Extrastatecraft

Infrastructural Sophistry
 dispositions
“[Disposition] describes a tendency, activity, faculty, or property in
either beings or objects—a propensity within a context” (72).
 active forms
“Different from object forms of masterpiece buildings or master
plans, these active forms operate in another gear or register, to
act like bits of code in the system” (73).
 active forms
“As the levers of dispositions in infrastructure space, active forms,
in different linkages and interplays, are tools of
extrastatecraft” (81).
 active forms
“A computer scientist would never attempt to fully represent the
internet but would rather author active forms that ride the
network with very explicit instructions […] Power lies rather in the
prospect of sharing a series of activities and relationships over
time” (85).
active forms
 active forms
“since the social and the technical interact with each other, an
active form can also be a social story—not a vessel in which to fix
meaning but a carrier to channel a flow of meanings” (91).
 dispositions
“Disposition is an extra diagnostic tool for assessing undisclosed
capacity or political bearing in infrastructural space. A multiple of
active forms can be used to both detect and adjust a
disposition” (92).
 extrastatecraft
“Relinquishing overt resistance is mistaken for capitulation or
ethical relativism. Answering duplicity with duplicity is mistaken
for equivocation or lack of conviction rather than a technique to
avoid disclosing a deliberate strategy. In the end, righteous and
combative narratives may exhaust themselves and escalate
tensions” (213).
 extrastatecraft
“The activist need not face off against every weed in the field but
rather, unannounced, alter the chemistry of the soil” (214).
 extrastatecraft
“It creates not a binary—an enemy and an innocent—but rather
countless mirrorings of power in a world where no one is
innocent” (225).
 extrastatecraft
“It tutors an activism in which the forthright may be less important
than the fictional or the sly” (215).
 extrastatecraft
“Hustlers lead their suckers down the garden path with countless
little courtesies and unimportant details that become collectively
untraceable but are inescapable” (229).
 extrastatecraft
“Design activism may even deliberately avoid the most righteous
resistance if it is reductive and competitive, looking instead for
ways to release tensions by releasing information” (240).
 extrastatecraft
“English is a word used when playing pool or billiards, in phrases
such as ‘put a little english on the ball’ or ‘give it some
english’ […] Its intelligent use lies in the recognition that a special
kind of spin is possible beyond the straightforward dynamics of
the ball” (215).
 extrastatecraft
“The space that has always been available for manipulation, when
seen in this way, becomes a fresh territory for political
action” (232).