Living in a networked world means never really getting to decide in
any thoroughgoing way who or what enters your 'space' (your laptop,
your iPhone, your thermostat . . . your home). With this as a basic
frame-of-reference, James J. Brown�
Ethical Programs
examines and explores the rhetorical potential and problems of a
hospitality ethos suited to a new era of hosts and guests. Brown
reads a range of computational strategies and actors including the
general principles underwriting the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP), which determines how packets of information can travel
through the internet, to the Obama election campaign� use of the
power of protocols to reach voters, harvest their data, incentivize
and, ultimately, shape their participation in the campaign. In
demonstrating the kind of rhetorical spaces networked software
establishes and the access it permits, prevents, and molds, Brown
makes a major contribution to the emergent discourse of software
studies as a major component of efforts in broad fields including
media studies, rhetorical studies, and cultural studies.