-O-Matic, we might apprehend something of the unfurling, unstable opacity of contemporary infrastructures. The names of constituent fragments may attest to their splintering (Graham and Marvin 2001), to their naturalisation (Bowker and Star 1999, 326) but also to their existence in time. All structures, no matter how subterranean, act semiotically. Rusted bolts,
cracked concrete plinths, the stanchions, bars, girders, plugs, cables, stone, steel, glass, rubber, oil, plastic, electricity, gas and springs participate in semiosis. They function as indices for infrastructural interpretants: rust suggests moisture, cloudy or black oil suggests wear, a buzzing indicates something loose, etc. On accompanying diagrams, labels name components, processes, flows and structures. At least for their interpretants, semiosis affects what counts as infrastructure.1 If, like NSA-O-Matic, we apprehend infrastructures in name only, how do they appear to us? Somewhat inverse to tendencies to see depth and scale as the underpinning power dynamic, many contemporary information infrastructures proliferate names. While we might approach contemporary instances in terms of the growth of forms such as ‘platforms’ (Gillespie 2010) or programmed or protocol control (Beniger 1986; Galloway 2004), their aggregate consistency and variety owes much to the named entities that thread through many different media, communication, administrative and operational practices. Naming practices or nominalisation of infrastructure, then, might offer a viable way of navigating the dense patterns of code, protocols, standards, devices, statements and operations that thicken people’s infrastructural practices.
