I Software Studies Matthew Fuller, Lev Manovich, and Noa

I
Software Studies
Matthew Fuller, Lev Manovich, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin,
editors
Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and
Software Studies,
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2009
Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life,
Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, 2011
Programmed Visions: Software and Memory,
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2011
Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression,
Geoff Cox and Alex McLean, 2012
10 PRINT CHR$(205.S+RND(1));: GOTO 10,
Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy
Douglass, Mark Marino, Michael
Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter, 2012
The Imaginary App,
Paul D. Miller and Svitlana Matviyenko, 2014
The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty,
Benjamin H. Bratton, 2015
The Stack
On Software and Sovereignty
Benjamin H. Bratton
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England
/
40 The Nomos of the Cloud
cells and others with hierarchical patterns, but all afford some
kind of social posture
and position. Their proliferation doesn't only close off space
into smaller units; it also
produces new territories that are equally physical and abstract,
heavy and virtual. In
turn, this space is motivating a new land grab among state and
nonstate actors alike;
it is also forcing transformations in how geography is held,
conceptualized, modeled,
and defended. The order of those transformations occupies a
similar location in our
architectures of sovereignty as nomos, but because it involves
grids of land, air, and sea
all at once, dedifferentiating their relative weight and
liquidities, the logics of this new
arrangement are also perhaps very different.42 Because these
transformations are both
driven by planetary-scale computation and mediated through it,
any strong distinc-
tions between a political geography supported by technical
systems and technological
systems spread through agonistic geographic space are
undermined.
The state takes on the armature of a machine, because the
machine, The Stack, has
already taken on the roles and register of the state. While the

proliferation of lines has
normalized a certain kind of reversibility, the early geopolitics
of The Stack also sees the
fortification of intentional camps and bunkers, with some
populations excluded from
movement and transaction and others stationed in networks of
enclaves absorbing
capital by centripetal force. To design up and away from this
outcome does not mean
a reestablishment of ground for an upright primate perspective
of natural place or pre-
maturely freezing in place The Stack's most preliminary new
geographies as the only
options. An emergent alternative to archaic and recidivist
geopolitics must be based
on something more scalable than settler colonialism, legacy
genomes, and Bronze Age
myths and the maps of nations that have resulted from these. 43
The discussion of the
layers of The Stack, and the productive accidents of each, is an
outline platform sover-
eignty, a term that will appear explicitly in some parts of the
following chapters but
lurks underneath almost every paragraph in some way. But first,
what exactly is a plat-
form, and how do the layers of The Stack constitute one?
Platform and Stack, Model and Machine
The goal of future wars is already established: control over the
network and the flows of informa-
tion running through its architecture. It seems to me that the
quest for global totalitarian power
is not behind us but is a true promise of the future. If the
network architecture culminates in one
global building then there must be one power that controls it.

The central political question of
our time is the nature of this future power.
-Boris Groys1
The essence of datagram is connectionless. That means you
have no relationship established
between sender and receiver. Things just go separately, one by
one, like photons.
-Louis Pouzin2
9. Platforms
Platforms are what platforms do. They pull things together into
temporary higher-
order aggregations and, in principle, add value both to what is
brought into the plat-
form and to the platform itself. They can be a physical technical
apparatus or an
alphanumeric system; they can be software or hardware, or
various combinations.
As of now, there are some organizational and technical of
platforms avail-
able, but considering the ubiquity of platforms and their power
in our lives, they
are not nearly robust enough. Perhaps one reason for the lack of
sufficient theories
about them is that platforms are simultaneously organizational
forms that are highly
technical, and technical forms that provide extraordinary
organizational complexity
to emerge, and so as hybrids they are not well suited to
conventional research pro-
grams. As organizations, they can also take on a powerful
institutional role, solidi-
fying economies and cultures in their image over time. For The

Stack, this is their
most important characteristic but perhaps also the hardest to
fully appreciate. Plat-
forms possess an institutional logic that is not reducible to those
of states or markets
or machines, as we normally think of them. They are a different
but possibly equally
powerful and important form. Many different kinds of systems
can be understood as
42 Platform and Stack, Model and Machine
platforms, from urban street grids to Google, and so to consider
their common opera-
tions, some abstraction is necessary. Part of their alterity to
normal public and private
operations is the apparently paradoxical way that they
standardize and consolidate the
terms of transaction through decentralized and undetermined
interactions. Platforms
can be based on the global distribution of Interfaces and Users,
and in this, platforms
resemble markets. At the same time, their programmed
coordination of that distribu-
tion reinforces their governance of the interactions that are
exchanged and capitalized
through them, and for this, platforms resemble states. Platforms
are often based on a
physical standardization of functional components that allows
for more diverse and
unpredictable combinations within a given domain. On the
macro scale, the intermix-
ing of public-facing infrastructural investment and oversight
tied up with the privati-

zation of existing public services makes the political identity of
platforms that much
more ambiguous. 3 So long as those exchanges are regularized
by passage through the
platform's established forms, they enforce the optimization of
interactions by binding
open exchanges between self-directed Users at the edges of its
network. When those
forms are computational (as for Google), that passage is the
capitalized translation of
interactions into data and data into interactions, and the
movement of these into and
out of central locations (such as strongly defended data
centers). As we will see, the
genealogy of platforms is diverse and seemingly contradictory.
Roman urban planners,
the encyclopedia of John Wilkins, Charles Babbage, the
Commissioners' Grid Plan of
1811, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Lady Ada Byron,
Vint Cerf, and others,
all contribute to the parentage of platforms, and it is their
eccentricity and exterior-
ity from normal state and market institutional models,
combining elements of these
as well as of machine engineering, that has made them so
successful in redrawing the
effective terms of global systems.
Platforms demand an active conversion between economic and
technical systems
and their respective limitations. Their initial program may be
born of economics, but
their execution can push sideways through other models of
value, confounding and
compressing the political spectrum along with them. Their
history bears this out. A

working technical definition of platform, in general, may
include references to a stan-
dards-based technical-economic system that simultaneously
distributes inter( aces through
their remote coordination and centralizes their integrated
control through that same coordi-
nation. 4 I will unpack this definition below. What I call
platform logics refers first to
the abstracted systems logic of platforms (their diagrammatics,
economics, geography,
and epistemology of transaction) and second to the tendency on
the part of some
systems and social processes to transform themselves according
to the needs of the
platforms that might serve and support them, both in advance of
their participation
with that platform and as a result of that participation.
Platforms provide an armature
and induce processes to conform to it. The Stack is a platform,
or, more accurately, a
combination of platforms. Its own governing logics are derived
from platform logics,
Platform and Stack, Model and Machine 43 -
but its geography and geometry are also peculiar, and so while
stacks are platforms,
not all platforms are stacks, and in fact most platforms are not
stacks.
While systems that arguably operate as platforms might be
found in every culture,
where does the concept of platform come from, specifically in
relation to the devel-
opment of modern machines? The etymology of platform refers
to a "plan of action,

scheme, design" and, from the Middle French, platte form, or,
literally, a plateau or
raised level surface. As Benedict Singleton writes, this
conjoined with the plot, which
itself first implies a plot of land. Once situated on the platform
of the stage, the "plot"
becomes a more abstract structure that situates characters into
the forgone conclusion
of its unfolding, even as they suffer the choices that aren't
really theirs to make. As Sin-
gleton would have it, here the plot is a diagram that ensnares
the Users of the platform
in its designs.5 By at least 1803, platform takes on more
explicitly political meaning, as
in a "statement of party policies." All three of these
connotations (platform as a plan of
action, as a stage for a plot, and as proposed rules governance)
are important for under-
standing The Stack as a platform and for platform sovereignty
in general. One is set of
instructions, one is a situated place where action is played out
according to plan, and
one is a framework for a political architecture. Already these
connotations are slipping
and sliding into one another.
Now consider the word program. Its etymology refers first to a
"public edict," and in
the early modern era, it also comes to mean variously a plan or
scheme, a list of events
to be presented, a menu of proposed political ideas, and a way
to organize how people
will occupy architectural space. Only after World War II does
"to program" mean "to
write software." For architecture, computation, and politics, the
"program" has cen-

tral significance as a design problem and governing technique.
The triangulation of
designed site, designed action, and designed polis traces that of
"plot": platform and
program overlay one another asymmetrically. For example, an
architectural program
might be defined as an intended organization of Interfaces in a
particular arrangement
so as to coordinate social contact and interaction (or prevent it).
As a diagrammatic
image, an architectural program indexes the significance of that
organization. A soft-
ware program is a set of instructions that a designer gives to
codiputational systems
with the intention of coordinating that system's internal and
external interfaces in
relation to itself, to compatible systems, and to Users. An
interfacial image of that
program, usually the graphical user interface (GUI),
summarizes, reduces, and makes
those instructions significant for Users. And clearly today, these
two kinds of programs
intermingle. In many respects, what society used to ask of
architecture-the program-
matic organization of social connection and disconnection of
populations in space
and time-it now (also) asks of software. We will return to that
shift more than once
in the following chapters, and we will have to question what is
or isn't the remaining
work of physical architecture in light of this. Among what
remains is the active con-
tingency of programs, both hard and soft.
I
I

A recognition of platforms as a third institutional form, along
with states and mar-
kets, situates the convergence of its architectonic and
computational forms in a more
specific and fundamental way. A central argument of this book
is that the "political
program" is not only to be found in the legal consensus (or
dissensus) and policy
admonitions of traditional "politics" but also in machines
directly. This is where the
global-scale arrangement of planetary-scale computing coheres
into The Stack, and
how the convergence of the architectural and computational
design logics of program
directly contributes to that system. For our purposes it is far
less important how the
machine represents a politics than how "politics" physically is
that machinic system.
The construction of platforms draws in, to varying and
contingent degrees, strong con-
notations of "design" (design as in to "designate, 11 and to
govern through material
intervention) and, in this platforms are plots, and (per
Singleton) also diagrams that
"ensnare" actors in their fatal outcomes (design as in "to have
designs on something,"
to trap the User just so). At the same time, platforms are not
master plans, and in many
respects, they are the inverse. Like master plans, they are
geared toward the coordina-
tion of system Interfaces into particular optimized forms, but

unlike them, they do
not attempt to fix cause and effect so tightly. Platforms are
generative mechanisms-
engines that set the terms of participation according to fixed
protocols (e.g., technical,
discursive, formal protocols). They gain size and strength by
mediating unplanned and
perhaps even unplannable interactions. This is not to say that a
platform's formal neu-
trality is not strategic; one platform will give structure to its
layers and its Users in one
way, and another in another way, and so their polities are made.
This is precisely how
platforms are not just technical models but institutional models
as well. Their drawing
and programming of worlds in particular ways are means for
political composition as
surely as drawing a line on a map. However, as opposed to the
public rights of citizens
in a polis and the private rights of homo economicus in a
market, we are severely lacking
in robust and practical theory of the political design logic of
platforms, even as they
remake geopolitics in their image (or demand a different
language to describe what the
political is now or ever was). What we can know from the outset
is that an essential
logic of platforms is a reconvergence of architectural,
computational, and political con-
notations of "program" back into one: the design logic of
platforms is the generative
program that is equally all three types at once.
At a more mechanical level, a platform is also a standardized
diagram or technology.
Its structure and the paths of interoperability that hold it

together can't be consid-
ered outside of the regularization and rationalization of how it
connects to the outside
world. As infrastructure, a platform's regularity is often
guaranteed less by laws than
by technical protocols, and this is one of several ways that the
sovereign decision is
built into the platform's interfacial partitions and surfaces. This
kind of intrasystemic
standardization was essential to the epochal metatechnologies of
industrialization
and post-Fordism, revolutionizing the manufacture, distribution,
and consumption of
Platform and Stack, Model and Machine 45
massive quantities of identical tangible and intangible items.
Because protocols are in
place to standardize physical and immaterial properties of
integral components and
discontiguous manufacturing processes-from the width and
direction of grooves in
a screw, to the costs of stamps and the nomenclature of
international postal zones,
longitudinal mean times, cryptographic keys for international
monetary transfers, sto-
chastic synchronization of data transfers, and so on-the pace
and predictability of
industrialization could unfold as it did. 6 Artificial
standardizations become naturalized
as if they were always the measure of things. This kind of
complementarity between
technique and thought is familiar to adepts of Michel Foucault,
Max Weber, Friedrich
Kittler and Sam Walton. Standardization drives logistics, and
logistics in turn enables

geopolitical ambition and momentum. Innovations in munitions
standardizations,
allowing soldiers to quickly disassemble and repair guns on the
battlefield with stan-
dard parts, contributed for better or worse to American military
prowess in the nine-
teenth century and its ability to defend a hemispherical doctrine
posited by a Virginia
farmer, James Monroe. We appreciate the role of railroads,
telegraphy, and telephony
networks as the infrastructure of globalization, and their speed
for the acceleration of
the modernities of space and time, but perhaps we
underappreciate the metastructur-
ing importance of mundane anonymous ·standards to turn
isolated mechanical inven-
tions into infrastructural innovations (e.g., railroad gauges and
spike lengths, timetable
templates, the semiotics of graphical interface feedback
conventions, transmission line
materials, arbitrary telegraphic languages, packet-switching
protocols, country codes
and area codes, the fixed numeration of money itself, and so
on). The centrifugal stan-
dardization of how individual components interrelate and
assemble into higher-order
systems, whether physical or informational, is as important as
what any part or compo-
nent may be. This is how platforms can scale up. To engineer
systems that coordinate
the shuttling of units from one point to another with efficiency,
adaptability, and flex-
ibility is to compose within the rules laid down by other
systems, larger and smaller,
with which interaction is required. If two different systems
share common protocols,

then the subsystems of one can interoperate with subsystems of
another without nec-
essarily referring to any metasystemic authority. Systems swap
matJrial in this way,
such that intermodality and intramodality come to enable one
another: no standards,
no platform; no platform, no Stack.
The design of protocols, platforms and programs can be as
speculative as needed,
but the generativity of standards remains. Protocological
interoperability works not
only to componentize tangible things, but also to represent
undetermined relations
between things, events, and locations and to provide the means
to compose that traf-
fic in advance. In some cases, these are formal notational
systems, and the most inge-
nious are not always the most widely adopted, and sometimes
those adopted become
so naturalized that they disappear into the fabric. 7 By design,
systemic standardiza-
tion is enforced by fixed physical measurement and procedure,
and perhaps here most
Osborn, Matthew
particularly, the paradoxical tendency of platforms to control
and decontrol at the
same time is most evident. For example, the formal urban grid
in a major city is for

the most part rigid and inflexible, but precisely because of this
linear and universally
authoritarian topography, it affords both maximum tumult of
dynamic horizontal
interchange in the street plan as well as vertical recombinant
programmatic complex-
ity in the skyscrapers that pop up in each of its cells (more on
this in the City layer
chapter).8 Similarly, it is the legal and practical standard size of
the humble paper enve-
lope that makes it possible for it to shuttle messages both
discrete and discreet; like the
urban grid, the envelope's power is in its dumbness. In the
1970s as the world's cities
began to more fully merge into the networked hierarchies of
today with the widespread
standardization of very-large-scale envelopes, made of steel
instead of paper, in the
form of fixed proportion and attribute shipping containers.
Containerization migrated
the packet switching from telecommunications onto the transit
of physical objects (or
perhaps the other way around). It traded the standardized, linear
traffic program of the
grounded asphalt grid for another, now smoothed into liquid
shipping lanes, pacing
big packets of objects back and forth across the avenues of
oceans.
1 O. How Platforms Work
Platforms centralize and decentralize at once, drawing many
actors into a common
infrastructure. They distribute some forms of autonomy to the
edges of its networks
while also standardizing conditions of communications between

them. Many of the
defining cultural, political, and economic machines of our time
operate as platforms
(from Google to transnational political theologies). Platforms
are formally neutral but
remain, each and every one, uniquely "ideological" in how they
realize particular strat-
egies for organizing their publics. They are identified with
neoliberalism (not without
reason), but their origins lie as much within the utopian
megastructures of 1960s exper-
imental architecture, counterculture cybernetics, Soviet
planning schemes, and many
other systems of sociotechnical governance, both realized and
imagined. Platforms are
infrastructural but rely heavily on aesthetic expression and
calibration. A platform's
systems are composed of interfaces, protocols, visualizable
data, and strategic render-
ings of geography, time, landscapes, and object fields. For stack
platforms, they also
include a predominant architecture of interoperable layers. Even
as the majority of
the information they mediate may be machine-to-machine
communication (as, for
example, today's Internet), the specific evolution of any one
platform, in the ecological
niche between the human and inhuman, depends on how it
frames the world for those
who use it. It draws some things in and draws other things out,
but foremost a platform
is a drawing and framing machine. Our interest, however, is not
to critique platforms
as aesthetic works but to identify the work that aesthetics does
in their development,

and through this to clarify how some existing (and potential)
platforms are worthy of
our critiques.
Platforms might be analyzed in many different ways, and
another book might make
a more thorough contribution to a very needed general theory of
platforms than this
one can. In order to discuss The Stack as a platform, however, it
is necessary to identify
some typological characteristics that all platforms might share
in common. These would
characterize platforms in relation to other technologies (such as
individual machines,
executable programs, fixed infrastructure, legal mechanisms, or
social norms) and in
relation to other institutions (such as states, bureaucracies, and
corporations). I list here
seventeen criteria and qualities of platforms (a nice prime
number). The list is by no
means final or exhaustive, but taken as a whole, the shape and
function of platforms
as both technical and political-economic forms are more clearly
specified, especially
in relation to The Stack. Some of the criteria listed look like
basic principles of second-
order cybernetics, others of software application design, and
others of any networks-
savvy political science. As such, "platform theory" is probably
less about inventing new
attributes from scratch than it is about observing that
recognizable common practices
already do constitute platforms as an institutional and technical
norm at the scale of

states and markets:
1. As opposed to other macrogovernance institutions, platforms
do not work accord-
ing to detailed premeditated master plans; rather they set the
stage for actions to unfold
through ordered emergence. Bureaucracies, by contrast, are
systems that are also depen-
dent on strict protocols and interfaces, but they operate by
premodeling desired out-
comes and then working backward to codify interactions that
would guarantee these:
means are a function of ends. Platforms begin by fixing equally
strict means but are
strategically agnostic as to outcomes: ends are a function of
means.
2. Platforms are based on a rigorous standardization of the
scale, duration, and morphology
of their essential components. The simplicity and rigidity of
these standards make plat-
forms predictable for their Users, but also allow them to support
idiosyncratic uses that
platform designers could never predict. The formal politics of
platfo:rms is character-. I
ized by this apparent paradox between a strict and invariable
mechanism (autocracy of
means) providing for an emergent heterogeneity of self-directed
uses (liberty of ends).
The emergent politics of any one platform may largely be a
function of how it strat-
egizes the relationship between standards calibration and the
perceived self-interests of
its stakeholders.
3. This standardization of essential components produces an
effect of generative entrench-
ment by which one platform's early consolidation of systems

(formats, protocols, and
interfaces) decreases a User's opportunity costs to invest more
and more transactions
into that particular platform, while it increases the costs to
translate earlier invest-
ments into another platform's (at least partially) incompatible
systems.9 The ongoing
I
I
'i
I
II
i
·1
11
consolidation of systems and reduction of transaction costs
leverages that advantage
toward increasing the robustness of that platform's unique
requirements:
4. Standardized components may also be reprogrammable within
constraints by Users,
allowing them to innovate new functions for machines that are
composed, at least
partially, of preexisting platform systems. The systematic reuse
of platform systems
allows for the development of complex products based on

virtual components, reduc-
ing development risks, costs, and project duration. For that
innovation, the ratio of
what is newly introduced by the User versus what is reused
from existing platform
systems may be extreme in either direction, though neither ratio
directly corresponds
to the intrinsic novelty of any one innovation's new functions.
5. The design and governance of platforms often relies on
formal models to organize,
describe, simulate, predict, and instrumentalize the information
under its manage-
ment. Those models may represent a rigorously discrete view of
the platform's internal
operations, its external environment, or, most likely, some
combination of the internal
and the external that measures platform performance according
to metrics evaluating
its outward-facing systems.10
6. Platforms' mediation of User-input information may result in
an increase in the value
of that information for the User. Platform network effects
absorb and train that informa-
tion, making it more visible, more structured, and more
extensible for the individual ,
User or in relation to other Users who make further use of it,
thereby increasing its social
value. At the same time, it is likely the platform itself that
derives the most significant
net profit from these circulations in total. Each time a User
interacts with a platform's
governing algorithms, it also trains those decision models,
however incrementally, to
better evaluate subsequent transactions. An economically
sustainable platform is one
for which the costs of providing systemic mediation are, in the

aggregate, less than the
total value of input User information for the platform. Platform
economics provides
then two surpluses: (1) User surplus, in which the information is
made more valuable
for the User once involved with the platform at little or no
direct cost to that User, and
(2) platform surplus, that is, the differential value of all User
information for the plat-
form is greater than the costs of providing the platform to
Users. 11
7. Like centralizing systems, platforms consolidate
heterogeneous actors and events
into more orderly alliances, but they themselves are not
necessarily situated in a true
central position in relation to those alliances in the same way
that, for example, a mas-
ter planning committee or federal capitol building would be.
Like some decentralized
systems, platforms rationalize the self-directed maneuvers of
Users without necessarily
superimposing predetermined hierarchies onto their interactions
.. The centralization-
versus-decentralization dichotomy may therefore be illusory in
many cases (and not in
others) in that the choke points where a platform incentivizes
commitment and lever-
ages its advantages over other options may be even more widely
distributed than all of
the Users that it organizes.
8. The generic universality of platforms makes them formally
open to all Users, human
and nonhuman alike. If the User's actions are interoperable with

the protocols of the
platform, then in principle, it can communicate with its systems
and its economies. For
this, platforms generate User identities whether they are desired
or not. Platforms can provide
identities to Users who would otherwise not have access to
systems, economies, ter-
ritories, and infrastructures, such as a person who is not
recognized as a political "citi-
zen" by a location, but who is nevertheless included in
communication by platforms
that are agnostic …
2 Daemonic Interfaces, Empowering Obfuscations
Interfaces, in particular interactive GUis (graphical user
interfaces), are widely assumed
to have transformed the computer from a command-based
instrument of torture to a
user-friendly medium of empowerment. From Douglas
Engelbart's vision of a system
to "augment human intellect" to Ben Shneiderman's
endorsement of "direct manipu-
lation" as a way to produce "truly pleased users," GUis have
been celebrated as
enabling user freedom through (perceived) visible and personal
control of the screen.
This freedom, however, depends on a profound screening: an
erasure of the computer's
machinations and of the history of interactive operating systems
as supplementing-
that is, supplanting-human intelligence. It also coincides with
neoliberal manage-
ment techniques that have made workers both flexible and

insecure, both empowered
and wanting (e.g., always in need of training). 1
Rather than condemning interfaces as a form of deception,
designed to induce false
consciousness, this chapter investigates the extent to which this
paradoxical combina-
tion of visibility and invisibility, of rational causality and
profound ignorance, grounds
the computer as an attractive model for the "real" world.
Interfaces have become
functional analogs to ideology and its critique-from ideology as
false consciousness
to ideology as fetishistic logic, interfaces seem to concretize
our relation to invisible
(or barely visible) "sources" and substructures. This does not
mean, however, that
interfaces are simply ideological. Looking both at the use of
metaphor within the early
history of human-computer-interfaces and at the emergence of
the computer as meta-
phor, it contends that real-time computer interfaces are a
powerful response to, and
not simply an enabler or consequence of, postmodern/neoliberal
confusion. Both
conceptually and thematically, these interfaces offer their users
a way to map and
engage an increasingly complex world allegedly driven by
invisible laws of late capital-
ism. Most strongly, they induce the user to map constantly so
that the user in turn
can be mapped. They offer a simpler, more reassuring analog of
power, one in which
the user takes the place of the sovereign executive "source,"
code becomes law, and
mapping produces the subject. These seemingly real-time

interfaces emphasize the
power of user action and promise topsight for all: they allow
one to move from the
60 Chapter 2
local detail to the global picture-through an allegedly traceable
and concrete path-
by simply clicking a mouse. Conceptually drawn from auto
navigation systems, these
interfaces follow in the tradition of cybernetics (named after the
Greek term kybernete
for steersmen or governor) as a way to navigate or control,
through a process of
blackboxing.
Because of this, they render central processes for computation-
processes not under
the direct control of the user-daemonic: orphaned yet"
supernatural" beings "between
gods and men ... ghosts of deceased persons, esp. deified
heroes."2 Indeed, the inter-
face is "haunted" by processes hidden by our seemingly
transparent GUis that make
us even more vulnerable online, from malicious "back doors" to
mundane data gather-
ing systems. Similar to chapter 1, this chapter thus does not
argue we need to move
beyond specters and the undead, but rather contends that we
should make our inter-
faces more productively spectral-by reworking rather than
simply shunning the usual
modes of "user empowerment."

Interface, lntrafaith
Interactive interfaces-live screens between man and machine-
stem from military
projects, such as SAGE discussed in chapter 1. SAGE,
according to Paul Edwards,
was "a metaphor for total defense," a Cold War project that
enclosed "the United
States inside a radar 'fence' and an air-defense bubble."3
Edwards describes SAGE
as both based on and the basis for the world as a closed world,
"an inescapably
self-referential space where every thought, word, and action is
ultimately directed
back toward a central struggle."4 (The opposite of a closed
world is a green world,
in which "the limits of law and rationality are surpassed.")5
SAGE began as a uni-
versal cockpit simulator, but quickly evolved into a real-time
network of digital
computers, designed to detect incoming Soviet missiles.
Unfortunately, yet not atypi-
cally, it was obsolete by the time it was completed in 1963 due
to the introduction
of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Despite this, SAGE is
considered central to the
development of computing because it fostered many new
technologies, including
digital real-time control systems, core-memory devices, and
most importantly for
this chapter, graphical user displays.
These graphical CRT interfaces were simulations of an analog
technology: radar
(see figure 2.1).6 Divided into X-Y coordinates, these displays
allowed the users-

military personnel tracking air space-to deploy a light pen to
select potential hostile
aircraft tracks. This user's control of the interface and the
system depended on a
selective mapping that filtered as much as it represented,
reducing all air traffic to
blinking lines. Because of this direct real-time contact between
user and computer,
SAGE and the test machines associated with it are widely
considered to be predeces-
sors to personal interactive computing, albeit discontinuously
(they were initially
Daemonic Interfaces, Empowering Obfuscations 61
Figure 2.1
SAGE operator at console, 1958, National Archives photo no.
342-B-003-14-K-43548
displaced by mainframes).7 This screen, however, was an input
device for the user,
not for the programmers/coders, who produced taped programs
that operators would
load and run.
Interactive operating systems, key to making screens serve as
part of an input
system for all users (thus chipping away at the boundary
between user and program-
mer), also stemmed from military funding, in particular projects
related to artificial
intelligence (AI). Interactivity entailed giving over to the
machine tasks that humans
could not accomplish. As John McCarthy, key to both AI and
time-sharing operating
systems (OS), explains, the LISP programming language, used

in early AI projects,
was designed "in such a way that working with it interactively-
giving it a command,
then seeing what happened, then giving it another command-was
the best way to
62 Chapter 2
work with it. 118 Interactivity was necessary because of the
limitations of procedural
programming and of early neural networks. That is, by the
1960s, the naivete behind
John von Neumann's declaration that "anything that can be
exhaustively and unam-
biguously described, anything that can be completely and
unambiguously put into
words, is ipso facto realizable by a suitable finite neural
network" was becoming
increasingly apparent.9 Since exhaustive and unambiguous
description was difficult,
if not impossible, one needed to work "interactively"-not just
automatically-with
a computer. The alleged father of the Internet J. C. R.
Licklider's vision of "Man-
Computer Symbiosis" encapsulates this intertwining of
interactivity and human fal-
libility nicely. Describing the partnership between men and
computers, Licklider
predicts, "man-computer symbiosis is probably not the ultimate
paradigm for complex
technological systems. It seems entirely possible that, in due
course, electronic or
chemical 'machines' will outdo the human brain in most
functions we now consider

exclusively within its province. 1110 Similarly Jay Forrester,
the force behind SAGE's
development, contended, "the human mind is not adapted to
interpret[] how
social systems behave ... the mental model is fuzzy ...
incomplete ... imprecisely
stated. 1111 The goal, then, was to develop artificial systems to
combat human frailty
by usurping the human.
Given this background and the ways in which the screen
screens, the emergence
of user-friendly interfaces as a form of "computer liberation"
seems dubious at best
and obfuscatory at worst. So, why and how is it that interactive
systems have become
synonymous with user and machine freedom? What do we mean
by freedom here?
What do these systems offer and what happens when we use
them?
Direct Manipulation
The notion of interfaces as empowering is driven by a dream of
individual control: of
direct personal manipulation of the screen, and thus, by
extension, of the system it
indexes or represents. Consider, for instance, the interface to
Google Earth. Offering
us a god's eye view, it allows us to zoom in on any location, to
fly from place to place,
and to even control the amount of sunshine in any satellite
photo. Google Earth,
however, hardly represents the world as it is, but rather a more
perfectly spherical one
in which it hardly ever rains (even when the Google Earth

weather layer shows rain),
and in which nothing ever moves, even as time goes by.
Viewing these divergences
from reality as failures, however, misses what makes this
program so compelling: the
actions it enables, the kind of dynamic mapping actions, the
"top sight"-overview
and zooming-it facilitates.
Google Earth, and interactive interfaces in general, follow in
the tradition of "direct
manipulation." According to Ben Shneiderman, who coined the
term in the 1980s,
"certain interactive systems generate glowing enthusiasm among
users-in marked
contrast with the more common reaction of grudging acceptance
or outright hostil-
ity." In these systems, the users reported positive feelings, such
as "mastery" over the
system and "confidence" in their continuing mastery,
"competence" in performing
their tasks, "ease" in learning the system, "enjoyment" in using
it, "eagerness" to help
new users," and the "desire" to engage the more complex parts
of the system. Changes
in visibility and causality seem central to the creation of a truly
pleased user, in par-
ticular, "visibility of the object of interest; rapid, reversible,
incremental actions; and
replacement of complex command language syntax by direct
manipulation of the
object of interest-hence the term 'direct manipulation. 11112

Crucially, Shneiderman posits direct manipulation as a means to
overcome users'
resistance: as a way to dissipate hostility and grudging
acceptance and instead to foster
enthusiasm by developing feelings of mastery. Direct
manipulation does this by
framing the problem of work from the perspective of the
worker-more precisely of
the neoliberal worker who decides to work-and by replacing
commands with more
participatory structures.13 Direct manipulation is thus part of
the "new spirit of capital-
ism" that the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve
Chiapello outline in their
book of the same title. This new spirit of capitalism fosters
commitment and enthu-
siasm-emotions not guaranteed by pay or working under duress-
through manage-
ment techniques that stress "versatility, job flexibility, and the
ability to learn and
adapt to new duties. 1114 As Catherine Malabou notes, in such
a system "'the leader
has no need to command,' because the personnel are 'self-
organized' and 'self-
controlling."115 In such a system, Malabou underscores,
drawing from Boltanski and
Chiapello, flexibility is capitulation and normative, and
"everyone lives in a state
of permanent anxiety about being disconnected, rejected,
abandoned." 16
Not surprisingly, the term direct manipulation also draws from
cognitive psychology:
George Lakoff and Ben Johnson use the term in relation to Jean
Piaget's argument
that infants "first learn about causation by realizing that they

can directly manipulate
objects around them." 17 That is, infants' repeated
manipulations of certain objects are
key to their eventual grasping of causality: that doing X will
always (or usually) cause
Y to happen. Relatedly, Lakoff and Johnson argue that
interactions with objects also
ground metaphor, since "interactional properties are prominent
among the kinds of
properties that count in determining sufficient family
resemblance."18 Shneiderman
also offers examples of direct manipulation outside (or at least
at that point outside)
of computer interfaces, most importantly the steering wheel of a
car:
Driving an automobile is my favorite example of direct
manipulation. The scene is directly
visible through the windshield, and actions such as braking or
steering have become common
skills in our culture. To turn to the left, simply rotate the
steering wheel to the left. The response
is immediate, and the changing scene provides feedback to
refine the turn. Imagine trying to
turn by issuing a LEFf 30 DEGREES command and then issuing
another command to check
your position, but this is the operational level of many office
automation tools today. 19
64 Chapter 2
Direct manipulation is thus a metaphor based on real-time
analog technologies, such
as a drive shaft, and their integration into a visual system.

(These analog technologies,
which linked steering wheel to car wheel in a mechanical cause-
and-effect relation,
of course are themselves being replaced by computerized drive
shafts.) HCI's version
of direct manipulation is never "direct," only simulated, and the
mastery, as Shneider-
man notes, is "felt" not possessed. This emphasis on feelings,
however, reveals that
the visibility of the object of interest matters less than the
affective relationship
established though rapid, reversible, incremental actions.
Brenda Laurel has argued this point most influentially in her
classic Computer as
Theater. According to Laurel, direct manipulation is not and has
never been enough,
and the strand of HCI focused on producing more and more
realistic interface meta-
phors is wrongheaded.20 People realize when they double-click
on a folder that it is
not really a folder; making a folder more "life-like" (following
the laws of gravity,
having it open by the user flipping over the front flap, etc.)
would be more annoying
than helpful. What does help, though, is direct engagement: an
interface designed
around plausible and clear actions. Direct engagement, Laurel
contends, "shifts the
focus from the representation of manipulable objects to the
ideal of enabling people
to engage directly in the activity of choice, whether it be
manipulating symbolic tools
in the performance of some instrumental tasks or wandering
around the imaginary
world of a computer game." This ideal engagement "emphasizes

emotional as well as
cognitive values. It conceives of human-computer activity as a
designed experience"21-
an experience designed around "activities of choice" or, more
properly, making these
activities feel like activities of choice.
As a designed experience, Laurel astutely insists, computer
activity is artificial and
should remain so.22 That is, fabricating computer interfaces
entails "creating imaginary
worlds that have a special relationship to reality-worlds in
which we can extend,
amplify, and enrich our own capacities to think, feel, and
act."23 The computer inter-
face thus should be based on theater rather than psychology
because "psychology
attempts to describe what goes on in the real world with all its
fuzziness and loose ends,
while theatre attempts to represent something that might go on,
simplified for the pur-
poses of logical and affective clarity. Psychology is devoted to
the end of explaining
human behavior, while drama attempts to represent it in a form
that provides intel-
lectual and emotional closure."24 Importantly, Laurel's
argument, even as it condemns
metaphor, is itself based on metaphor, or more precisely simile:
computers as theater.
It displaces rhetorical substitution from the level of the
interface (objects to be manip-
ulated) to the interface as a whole; it also makes the
substitution more explicit (simile,
not metaphor).
Laurel's move to theater is both interesting and interested, and

it resonates strongly
both with Weizenbaum's parallel between programmer as
lawgiver/playwright dis-
cussed previously and with Edwards's diagnosis of the computer
as a metaphor of the
Action
Character 0
Q) 3 UJ Thought ::J ee. ca u ()
:ii Ill Language c Qi UJ m
1ii
E Pattern
Enactment
Figure 2.2
Causal relations among elements of quantitative structure. A
reproduction of Brenda Laurel's
illustration in Computers as Theater, 51.
closed world, a term also drawn from literary criticism.25 The
Aristotelian model Laurel
uses provides her structuralist theory with the kind of emotional
and intellectual
closure she contends interfaces should create: clear definitions
of causality, of
the means to produce catharsis and, most important, of theater-
like interfaces and
computers-as following laws."26 Clear, law-abiding causality
drives every level of
Laurel's system (see figure 2.2): action is the formal cause of
character and so on down
to enactment; enactment is the material cause of pattern and so

on up to action.
Because events happen so logically, users accept them as
probable and then as
certain. Consequently, this system ensures that users universally
suspend their dis-
belief. This narrowing also creates pleasure: the creation and
elimination of uncer-
tainty-the "stimulation to imagination and emotion created by
carefully crafted
uncertainty" and the "satisfaction provided by closure when
action is complete"-
Laurel contends, drives audience pleasure.27
The fact that users are not simply the audience, but also the
actors, makes causality
in computer interfaces more complicated. Thus, the designer
must not simply create
"good" characters that do what they intend (character, she
argues, is solely defined
by action), but also create intrinsic constraints so that users can
become good char-
acters too and follow the "laws" of the designer. 28 The
designer is both scriptwriter
and set designer: Laurel's description of the designer's power
seems less extreme than
Weizenbaum's; however, Laurel's vision-focused on the
relationship between designer
and user, rather than programmer and program-is not less but
rather differently
coercive. In Laurel's view, the constraints the designer produces
do not restrict freedom;
they ensure it. Complete freedom does not enhance creativity; it
stymies it. Addressing
fantasies by gamers and science fiction writers of "magical
spaces where they can

invent their own worlds and do whatever they wish-like gods,"
she argues that the
experience of these spaces "might be more like an existential
nightmare than a dream
of freedom":
66 Chapter 2
A system in which people are encouraged to do whatever they
want will probably not produce
pleasant experiences. When a person is asked to "be creative"
with no direction or constraints
whatever, the result is, according to May, often a sense of
powerlessness-or even complete
paralysis of the imagination. Limitations-constraints that focus
creative efforts-paradoxically
increase our imaginative power by reducing the number of
possibilities open to us. 29
A green world, in other words, in which action flows "between
natural, urban, and
other locations and centers [on] magical, natural forces"
produces paralysis and night-
mares. Yet constraints-the acceptance of certain interface
conventions as self-enforced
rules-enable agency and an arguably no less magical feeling of
power: a sense that
users control the action and make free and independent choices
within a set of rules,
again the classic neoliberal scenario. (The goal of interface
design, Laurel tellingly
states, is to "build a better mousetrap.")30 To buttress this
feeling of mastery, discon-
certing coincidences and irrelevant actions that can expose the

inner workings of
programs must be eliminated. For users as for paranoid
schizophrenics (my observa-
tion, not Laurel's), everything has meaning: there can be no
coincidences but only
causal pleasure in this closed world.
Laurel's conception of freedom, however, is disturbingly banal:
the true experi-
ence of freedom may indeed be closer to an existential
nightmare than to a pleasant
paranoid dream. Indeed, the challenge, as I argue in Control and
Freedom: Power and
Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2006), is to take freedom
seriously, rather than
to reduce it to control (and thus reduce the Internet to a gated
community). Freedom
grounds control, not vice versa. Freedom makes control
possible, necessary, and
never enough. Not surprisingly, the system Laurel describes-
focused on getting
users to suspend disbelief and to act in certain prescribed ways-
resonates widely
with definitions of ideology.
Interfaces as Ideology
To elaborate on an argument I have made before, GUis are a
functional analog to
ideology.31 In a formal sense computers understood as
comprising software and hard-
ware are ideology machines. They fulfill almost every formal
definition of ideology
we have, from ideology as false consciousness (as portrayed in
the 1999 Wachowski
Brothers' film The Matrix) to Louis Althusser's definition of

ideology as "a 'representa-
tion' of the imaginary relation of individuals to their real
conditions of existence."32
According to Althusser, ideology reproduces the relations of
production by "'constitut-
ing' concrete individuals as subjects. "33 Ideology, he stresses,
has a material existence: it
shapes the practices and consciousness of individual subjects. It
interpellates subjects:
it yells "hey you," and subjects turn around and recognize
themselves in that call.
Interfaces offer us an imaginary relationship to our hardware:
they do not represent
transistors but rather desktops and recycling bins. Interfaces and
operating systems
produce "users"-one and all. Without OS there would be no
access to hardware;
without OS there would be no actions, no practices, and thus no
user. Each OS, in its
extramedial advertisements, interpellates a "user": it calls it a
name, offering it a name
or image with which to identify. So Mac users "think different"
and identify with
Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein; Linux users are open-
source power geeks,
drawn to the image of a fat, sated penguin (the Linux mascot);
and Windows users
are mainstream, functionalist types perhaps comforted, as Eben
Moglen argues, by
their regularly crashing computers. Importantly, the "choices"
operating systems offer

limit the visible and the invisible, the imaginable and the
unimaginable. You are not,
however, aware of software's constant constriction and
interpellation (also known as
its "user-friendliness"), unless you find yourself frustrated with
its defaults (which
are remarkably referred to as your preferences) or unless you
use multiple operating
systems or competing software packages.
Interfaces also produce users through benign interactions, from
reassuring sounds
that signify that a file has been saved to folder names such as
"my documents," which
stress personal computer ownership. Computer programs
shamelessly use shifters-
pronouns like "my" and "you"-that address you, and everyone
else, as a subject.
Interfaces make you read, offer you more relationships and ever
more visuals. They
provoke readings that go beyond reading letters toward the
nonliterary and archaic
practices of guessing, interpreting, counting, and repeating.
Interfaces are based on a
fetishistic logic. Users know very well that their folders and
desktops are not really
folders and desktops, but they treat them as if they were-by
referring to them as
folders and as desktops. This logic is, according to Slavoj
Zizek, crucial to ideology. 34
As mentioned previously, Zizek (through Peter Sloterdjik)
argues that ideology persists
in one's actions rather than in one's beliefs: people know very
well what they are
doing, but they still do it. The illusion of ideology exists not at

the level of knowledge
but rather at the level of action: this illusion, maintained
through the imaginary
"meaning of the law" (causality), screens the fact that authority
is without truth-that
one obeys the law to the extent that it is incomprehensible. Is
this not computation?
Through the illusion of meaning and causality-the idea of a law-
driven system-do
we not cover over the fact that we do not and cannot fully
understand or control
computation? That computers increasingly design each other
and that our use is-to
an extent-a supplication, a blind faith?
Operating systems also create users more literally, for users are
an OS construction.
User logins emerged with time-sharing operating systems, such
as UNIX, which
encourage users to believe that the machines they are working
on are their own
machines (before this, computers mainly used batch processing;
before that, a person
really did run the computer, so there was no need for operating
systems-one had
human operators). As many historians have argued, the time-
sharing operating systems
developed in the 1970s spawned the "personal computer."35
That is, as ideology creates
68 Chapter 2
subjects, interactive and seemingly real-time interfaces create
users who believe they

are the "source" of the computer's action.
Real-time Sourcery
According to the OED, real time is "the actual time during
which a process or event
occurs, especially one analyzed by a computer, in contrast to
time subsequent to it
when computer processing may be done, a recording replayed,
or the like." Crucially,
hard and soft real-time systems are subject to a "real-time
constraint." That is, they
need to respond, in a forced duration, to actions predefined as
events. The measure
of real time, in computer systems, is their reaction to the live; it
is their liveness-their
quick acknowledgment of and response to our actions.
The notion of real time always points elsewhere-to "real-world"
events, to user's
actions-thereby introducing indexicality to this supposedly
nonindexical medium.
That is, whether or not digital images are supposed to be "real,"
real time posits the
existence of a source-coded or not-that renders our computers
transparent. Real-
time operating systems create an "abstraction layer" that hides
the hardware details of
the processor from application software; real-time images
portray computers as unme-
diated connectivity. SAGE, for instance, linked computer-
generated images to lines on
a screen; unlike in the case of radar images, there was no
"footprint" relation between
screen and incoming signal. As RealPlayer reveals, the notion
of real time is bleeding

into all electronic moving images, not because all recordings
are live, but because
grainy moving images have become a marker of the real. 36
What is authentic or real is
what transpires in real time, but real time is real not only
because of this indexicality-
this pointing to elsewhere-but also because of its quick
reactions to users' inputs.
Dynamic changes to web pages in real time, seemingly at the
bequest of users'
desires or inputs, create what Tara McPherson has called
"volitional mobility."
Creating "Tara's phenomenology of websurfing, 11 McPherson
argues:
When I explore the web, I follow the cursor, a tangible sign of
presence implying movement.
This motion structures a sense of liveness, immediacy, of the
now ... yet this is not just the
same old liveness of television: this is liveness with a
difference. This liveness foregrounds
volition and mobility, creating a liveness on demand. Thus,
unlike television which parades
its presence before us, the web structures a sense of causality in
relation to liveness, a liveness
which we navigate and move through, often structuring a feeling
that our own desire drives
the movement. The web is about presence but an unstable
presence: it's in process, in motion. "37
This liveness, McPherson carefully notes, is more the illusion-
the feel or sensation-
of liveness, rather than the fact of liveness; the choice yoked to
this liveness is similarly
a sensation rather than the real thing (although one might ask:

What is the difference
between the feel of choice and choice itself? Is choice alone not
a limited agency?).
The real-time moving cursor and the unfolding of an unstable
present through our
digital (finger) manipulations make us crane our necks forward,
rather than sit back
on our couches, causing back and neck pain. The extent to
which computers turn the
most boring activities into incredibly time-consuming and even
enjoyable ones is
remarkable: one of the most popular computer games to date,
The Sims, focuses on
the mundane; action and adventure games reduce adventure to
formulaic …
T H E
D I A L O G U E S O F P L A T 0
T R A N S L A T E D I N T O E N G L I S H
WZTH A N A L Y S E S A N D INTRODUCl'IOiVS
BY
.B. J O W E T T , M.A.
I I A S T E R OF B . < L L I O L COLLELE
R E G I U S PROFESSOR OF G R E E K IN THE U N i v m s i
r Y OP oxvoxn
DOCTOR IS THEOLOGY OK THE L N I V C K S I T Y OF L

E I D E N
T H I R D E D I T I O N
R E V I S E D A N D CORRECYZ'D T H R O U G H O U T ,
W I T H AfAARGlNAL A N A L Y S E S
A N D A N I N D E X O F S U E I E C T S A N D P R O P
E R .VAAfES
0 X F 0 R D P R E S S
L O N D O N : H U M P H R E Y M I L F O R D
U N I V E R S I T Y
Published 1892
P H A E D R U S .
476
Phacdrus.
&CRATES,
PHAEDRUS.
Prodicus.
Hippias.
Polus.
Lic ymnius.

Protagoras.
Thrasyma-
chus again.
Rhetoric a
superficial
art.
The insuficiency of rhetoric.
I told him of t h i s ; he said that he had himself discovered
the true rule of art, which was to be neither long nor short,
but of a convenient length.
Phaedr. Well done, Prodicus !
Sac. Then there is Hippias the Elean stranger, who
Phaedr. Yes.
Sac. And there is also Polus, who has treasuries of dipla.
siology, and gnomology, and eikonology, and who teaches
in them the names of which Licymnius made him a present ;
they were to give a polish.
Phaedr. H a d not Protagoras something of the same s o r t ?
Sac. Yes, rules of correct diction and many other fine pre-
cepts; for the ‘sorrows of a poor old man,’ o r any other
pathetic case, no one is better than the Chalcedonian giant ;
he can put a whole company of people into a passion and out
of one again by his mighty magic, and is first-rate at invent-
ing or disposing of any sort of calumny on any grounds or
none. All of them agree in asserting that a speech should
end in a recapitulation, though they d o not all agree to use
the same word.

Phaedr. You mean that there should be a summing up of
the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them.
SOC. I have now said all that I have to say of the a r t of
rhetoric : have you anything to add ?
Phaedr. Not much ; nothing very impo’rtant.
SOC. Leave the unimportant and let us bring the really 268
probably agrees with him.
important question into the light of day, which i s : W h a t
power has this art of rhetoric, and w h e n ?
Phaedr. A very great power in public meetings.
SOC. It has. But I should like to know whether you have
the same feeling as I have about the rhetoricians? To me
there seem to be a great many holes in their web,
Phaedr. Give an example.
SOC. I will. Suppose a person to come to your friend
Eryximachus, o r to his father Acumenus, and to say to him :
‘ I know how to apply drugs which shall have either a
heating o r a cooling effect, and I can give a vomit and also
a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all this, a s
I do, I claim to be a physician and to make physicians by
Begin here,
with Socrates
47 7 The mere c r i t i c and the true artist.

imparting this knowledge to others,’-what do you suppose
ph,jws.
Phaedr. They would be sure to ask him whether he knew P ~ *
m m
that they would s a y ? S o c a h T E S ,
‘to whom’ he would give his medicines, and ‘when,’ and
‘how much.’
SM. And suppose that he were to reply: ‘ N o ; I know
nothing of all that ; I expect the patient who consults me to
be able to do these things for himself’?
Phaedr. They would say in reply that he is a madman o r a
pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read
something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two,
although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine.
SOC. And suppose a person were to come to Sophocles or What
Euripides and say that he knows how to make a very long would
speech about a small matter, and a short speech about a o r ~ u
n -
great matter, and also a sorrowful speech, or a terrible, or p i d
s s a y
threatening speech, or any other kind of speech, and in
Esf”,B”iF
teaching this fancies that he is teaching the art of tragedy- ?
rhetoric?
Phaedr. They too would surely laugh at him if’ he fancies
that tragedy is anything but the arranging of these elements
in a manner which will be suitable to one another and to the
whole.
SOC. But I do not suppose that they would be rude or

abusive to him: Would they not treat him a s a musician
would a man who thinks that he is a harmonist because
he knows how to pitch the highest and lowest note ; happen-
ing to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely,
‘Fool, you are mad !’
and harmonious tone of voice, he would answer : ‘ My good say
t o him in the most
friend, he who would be a harmonist must certainly know
courteous
this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony if he .
manner and
in the sweet-
has not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for YOU only est
tone of
know the preliminaries of harmony and not harmony itself.’
Olce, ‘ Y o u
only know
Phaedr. Very true. the alpha-
SOC. And will not Sophocles say to the display of the bet
ofyour
Sophocla
But like a musician, in a gentle Theywould
269
would-be tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the prelimi- art”
naries of tragedy? and will not Acumenus say the same of
medicine to the would-be physician ?
Phaedr. Quite true.
SOC And if Adrastus the mellifluous or Pericles heard of

4is I-’wic/r.s and Jirtn.~~zgovrt.s.
Phaednts. these wonderful arts, brachylogies and eilionologies
and all
~ o c ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , the hard names which we have been
endeavouring to draw
PHARDRUP. into the light of day, what would they s a y ?
Instead of
losing temper and applying uncomplimentary epithets, a s you
and I have been doing, to the authors of such a n imaginary
art, their superior wisdom would rather censure us, a s well
w e s h o u l d a s them. ‘ H a v e a little patience, Phaedrus
and Socrates,
not be too they would s a y ; you should not be in such a
passion with
hard on the
rhetorician those who from some want of dialectical skill a r e
unable to
fortaching define the nature of rhetoric, and consequently
suppose that
only part
of his art, they have found the a r t in the preliminary
conditions of it,
and when these have been taught by them to others, fancy that
the whole art of rhetoric has been taught by them ; but a s to
using the several instruments of the art effectively, or making
the composition a whole,-an application of it such a s this
is they regard a s an easy thing which their disciples may
make for themselves.’
Phaedr. I quite admit, Socrates, that the art of rhetoric
which these men teach and of which they write is such a s

you describe-there I agree with you. But I still want to
know where and how the true a r t of rhetoric and persuasion
is to be acquired.
The perf- SOC. T h e perfection which is required o f t h e
finished orator
tion of ora-
tory is part- is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything
else,
ly a gift of partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by
art. If
it may be you have the natural power and add to it knowledge
and
improved practice, you will be a distinguished speaker ; if you
fall short
byart.This in either of these, you will be to that extent
defective. But art, how-
ever, is not the art, a s far a s there is a n art, of rhetoric does
not lie in the
the art Of direction of Lysias o r Thrasymachus. Thrasyma-
thus, but Phaedr. I n what direction then ?
partakasof SOC. I conceive Pericles to have been the most
accom-
of philoso- plished of rhetoricians.
PhY. Phnedr. W h a t of that ?
SOC. All the great arts require discussion and high specula-
tion about the truths of nature ; hence come loftiness of 270
thought and completeness of execution. And this, a s I con-
ceive, was the quality which, in addition to his natural gifts,
Pericles acquired from his intercourse with Anaxagoras
whom he happened to know. H e was thus imbued with the
nature. But
the nature

The viytide of tsita&.vk. 4 i9
higher philosophy, and attained the knowledge of Mind
~hacdrrcs.
and the negative of Mind, which were favourite themes of
socRATe+,
Anaxagoras, and applied what suited his purpose to the a r t
PHasDRcs~
of speaking.
Phaedr. Explain.
SOC. Rhetoric is like medicine.
Phaedr. H o w so ?
Sod. W h y , because medicine h a s to define t h e nature of
the body and rhetoric of the soul -if we would proceed, not
empirically but scientifically, in the o n e case to impart health
and strength by giving medicine and food, in the other to
implant the conviction o r virtue which you desire, by the right
application of words and training.
Phaedr. There, Socrates, I suspect that you a r e right.
Svc. And d o you think that you can know the nature of the
soul intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole ?
Phaedr. Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that t h e nature
even of the body can only be understood a s a whole'.
SOC. Yes, friend, and he was right :-still, we ought not to
be content with the name of Hippocrates, but to examine and
see whether his argument agrees with his conception of
nature.

Phacdr. I agree.
SOC. T h e n consider what truth a s well a s Hippocrates says
First there
about this or about any other nature. Ought we not to con-
Fi;:,":
sider first whether that which we wish to learn and to teach
thesoul.
is a simple o r multiform thing, and if simple, then to enquire
what power it h a s of acting o r being acted upon in relation
to
other things, and if multiform, then to number t h e forms;
and see first in the case of one of them, and then in the case
of all of them, what is that power of acting o r being acted
upon which makes each and all of them to be what they a r e ?
Phaedr. You may very likely be right, Socrates.
SOC. T h e method which proceeds without analysis is like
the groping of a blind man. Yet, surely, h e who is an artist
ought not to admit o f a comparison with the blind, o r deaf.
T h e rhetorician, who teaches his pupil to speak scientifically,
will particularly set forth the nature of that being to which h e
addresses his speeches ; and this, I conceive, to be the soul.
1 Cp. Chnmides, 156 C.
480
Phaedt-rrs. Phaedr. Certainly.
PHAEDaus*
The tn4e natu9.e of o r a t o v .

SOC. H i s whole effort is directed to the s o u l ; for in that
271
Phaedr. Yes.
SOC. T h e n clearly, Thrasymachus o r any one else who
teaches rhetoric in earnest will give a n exact description of
the nature of the s o u l ; which will enable u s to see whether
she be single and same, or, like the body, multiform. T h a t
is what we should call showing the nature of the soul.
he seeks to produce conviction.
Phaedr. Exactly.
Soc. H e will explain, secondly, the mode in which s h e acts
Then the
show or is acted upon.
by what Phaedr. T r u e .
means the
soul affects SOC. Thirdly, having classified men and speeches,
and
or is af- their kinds and affections, and adapted them to o n e
another,
fectedn and he will tell the reasons of his arrangement, and
show why
why one
SOU^ in one one soul is persuaded by a particular form of
argument, and
way and another not.
another in
another.
rhetorician
Phaedr. YOU have hit upon a very good way.

SOC. Yes, that is the true and only way in which any sub-
ject can be set forth o r treated by rules of art, whether in
speaking or writing. But t h e writers of the present day, a t
whose feet you have sat, craftily conceal the nature of the
soul which they know quite well. Nor, until they adopt our
method of reading and writing, can we admit that they write
by rules of a r t ?
Phnedr. W h a t is our method ?
SOC. I cannot give you the exact details; but I should like
to tell you generally, a s far as is in my power, how a man
ought to proceed according to rules of art.
Phnedr. L e t me hear.
Oratoryis SOC. Oratory is the a r t of enchanting t h e soul,
add there.
the art Of fore he who would be an orator has to learn t h e
differences of
thesoul, human souls-they a r e so many and of such a nature,
and
andthere- from them come t h e differences between man and
man.
fore the
Orator Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, h e will next
learn the divide speeches into their different classes :--‘Such
and such
ofhuman persons,’ he will say, ‘ a r e affected by this o r that
kind of
soulsbyre- speech in this or that way,’ and h e will tell you
why. The
experience. pupil must have a good theoretical notion of them
first, and
enchanting

differences
The so-cadled a r t of Rhetoric.
then he must have experience of them in actual life, and be P ~
U C & ~ W
able to follow them with all his senses about him, o r h e will s
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ,
never get beyond the precepts of his masters. But when P n A E
u R " ~ .
he understands what persons are persuaded by what argu-
Knowledgp
2 7 2 ments, and sees t h e person about whom he was
speaking in ofjndlvi-
the abstract actually before him, and knows that it is he, and
dual char-
can say t o himself, ' T h i s i s the man o r this is t h e
character :Esary
who ought to have a certain argument applied to him in o r d e r
to the
to convince him of a certain opinion ; '-he who knows all
rhetorician.
this, and knows also when he should speak and when he
should refrain, and when h e should use pithy sayings,
pathetic appeals, sensational effects, and all the other modes
of speech which h e h a s learned ;-when, I say, he knows
the times and seasons of all these things, then, and not till
then, h e is a perfect master of his a r t ; but if h e fail in any
of these points, whether in speaking o r teaching o r writing
them, and yet declares that he speaks by rules of art, he who
says ' I don't believe you ' has the better of him. Well, the
teacher will say, is this, Phaedrus and Socrates, your account

of the so-called a r t of rhetoric, o r Pm I to look for another ?
Phaedr. H e must take this, Socrates, for there is no pos-
sibility of another, and yet the creation of such an art is not
easy.
SOC. Very true ; and therefore let u s consider this matter
in every light, and see whether we cannot find a shorter and
easier road ; there is no use in taking a long rough round-
about way if there be a shorter and easier one. And I wish
that you would try and remember whether you have heard
from Lysias o r any o n e else anything which might be of
service to us,
Phaedr. I f trying would avail, then I might; but at the
moment I can think of nothing.
SOC. Suppose I tell you something which somebody who
knows told me,
Phaedv. Certainly.
SOC. May not ' t h e wolf,' a s t h e proverb says, 'claim a
Phaedr. Do you say what can be said for him.
Soc. H e will argue that there is no use in putting a solemn But
' t h e
face o n these matters, o r in going round and round, until
YOU ~ ~ ~ ~ Y s
VOL. I. i i
hearing '3
48:' Roditst sophisfry.

Phaednis. arrive at first principles ; for, a s I said at first, when
the ques-
.ksArEs, tion is of justice and good, o r is a question in which
men a r e
concerned who are just and good, either by nature o r habit,
Of he who would be a skilful rhetorician has no need of truth-
caresabol,t for that in courts of law men literally care nothing
about
[ r ~ t t l . truth, but only about conviction : and this is based
on proba-
bility, to which he who would be a skilful orator should there-
fore give his whole attention. And they say also that there
are cases in which the actual facts, if they are improbable,
ought to be withheld, and only the probabilities should be
told either in accusation o r defence, and that always in
speaking, the orator should keep probability in view, and say
good-bye to the truth.
throughout a speech furnishes the whole art.
Phaedr. That is what the professors of rhetoric do actually
say, Socrates. I have not forgotten that we have quite
briefly touched upon this matter' already; with them the
point is all-important.
Does
he not define probability to be that which the many think ?
PHAEDWS.
law no one
And the observance of this principle 2 7 3

SOC. I dare say that you are familiar with Tisias.
Phaedr. Certainly, he does.
SOC. I believe that he has a clever and ingenious case of
this sort:-He supposes a feeble and valiant man to have
assaulted a strong and cowardly one, and to have robbed
him of his coat or'of something or other ; he is brought into
-9ccording court, and then Tisias says that both parties should
tell lies :
either party the coward should say that he was assaulted by
more men than
should tell one ; the other should prove that they were alone,
and should
sort which argue thus : ' H o w could a weak man like me have
assaulted
t h e o t h e r a strong man like him?' T h e complainant will
not like to
unwilling confess his own cowardice, and will therefore invent
some
or unable other lie which his adversary will thus gain an
opportunity of
'O refuting. And there are other devices of the same kind which
have a place in the system. Am I not right, Phaedrus?
to Tisias,
D lie of a
would be
Phaedr. Certainly.
SOC. Bless me, what a wonderfully mysterious a r t is this

which Tisias or some other gentleman, in whatever name or
country he rejoices, has discovered. Shall we say a word to
him or n o t ?
' Cp. z j g E.
' iVot as pleasers of men, but of God.' 483
Phaedr. W h a t shall we s a y to him ?
SOC. Let u s tell him that, before he appeared, you and I
kaATEs,
were saying that t h e probability of which he speaks was
PHAsDaus.
engendered in t h e minds of the many by the likeness of the
T$z:
truth, and we had j u s t been affirming that h e who knew t h e
manshould
truth would always know best how to discover the resem- l e a r
n t o s a y
blances of the truth. I f he h a s anything else to say about the
ceptable to
art of speaking we should like to hear him ; but if not, we God.
This
a r e satisfied with o u r own view, that unless a man estimates
~e~~~~~
the various characters of his hearers and is able to divide
ofrhetoric
all things into classes and to comprehend them under single
ideas, he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the
limits of human power. And this skill he will not attain
without a great deal of trouble, which a good man ought to
undergo, not for the sake of speaking and acting before men,
but in o r d e r that h e may be able to say what is acceptable

to
God and always to act acceptably to H i m a s far a s in him
2 7 4 lies ; for there is a saying of wiser men than ourselves,
that a
man of sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at
least this should not be his first object) but his good and
noble masters ; and therefore if the way i s long and circuitous,
marvel not a t this, for, where the end is great, there we may
take the longer road, but not for lesser ends such a s yours.
Truly, the argument may say, Tisias, that if you do not mind
going so far, rhetoric has a fair beginning here.
Phaedr. I think, Socrates, that this is admirable, if only
practicable.
SOC. But even to fail in an honourable object is honourable.
Phaedr. True.
SOC. Enough appears to have been said by u s of a true and
false a r t of speaking.
Phaedr. Certainly.
SOC. But there is something yet to be said of propriety and
impropriety of writing.
Phaedr. Yes.
Soc. Do you know how you can speak o r act about rhetoric
Phaedr. No, indeed.
SOC. I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true
or not they only know ; although if we had found the truth
I i 2
Phaedrm.

what IS ac-
in a manner which will be acceptable to God ?
Do you ?
484 Thamus and Theuth.
Phaedrus.
%CRATES.
PHAEDRUS.
The inge-
nuity of
the god
Theuth.
who was
theinventor
of letters,
rebuked
by King
Thamus,
also called
Ammon.
ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the
opinions of men ?
Phaedr. Your question needs no answer ; but I wish that
you would tell me what you say that you have heard.
SOC. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous
old god, whose name was Theuth ; the bird which is called
the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many
arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and

astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery
was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus
was the king of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt
in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call
Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them
Ammon. T o him came Theuth and showed his inventions,
desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have
the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus
enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them
and censured others, as he approved o r disapproved of them.
I t would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to
Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when
they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyp-
tians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific
both for the memoryand for the wit. Thamus replied : 0 most
ingenious Theuth, the parent o r inventor of a n art is not
always
the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions
to the users of them.
father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children
have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot
have ; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness i n
the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories ;
they will trust to the external written characters and not
remember of themselves. T h e specific which you have dis-
covered is a n aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you
give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth ;
they will be hearers of many things and will have learned
nothing ; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally
know nothing ; they will be tiresome company, having the
show of wisdom without the reality.
Phaedr. Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt,
o r of any other country.
And in this instance, you who are the 275

The written word an im&ge on& of the s j o b z . 48 5
SOC. T h e r e was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that
I%ae[irns
oaks first gave prophetic utterances. T h e men of old, unlike
sWnArEs,
in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they
PH*EDRU5.
heard t h e t r u t h even from 'oak or rock,' it was enough for
T h e s c e p
them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is
phaed,,,s
or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country
reprovedby
the tale comes.
Phaedr. I acknowledge t h e justice of your r e b u k e ; and I
think that the T h e b a n i s right in his view about letters.
SOC. H e would be a very simple person, and quite a b'riting
far
stranger to the oracles of T h a m u s o r Ammon, who should
:zi'-to'
leave in writing o r receive in writing any a r t under the idea
tion.
that the written word would be intelligible o r certain ; o r who
deemed that writing was a t all better than knowledge and
recollection of the same matters ?
ticism of
Soeratee

Plzaedr. T h a t is most true.
SOC. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfor-
Writing IS
tunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have :':
P:::'
the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they
silent ever,
preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of not,
speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but
speech, be
if you want to know anything and put a question to one of
adaptedto
them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And
when they have been once written down they a r e tumbled
about anywhere among those who may o r may not understand
them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not :
and, if they a r e maltreated o r abused, they have no parent to
protect them ; and they cannot protect o r defend themselves.
indinduals
Phaedr. T h a t again i s most true.
soc. Is there not another kind of word o r speech far Butthere
better than this, and having far greater power-a son of the
~1~~~~
276 same family, but lawfully begotten ? writing
graven on
the tablets
Phaedr. W h o m d o you mean, and what is his origin ?
soc. 1 mean a n intelligent word graven in the soul of the
ofthemilid

learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak
and when to be silent.
Phaedr. You mean the living word of knowledge which
has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no
more than a n image ?
And now may
*
SOC. Yes, of course that is what I mean.
486 Recajitzdatioiz in n j p r e .
P A ~ ~ ~ ~ Y U J , I be allowed to ask you a question: Would
a husbandman,
socRArEa, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he
values and
P H A E D ~ L b . which h e wishes to bear fruit, and in sober
seriousness plant
IVhat man
of sense
would plant
sccds in an
artificial
garden, to
tiring forth
fruit or
flowers i n
eight days,
and not in
deeper and
iuore fitting
soil ?

them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis,
that he may rejoice when h e sees them in eight days appcar-
ing in beauty? at least h e would do so, if at all, only for the
sake of amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest
he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is
satisfied if in eight months the seeds which he has sown
arrive at perfection ?
Phncdr. Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is i n
earnest ; he will do the other, a s you say, only in play.
SOC. And can we suppose that he who knows the just and
good and honourable has less understanding, than thc
husbandman, about his own seeds ?
/’/inch,. Certainly not.
SOC. ’I’hen he will not seriouslx incline to ‘ w r i t e ’ his
thoughts ‘in water’ with pen and ink, sowing words which
can neither speak for themselves nor teach thc truth ade.
quately to o t h e r s ?
Pllncdv. No, that is not likely.
,Is i i wq- Soc. Xo, that is not likely--in the garden of letters hc
will
sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amuse-
IlMy pl.111t
tii f,lir mcnt ; he will write them down a s memorials to be
treasured
tlioogliih i i i against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself,
or by any
t l l C pardcll
other old nian who is treading the sanie path. H e will

rejoice in beholding their tender growth ; and while others
are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this
will be the pastime in which his days are spent.
I’/zncd~ -4 pastime, Socrates, as noble as the othcr i s
ignoble, the pastime of a man who can be amused by serious
talk, and can discourse merrily about justice and the like.
Illit /,IF SOC. True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious
,,.ill tie t o pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial
soul, by
implant the help of science sows and plants therein words which
o w n a n d are able to help themselves and him who planted
them, 277
o t h e r l l o t h and a r e not unfruitful, but have in them a
seed which
others brought up in different soils render immortal, making
the possessors of it happy to t h c utmost extent of human
happiness.
t l l l l l : 11e
serious aiin
them in hi>
n;itiires.
The pidgeimvat t~,boii Lysias. 48 i
Phaedr. Far nobler, certainly. , l'hnedrus.
SOC. And now, Phaedrus, having agreed upon the prcniises
socRnrKs,

Phaedr. About what conclusion ?
SOC. About Lysias, whom we censured, and his art of
writing, and his discourses, and the rhetorical skill or want
of skill which was shown in them-these are the questions
which we sought to determine, and they brought us to this
point. And I think that we are now pretty well informed
about the nature of art and its opposite.
Ptinedr. Yes, I think with you ; but I wish that you would
repeat what was said.
SOC. Until a man knows the truth of the several particulars The
con-
of which he is writing o r speaking, and is able to define them
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , & b t
as they are, and having defined them again to divide them IIC
able to
until they can be no longer divided, and until in like manner
&"'e~:l
he is able to discern the nature of the soul, and discover the
denote tilt:
different modes of discourse which a r e adapted to different ~
~ c ~ ~ > ~
natures, and to arrange and dispose them in such a way that
speaking.
the simple form of speech may be addressed to the simpler a n d
t o d i s -
nature, and the complex and composite to the more complex of
nature-until h e has accomplished all this, he will be unable
thosevholn
to handle arguments according to rules of art, a s far as their
dressing,
nature allows them to be subjected to art, either for the
purpose of teaching or persuading ;-such is the view which
is implied ,in the whole preceding argument.

Phacdv. Yes, that was our view, certainly.
SOC. Secondly, a s to the censure which was passcd on the
speaking o r writing of discourses, and how they might …

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