http://www.networkcultures.org/
Thursday 28 June - Public Event
Location:University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, D0.08.
Registration desk: University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, main hall.
As the now fashionable term 'Web 2.0' suggests, the Web has changed.
But what has exactly changed, and do the ideas that came with Web 1.0 -
distrtibution, connectivity, flows etc. - still provide us with apt
ways of thinking about the Web? How intelligent is a web based
'collective intelligence'?
9:30
Doors open, coffee & tea
10:00
Welcome by Geert Lovink, Richard Rogers, Jan Simons
10:15 – 12:30
Morning session
Moderator: Richard Rogers
Siva Vaidhyanathan:
The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Shaking Up Culture, Commerce and Community.
What does the world look like through Google? More to the point, what
cultural, political, economic, and technological theories might we
invoke to make sense of this new information lens -- a profitable
company that seems benign yet increasingly functions as a public
utility? This presentation considers the ways that Google has crafted
an egalitarian public image while generating stunning revenue reports.
As Google continues to disrupt and challenge established powers such as
big media companies (Viacom) and big publishers (Bertelsmann AG), it
has chosen to work with the government of the Peoples Republic of China
in its efforts to restrict Web censorship. Although the company's
recent moves have generated controversy, Google clearly must protect
its brand by being seen as the good guy. And so far it has. The damage
Google has done to the world is minimal and centers largely on the
slippage of grammatical standards, encouraging more people to use its
brand as a verb. Google got big by keeping ads small. It carefully
avoided pinching our marketing-saturated nervous systems and offered
illusions of objectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and democracy.
After all, we are led to believe, Google search results are determined
by peer-review, by us, not by an editorial team of geeks. So far, this
method has worked wonderfully. Google is the hero of word-of-mouth
marketing lore. And just as clearly, Google must get bigger. It must go
new places and send its spiders crawling through un-indexed corners of
human knowledge. Google’s mission statement includes the rather
optimistic and humanistic phrase, “to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful.” But Google co-founder
Sergey Brin once offered a more ominous description of what Google
might become: “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”
Tiziana Terranova:
Everything is everything: network science, neo-liberalism and security.
What links the emerging field of network science with its laws, its
representations and its predictive models; the global system of
neoliberal governmentality, feeding on cooperation and innovation while
also fundamentally organized by mechanisms of competition between
unit-enterprises; and new forms of net-centric warfare attempting to
prevent unpredictable series of threats which are also themselves
network effects? Drawing on Michel Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism
and security, the paper will explore the relationship between the
science of networks, mechanisms of security, and neo-liberal
governmentality – and what a network culture might have to do with it
all.
Wendy Chun:
Imagined Networks.
Drawing from Benedict Anderson's analysis of the nation as an "imagined
community," this paper argues that we are witnessing the emergence of
make imagined groupings--imagined networks--that are both less and more
than communities or nations. In doing so, it does not argue for the
distributed network as the model for our social interactions,
bureaucratic organizations, or even our technologies, but rather asks:
what needs to be in place for us to understand ourselves and our
technologies as networked? How do social and technological abstractions
coincide, diverge and inform each other? and how are these abstractions
experienced, sensed, felt?
12:30-13:30
LUNCH
13:30 – 15:30
Early afternoon session
Moderator: Geert Lovink
Alan Liu:
Just Networking: Can Network Knowledge Be Better Than "Good Enough" Knowledge?
What is "network knowledge" as it forms at the unstable boundary
between "expert" and "amateur" knowledge, or intrinsic and extrinsic
knowledge? As exemplified by recent controversies over the
inappropriate use of Wikipedia by students seeking only "good enough"
knowledge to complete an assignment, the network in the age of Web 2.0
produces knowledge that can collide with academic, governmental, legal,
medical, scientific, and other institutional understandings of the
basic nature of knowledge. While such "good enough" network knowledge
goes beyond local, expert regimes of knowledge to mash up, aggregate,
folksonomize, and social-network together different regimes of
knowledge, it is often not yet "good" knowledge or (ethically) "just"
knowledge able to be fair to the true otherness of really robust
knowledge--that is, knowledge that can stand up to, and with, other
audiences, other perspectives, other assumptions. Instead, network
knowledge is often practiced as an opportunistic grab-what-you-can raid
that is true only to the spirit of "flexible" postindustrial global
competition. Can the network do a better job of using its structure and
technologies to adjudicate, and educate users in, "good" network
knowledge?
Anna Munster:
The Image in the Network
The image of connectivity, distribution and flow has persistently
shaped the aesthesia of networks. We are all too familiar with its form
– an uneven diagram of recurring links and nodes. Much has been made of
the spatial dimensions of this image: the proximity and distance of its
nodes, its scalability, and its distributed form. We have entire fields
of network visualisation, theory, critique and even new networks
growing thanks to the ubiquity of this image of the network. Less has
been said about the ways in which this image generates redundancy and
how this network junk may link to social and aesthetic issues of waste
and sustainability. Still less has been done to produce new images for
and in networks that give us a sense of both their fractured and
continuous temporalities. I will look at what has yet to be done to
transform networks’ image culture. In particular, I will ask: where are
the abrupt changes, little deaths and broken lines signalling
transformation of the image by the distributed temporalities of
networks? Can we take cues from mash-ups of blogs, lists and Google
Earth as a coming aesthesia of new network ‘time-images’? How are
networked arts coming to terms with temporality in the network?
Rob Stuart: Network adoption amongst groups - elements for success and failure.
Drawing on experiences creating philanthropic, activist and issue
advocacy networks, Stuart will describe elements which affect whether
networks are adopted widely amongst participants. Why do some networks
scale while others never take hold? What impact does human
relationships have on network technology? Can new network "principles"
provide a foundation for more expansive and successful networks?
15:30 – 15:45
TEA/COFFEE
15:45 – 17:45
Late afternoon session
Warren Sack:
From Networked Publics to Object-Oriented Democracies
The language of politics has used a number of technical metaphors to
describe “us” as a body politic. For example, think of “the masses”:
could this have been imagined without the language of physics? The
latest in this series is the “network.” But, networks too – like older
ideas of association and assembly – will be displaced. Political
theorist Noortje Marres suggests a possible successor: the
“object-oriented public.” Popular objects of Internet exchange
illustrate the possibilities and limitations of an object-oriented
public: Is there a YouTube democracy? A BitTorrent public? I don’t
think so, but let’s have an argument if you do.
Olia Lialina:
The Work of Users in Times of Perfect Templates
"The Work of Users in Times of Perfect Templates" is a continuation of
my "Vernacular Web" research, surveillance of todays' amateurs culture,
an attempt to reveal it and describe. I'm looking at new ways of self
expression, amateur vs. professional clashes, aesthetics of self
representation. How do users show their connection to web history and
what are the signs of the future in their work? How does web look when
it is a technology of today and not tomorrow, when it is filled by
people who are not exited by its existence? And what to do with
networks of boredom? It is over repeated that todays web is about
people, that it is not pages, but user-centered. User generated content
is praised and Rich User Experience is a goal for developers. Sounds
like paradise in cyberspace. But in reality never before life of a user
was so formalized and disciplined. There is a particular service
offered for every format a user may want to share with the world, and a
community for every interest, network for any social group. (And mash
ups for artists.) So one of my biggest interests in this research is to
find traces of subversive web culture of today and to follow them.
Florian Cramer:
"Text" and "network", reconsidered.
The Latin word "textum" literally means "the web". With the invention
of the World Wide Web in the 1990s however, there was little reflection
of a world-wide text, but fruitless debates on "hypertext", a term that
hardly lived up to more than its first four letters. How can, nowadays,
text and network be reconsidered as two corresponding symbolic forms?
And do computer networks help to define more precisely what actually a
text is - technically, but also performatively, as both a purveyor and
agent of rumors, memes, obsessions?
Friday June 29
Registration:University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, main hall.
9:30 – 9:45
Introduction
Location:University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, D0.08.
Geert Lovink, Richard Rogers and Jan Simons
9:45 - 11:30
Plenary Session
Location:University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, D0.08.
Plenary Session
Moderator: Richard Rogers
Nosh Contractor:
MTML meets Web 2.0: Theorizing social processes in multidimensional networks.
Advances in digital technologies (e.g, Web 2.0) invite consideration of
organizing within communities as a process that is accomplished by
global, flexible, adaptive, and ad hoc networks that can be created,
maintained, dissolved, and reconstituted with remarkable alacrity.
Increasingly these networks are multidimensional including individuals
as well as digital artifacts and concepts. This presentation makes the
case for a new generation of theorizing about social processes in these
multidimensional networks. It proposes a contextually based
multi-theoretical multilevel (MTML) model to investigate the dynamics
for creating, maintaining, dissolving, and reconstituting these social
and knowledge networks in diverse communities. Using examples from his
research on communities involved in disaster response, environmental
engineering, public health, economic resilience, and MMOs (Massively
Multiplayer Online games), Contractor illustrates the potential of the
MTML framework to model how social and knowledge networks are enabled
by Web 2.0 technologies.
Valdis Krebs:
OSNA -- Open Source Network Analysis
Advanced technology and Web-savvy citizenry now make it possible for
open-source information gathering to rival, if not surpass, the
clandestine intelligence produced by government agencies. Indeed,
open-source methods have already proved their worth in
counterterrorism. Shortly after Sept. 11, Valdis Krebs, a security
expert, re-created the structure and identities of the core Al Qaeda
network using publicly available information accessed from the
Internet.
By Douglas Raymond and Paula Broadwell
Christian Science Monitor, 08 January, 2007.
In the past only experts did "social network analysis"[SNA], now many
smart people are using the software and methods of SNA to solve daily
problems and to share learning and sense-making with others. We will
look at several popular social network maps that were all created using
public information found on the Internet. From international terrorists
to local 'economic terrorists' we will see how "it takes a network to
fight a network."[1] Taking an SNA approach to a popular web site's
sales data reveals the same political patterns as multi-million dollar
national surveys. A top tier business school reveals what they deem
important from an SNA of data found on professor's home pages -- MBA
applicants take note! Finally, we will see how lobbyists influence
legislative outcomes, while maintaining their "distance" and retaining
"plausible deniability".
[1] John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt of Rand Corporation
Katy Börner:
Towards Scholarly Marketplaces
Scholarly marketplaces that provide easy access to scientific data,
algorithms, publications, and last but not least expertise require
major cyberinfrastructure. They require access to large-scale databases
such as the Scholarly Database https://sdb.slis.indiana.edu which
integrates and provides access to 20 Mio. publications, patents, and
funding awards. Plus, there needs to be a means to efficiently access
and workflow diverse data sampling, cleaning, analysis, modeling, and
visualization algorithms and to run them on scalable computing
infrastructures. These needs are addressed by the Cyberinfrastructure
Shell (CIShell) specification we developed, see also http://cishell.org.
Building on the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) specification,
CIShell supports the design of user-friendly, plug-and-play
cyberinfrastructures such as the Network Workbench.
Marketplace transaction data will supply the high quality and high
coverage data required to draw the first truly comprehensive map of
mankind’s scholarly knowledge. The maps can be used to identify major
experts, works, and (funding) resources; to understand the internal
structure and external linkages of scientific disciplines; and to keep
track of emerging research frontiers or bursts of activity, see also http://scimaps.org.
This research was conducted by members of the Information Visualization
Laboratory and the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at
Indiana University directed by Dr. Katy Börner as well as collaborators
named in the talk. More information is available at http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~katy/.
11:30 – 13:30
Parallel sessions
A: Network Theory
Moderator: Geert Lovink
Time and again metaphors have been laid upon on the Internet, with more
or less successful results. Metaphors have moved from the sociological
to more complex, imaginative categories. Is network itself a metaphor?
Networks have grown up, and have been materialized in maps. Most of
all, networks have turned from the abstract to a personal, concrete
category.
Tincuta Parv:
Fibers, links and networks – a parallel between textiles, data communication systems and social interaction
Textiles webs are among the first conceived models of networking. The
history of computational systems often highlights the basic 1/0 model
of the weaving machine, as well as Joseph-Marie Jacquard 1802's
automatic loom controlled by punched cards. If this genealogy of
computational systems is well known, the paper will try to inventory
some of the textile's technical formal aspects and to compare them with
similar aspects of data communications systems. By questioning the
formal aspects of social theories, the paper will forward discuss
issues as free networking and hypermedia.
Marianne van den Boomen:
E-sociability metaphors: From virtual community to social network and beyond
In this paper it is argued that both the concept of 'community' and
'network' often function as reifying metaphors in Internet research.
The virtual community metaphor, imported from the imagery of a
pre-modern village, is connected to a delimited virtual space with a
distinct group of communicating users. While pre web and early web
'social software' indeed did enable virtual settlements in bordered
virtual spaces, this no longer holds for distributed web communication.
In the context of for example MySpace and the so called blogosphere
aggregated web scripts generate permeable interface borders and a
proliferation of heterogeneous information and communication
transferences which, while undoubtedly social, elude the community
metaphor. The network concept seems more appropriate here, but might
turn out to be tricky as well. Especially when invoked simultaneously
as a model and as ontology, as in social network analysis, the network
might become a reified metaphor, in which unruly qualitative phenomena
are superseded by a model of homogenized quantitative relations.
Leslie Kavanaugh:
The Philosophical Foundation of Network Theory: the Reticulum.
In contemporary terms the concept of a network is derived from one of
several sources: computer technology; urban design and planning;
anatomy, meaning a network of nerves or blood vessels, or a system of
intersecting fibers; or a genealogical schema. This paper specifically
attempts to excavate the philosophical presuppositions of the term
network in order to make the structure more explicit. In turn, the term
can be productive as well as descriptive. I propose the concept of the
reticulum in order to account philosophically for the autonomy of
individuals within an intersubstantial community. The concept of the
reticulum is derived not only from Leibnizian metaphysics, inspired by
Deleuze, but also from the Latin word, rete meaning net, or network. As
an interwoven combination of parts or elements in the structure, the
reticulum provides a model of a unified whole without falling into the
“traps” befalling traditional metaphysics: the subject-object divide,
ontological difference, and totalizing tendencies. As with the
Leibnizian notions of inter-substantiality and inter-connectivity
between monadic substances, the interface between individuals in a
linked reticulum or relationship is critical. Without fixedness,
without immutability, without absolutism, we are faced with a chaotic
universe in which all objects in extension are relative to one another,
fluctuating, transforming, and eternally mutating. Upon first glance,
if all individuals are deflected not only by self-generation, but also
by interaction with other individuals, how can we describe the
relational dynamic?
Verena Kuni:
Subversive Stitches and Revolutionary Knitting Circles. Between art and
activism, DIY and prosumer cultures: Weaving new networks in times of
Web 2.0.
Crafts and needlework are usually considered as part of a conservative
educatory complex apt to train bodies and minds, "learning by doing",
according to equally conservative power structures. However, it seems
that the more recent developments in online technologies changed this
perspective in significant ways. Not only D.I.Y. techniques, home style
handicrafts and needlework in general experience a renaissance so
called Web 2.0 applications, but also the old tradition of
"Revolutionary Knitting Circles" is revitalized. And while "craftivism"
is promoted as cultural technique for cultural jammers, researchers on
the cognitive impact of network aesthetics ask in how far meshwork
modelling may work as tool for understanding complex processes. But
does this really mean traditional concepts of crafts are set out of
function? What are the driving forces directing the new codification –
and do they really lead to alternative directions? How do we have to
judge the role of electronic media, and the new web "2.0" applications
within these developments?
Mirko Tobias Schaefer:
From Network to Foam. Extending the dispositif of user interactions.
The digital culture unfolding on the Internet is widely described with
the terms of the 'community' and the 'network'. However both terms tend
to fail in describing and theorizing the complex and dynamic
interactions of the plurality of human and non-human actors. In this
paper I’ll describe the limitations of the metaphors network and
community. Following the trail of the Xbox Development Kit (XDK) from
its original producer Microsoft to the communities of game console
hackers, I'll demonstrate connections and causal dependencies between
user communities and corporate companies and how they are embedded into
the socio-technical ecosystem. In consequence this presentation raises
the question which agency is causing the fixture of the foam we call
digital culture.
B: The Link
Moderator: Richard Rogers
What constitutes linking, and how could we describe its mirror phantom,
or rather, its shadow? The link as a reference to another informational
object only comes into being as a conscious act. There is no automated
process of putting links. And there is no unconscious or subliminal
linking either. Linking is tedious work. It’s an effort and should be
considered ‘extra work’. There is no routine in linking. It’s a precise
job that needs constant control. But the opposite of the conscious link
is not the broken but the absent link. What is the lifespan of links
and networks?
Iina Hellsten:
Bird Flu as a Public Hype: Networks of Communication on the Web.
The paper focuses on the dynamics of communication networks across the
(medical) sciences, news media, and blogs during public hype on bird
flu, 2005-2006. Theoretically, the study builds upon research on media
hypes, dynamics of metaphors in science communication and sociological
theory of communication, all of which have discussed the dynamics of
cross-domain communications in society. The paper develops new
approaches to the analysis of communication networks: Instead of
focusing on hyperlink networks, the paper uses textual references to
detect changes in the interactions between the domains, on the Web. The
main research questions are: How do interactions between scientific and
public communication networks change during a hype (inspired by media
studies)? What are the possible, quantitative indicators for the
changes in the interactions between such networks during hypes
(communication sciences)? Does the use of certain tools of
communication (e.g. metaphors) increase or decrease during public hypes
(social studies of science)? The results show that the bird flu debate
gained sudden momentum in all the three domains (science, media, blogs)
in October 2005 when scientific results on structural similarities
between the bird flu (H5N1) and the Spanish Flu virus were detected,
and when the virus infected wild birds and poultry in Europe for the
first time. This amplification of the debate seemed to invite more
interactions across the domains, yet at the same time the debate
fragmented over time.
Astrid Mager:
Mapping, practicing and thinking "the Internet". Challenging network thought in the context of online health information
Coming from Science and Technology Studies I aim at discussing “the
InterNet” as health information source from a broader, more integrated
perspective. Combining different empirical data sources, I will
concretely elaborate: How chronic diseases are performed and structured
on the Web following a hyperlink network approach, how people navigate
through the Web and sort the information provided when looking for a
particular disease, and in how far this relates to the narratives,
images and metaphors of the Internet they articulate. Drawing on
Actor-Network Theory I will further argue that the Internet may not be
seen as stable technology that might be represented by a single
metaphor such as the network, but rather as enacted in different
“actor” constellations such as Web sites, links, search engines,
surfers and their interests, Internet skills, search creativity and
others. Thus, network thought is challenged by the range of multiple
enactments of the Internet users produce as they browse the Internet
following and making their own structures and rationales.
Clifford Tatum & Kirsten Foot:
From ad-hoc to infrastructure: The lifecycle of hyperlink networks and
its implications for social, cultural, and political activity.
Presented by Clifford Tatum.
Based on our examinations of several hyperlink networks over time, we
find what appears to be a distinct network lifecycle that results from
the coproduction of informational and structural resources on the web.
In this paper we propose that the lifecycle of relatively durable
hyperlink networks includes three key stages: the ad-hoc beginnings of
a network; a critical period of growth and innovation; and then
increasing stability as the network becomes infrastructure for the
actors that were involved in its initial creation, and others. To the
extent that hyperlink networks reflect this lifecycle, there are
several implications for the social, cultural, and/or political
activities through which the networks are created. Networks that become
infrastructure are broadly available resources appropriated in new
rounds of activity, and upon which new layers of activities are
inscribed. Understanding the lifecycle of a durable hyperlink network
helps illuminate how individual and aggregated actions of web
production in the context of broader human activities create online
structures that may catalyze and/or constrain future activities in
particular ways.
Leah A. Lievrouw & Lilly Nguyen:
Linking and the Network Imaginary
Presented by Lilly Nguyen.
In this paper Lievrouw and Nguyen propose a framework of the network
imaginary to explore two particular aspects of linking. The network
imaginary framework asserts that actors in mediated places must not
only be able to recognize links and the relations they signify within
their immediate social contexts; they must also be able to visualize
the extension or breakdowns of network relations beyond their immediate
situations. Subsequently, this paper will explore the nature of links
and how they are generated or constituted through explicit and implicit
social phenomena. This paper will also explore the generative and
degenerative dynamics of linking that continually and reflexively
reshape networks and social action. In turn, they will suggest several
directions for the study of links and linking within network theory.
C: Locative Media
Moderator: Jan Simons
The Internet was thought to abolish space and time constraints through
media. Wireless and mobile media have are-introduced questions of space
and place. Cyberspace and the so-called 'real world' converge into what
Lev Manovich has called 'augmented reality,' and in this 'augmented
reality' it does matter where you are. Locative media allow people to
map and share their own cartographies (which implies the dazzling
theoretical possibility that there are as many maps as there are
map-makers), but they also allow authorities to keep track of everybody
and everything. Locative media might give rise to two extreme forms of
claustrophobia: will it be possible to ever break out of one's own
maps, andwill it be possible to keep out of sight?
Adrian MacKenzie:
Wirelessness and radical network empiricism.
This paper develops a post-network theory of that seeks to link
technological and economic dimensions of networks. It asks: how should
we think about information networks in the light of their transnational
profusion as wireless networks saturating domestic, urban, rural,
transport and institutional zones? The paper analyses 802.11 wireless
networks on several levels. The paper will show how micro, meso and
macro-scales of wirelessness create inter-linked zones of corporeal,
domestic, urban, transnational and mass media connectivity. The concept
of wirelessness connects together a set of perceptions, representation,
materials, transactions, problems and events in contemporary media and
information cultures. The paper develops an idea of ‘radical
empiricism’ drawn from the philosopher William James to ask how
feelings associated with convoluted social processes, economic
formations, scientific knowledges, and technical infrastructures arise.
In this respect, the paper inverts conventional understandings of the
network as space of flows or information platform.
Claire Roberge:
The Sedimentation of the Passage: Conceptualizing the Locality Today.
Claire Roberge specializes in the cultural critic of transnational
studies. She links local participative action (how to communicate) and
the functioning of technologies in juxtaposition of spaces and times.
Her research pays particular attention to transnational networked
materialities engaged in circulation and the repercussions of
mediations and mediatisations in the locality. The title of her thesis
: L'espace transnational et la localité : le réseautage et la
sédimentation du passage renders a strong theorization about what can
be read (sediments) as chosen circulated materialities. Observing a
transnational network between six different localities (Costa-Rica,
Chili, Brazil, Mauritius, Senegal and Canada), she developed a
theorization taking the network beyond the traditional setting to
include six passages to the transnational space. This presentation will
discuss this network; precisely the theorization that came out of my
observations. The analysis answers, partly, Sassens's question : "What
are we aiming at ?".
Nancy Nisbet:
Stories, Roadmaps and RFID. Exchange; a performance releasing location, memory and identity.
Exchange is a performance that began on May 1, 2006. The goals are
3-fold: to confront the politics of international trade agreements; to
question Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as a surveillance
technology; and to resist the imposition of identity determined by
geography and data-profiles. Places, people and things become entangled
and newly connected in the nomadic performance of trade. The project
doesn’t create new maps but rather renders the existing maps
simultaneously more meaningful to individuals and less decipherable to
systems of power. Personal maps are released from the claustrophobic
moorings of the nation state and the suffocating greed of the corporate
database.
Sophia Drakopoulou:
Toothing and Bluetoothing; network–fantasy-reality.
The highly publicised ‘Toothing hoax’ involved strangers having sexual
encounters on the London tube by enabling their Bluetooth devices.
Current Bluetooth scans in London reveal that people create innovative
and sexually explicit nicknames for their devices. Users project an
image of themselves into a social network - not thinking that this will
result to an actual real sexual encounter, but they wish it would. The
very wishing creates the fantasy, never to be realised. This paper
explores how the fantasy of the existence of a localised virtual
network as a social plane for sexual interactions, exited peoples’
imagination.
13:30 – 14:30
LUNCH
14:30 – 16:30
Parallel sessions
A: Networks and Subjectivities
Moderator: Jan Simons
Network theory cannot function without actors, but arguably each
network has particular subjects implied or built in, be they old boys,
terrorists, credit card transactions. The unexpected might occur.
Networks constrain and also script the behaviour of its subjects, but
accidents may happen, disruptions may occur. The challenge of the
network is to rescript the action or turn the format into a productive
constraint for doing subjectivity.
Bernhard Rieder:
Rethinking Structure and Causation in Network Theory.
In the current state of “network theory”, the term “network” is not
only highly ambiguous epistemologically (is it a merely a concept of
descriptive analysis or do networks claim ontological quality?) but
also conceptually (mathematical graphs, forms of human sociability and
cabled connections between computers are obviously not one and the same
thing). While this openness affords the possibility of relating
previously unrelated disciplines, their specific knowledge and modes of
inquiry, and the discovery of stunning similarities in behavior of very
different classes of phenomena, there is a quite real danger of
slipping into the realm of pure metaphorical analogy where the
“parliament of things” (Latour) is loosing its force of intervention
and difference is silenced by universal connectivity. My contribution
will therefore concentrate on questions of classification and
differentiation, i.e. the task of identifying commonality and, more
importantly, of features or attributes that are not shared by different
types of networks, even when they are directly related. The principles
of “structure” and “causation” seem to be of particular interest in
this context.
Michael Goddard:
Post-Rekombinant Networks or the Transition from the Cognitariat to the Precariat.
This paper will address the fate of Rekombinance as a critical network
strategy, especially as expressed by the six-year history of the
Rekombinant Website, co-ordinated by Franco Berardi (Bifo) and Matteo
Pasquinelli. Drawing inspiration from biotechnology, Rekombinant aimed
to be much more than just a typical radical Website, providing
information about radical actions and interpretations of current
events. Instead, it was aiming at nothing less than a dynamic
rekombinant strategy by means of which political action, philosophical
thought, cognitive labour and network technologies could creatively
intersect, with the aim of facilitating an autonomous production of
subjectivity, contesting the hegemonic alliance between neo-liberal
capitalism and cognitive labour that had reached its peak in the
1990's. Crucial to this enterprise was the concept of the cognitariat,
the massive virtual class of operators, service and brain workers who,
in a response to such events as the dot-com crash were potentially in a
position to question the subordination of knowledge to capital and to
create other more autonomous network possibilities, maximising the
creativity of the human-machine interface and minimising the necessity
of its reduction to capitalist exploitation and control. The principle
support for this enterprise was the counter-globalisation movement form
Seattle 1999 onwards and its claims that another world is possible,
which the animators of Rekombinant saw as having a vital application to
the radicalisation of cognitive labour, in a creative, network
re-invention of the principles of creative autonomy from the
1970's.This paper, as well as examining this history of rekombinant
strategies, will also pose the question of what, in this precarious
context, might come to replace these strategies now that the euphoria
associated with the counter-globalisation movement, has given way to a
much more sober if not depressing network environment; one thing is
clear, namely that these strategies will have to be able to respond
actively with the fragilities, passivity and pathologies of the
contemporary production of subjectivity that are analysed in Franco
Berardi's most recent writings.
Konstantinos Vassiliou:
Subjects that matter: Subjectivity in Network Reality
The omnipresent role of global network structures and the crucial
cultural status of widespread media communications enact a dynamic
relationship between subjectivity and the network. In pragmatic terms a
question that arises from that assumption is whether the network is
changing if the subjects that constitute the network are changing.
Following an actor-network analysis, I argue that networks are likely
to change if the persons that constitute it are different, thus
subjectivity gets to be a contributor in the formation of the network.
On the other hand if subjectivity cannot be thought as entirely
autonomous-as was the case for the modernistic subject- the network is
also, in an actor-network environment, forming the subjectivity. Thus,
rethinking subjectivity in the network involves the loss of barriers
between the subjectivity as a separate entity and as an agent of
several network embodied structures. This can have a certain impact on
rethinking some concepts of the network in media studies- as
authorship, representation and hyper-reality. A strong case made from
these points is that subjectivity in the network must be thought in a
context that defies humanism in its modernistic version, nevertheless
without neglecting the impact of subjectivity on the network functions.
Franz Beitzinger, Natascha Zowislo and Jürgen Schulz:
Saying 'No': On the rejection of consensus-oriented communication on the Internet.
Presented by Franz Beitzinger.
It is a somewhat naïve and normatively-burdened idea that the purpose
of communication is to create consensus. However, it is easily
overlooked that is precisely the ‘No’ and the lack of a goal to reach
agreement by no means eradicate communication, but in fact increase the
communicative options and connectivity among the participants as
conflicting interests and alternative points of view, rather than the
aspiration for agreement and harmony, constitute a communicative
relationship. Firstly, this paper seeks to illustrate theoretically how
the ‘No’ on the Internet can lead to a) the maintenance of the
communicative system, b) to the establishment of identity for those
actors saying ‘No’, and c) to their gaining meaning in the real world
away from the Internet. Secondly, with the help of examples from
Internet-based political and anti-corporate protest movements the means
and strategies that the Internet itself enables individual and group
actors to use the ‘No’ to establish and secure their own identity will
be examined. Thirdly, this paper analyses how the targets of the
protest, the antagonists of the protest movement (corporations or
political parties), can successfully deal with dissent-oriented protest
on the Internet in order to avoid having their own prominent position
exploited for the purposes of the protest group in the aforementioned
way.
Ulises Ali Mejias:
Hyperlocality and the tyranny of nodes.
A defining characteristic of networked sociality is the overcoming of
physical space. Information and communication technologies (ICT's) have
allowed social groups to shift from densely-knit location-based
communities to sparsely-knit networks unbound to any specific physical
space. Thus, the network introduced what has been heralded as the
'death of distance.' But we have seen recently a return to a concern
with the local. Accessible, low-cost, and mobile technologies promise
to deliver a form of 'hyperlocality' that re-connects us to our
immediate surroundings in supposedly more meaningful ways. But what
biases does the hyperlocal exhibit? When social relevance is defined in
terms of presence within the network, what we have is a shift from
physical proximity to informational availability as the defining
feature of 'nearness.' Thus, the network actualizes a form of
epistemological exclusivity that can only 'see' nodes. In this
presentation, I intend to explore how hyperlocality works to render as
near only those elements in our environment that are available through
the network, and obscures what lies in the interstices.
B: Networking and Social Life
Moderator: Ramesh Srinivasan
‘Networking’ continues to be encouraged in our professional lives, but
no one seems to have thought through how life would be guided if we
apply network theory to professional ‘networking’ rather literally. As
network scientists’ terms and ideas spread, it is of interest to
speculate about one’s social life, governed by the power law,
preferential attachment, hubs, self-organization, swarming and
cascading effects. To network in a colloquial sense, essentially is to
connect oneself with a hub. As the hub receives more connections (or
becomes ‘preferentially attached’), the hub may become a
superconnector, handling a disproportionately large number of
connections relative to those of the other hubs in the overall network.
As the network continues to grow through self-organisation, general
knowledge of the existence of the superconnector may cause swarming
behaviour.
A superconnector, network science reports, has the greatest
vulnerabilities, however. If the superconnector cannot handle the
traffic, the network breaks down. If there's breakdown, with or without
cascading effects, which determines the extent of the damage, you’re on
your own again. One implication is that one should continue to seek
fresh hubs (as long as they last), and keep them from becoming
overheated superconnectors. Hub-seeking behaviour, along with
superconnector-care, come to guide social life.
Yukari Seko:
Acting Out Network: Self-destructive Murmurs in the Blogosphere.
The Internet has become a discursive space where interactants actively
discuss not only mainstream topics but socially-marginalized interests
such as suicide or self-injury (SI). While some go online to seek for
mutual supports from like-minded others, others adapt online venues as
another medium to monologically disclose their pent-up struggles.
Weblogging (blogging) can be viewed as a unique platform of monological
writing in which bloggers chronicle their daily life for public
consumption. Focusing on ambivalent characteristics of blogs –
monological and dialogical, – I aim to map the friendship network of
one suicidal/SI blogger. The finding suggests that through networking
process the blogger’s SI habits are tacitly recognized as a productive
(albeit temporal) solution both by authors and readers. This shared
legitimation of SI behavior indicates that a grass-roots network of
“acting out” plays a significant role in construction of discursive
identity.
Kristoffer Gansing:
Community (New) Media - Public access in the age of networked social media.
How are alternative media networks being formulated when the main
cultural drive actually seems to be towards the Web 2.0 ideals of
social media? Is there still any radical potential left in a concept of
Community (New) Media? The base for the investigation is research on
the state of non-commercial community media in Denmark and the case of
the artist-run local TV-station tv-tv. What is the meaning of the
station’s slogan “everybody can make TV” in a culture where everybody
actually can make TV? Traditionally, alternative media networks have
stressed the importance of the non-commercial, but new “free” Internet
tools for media publishing re-introduce the commercial in deceptive
ways. Old alt media networks are simply lacking the understanding of
the criteria behind Internet participation in the Web 2.0 culture. In
the presentation I will explore the need for rethinking the role of
alternative “public access” media in the paradoxical context of the
“massive de-massification” of social media networks.
Alice Verheij:
Re-thinking network theory and analysis concerning social care networks in the Internet age. A case description.
For my PhD research project I am studying structures, influences,
limitations and challenges concerning organizations and networks
involved in social care for gender dysphoric people. By it’s nature the
transgender community is a closed community making extensive use of the
possibilities of the internet for knowledge gathering and sharing and
self-support. To perform a network study in this environment it needs
to be executed ‘from the inside out’, meaning one needs to be part of
the community.
A large part of the study is concerned with peoples experiences with
social care processes also through internet fora and knowledge sharing
websites. Especially the influence of these on the regular health ad
social care is a research goal with specific challenges to the
researcher. Does this all require new ways of network research and a
new network theory?
Kimberly de Vries:
Desire, Dissent and Differentiation: Sustaining Growth in Virtual Networks.
Many if not all virtual communities have been spawned out of the
founders' desire to find others who share their views, pleasures,
distastes, and obsessions. The early net communities were generally
peopled by users who shared a propensity toward play or fantasy, but
the population of Internet users has diversified and grown to include
many people coming to net communities for many reasons beyond these
initial desires. This growth has challenged communities to accommodate
the demands of new participants and some have been stretched to
dissolution. Studying communities that have survived and evolved
reveals that they all find ways to identify and meet the changing
desires of their members, often by adopting a hybrid form. For this
study, three websites are examined: neilgaiman.com, warrenellis.com,
and sequentialtart.com. Choices about who controls contributions and
interaction on these sites as well as differing technical approaches
suggest many possible axes of comparison but commonalities may yet be
insufficient to justify the creation of fixed categories to contain our
thoughts on the evolution of social networks. Instead we may
productively complicate the simple and idealistic theories currently
popular.
Kenneth Werbin:
The List Serves: Bare Life in Cybernetic Order.
Historicizing the use of lists in power/knowledge contexts prior to the
emergence of internet-based technologies, 'The List Serves: Bare Life
in Cybernetic Order' probes questions of list culture; arguing that the
Third Reich's engagement of a conjunction of early Hollerith/IBM
computing technology, listing practices, and discourses of
identification and control of 'bare life,' represents the first
cybernetic feedback system for maintaining social order. Investigating
how this conjunction continues to resonate and reverberate in today's
increasingly cybernetic order, this research argues that list culture
involves dialectic operations; at once carving out knowledge, and at
the same time opening up questions about the constitution of categories
and classes by virtue of grouping people/items together.
C: Art and Info-Aesthetics
Moderator: Warren Sack
Going beyond the first generation of net.art, how we envision art forms
that utilize networks either as source material or environment? Since
the first network drawings there has been a sharp increase in
'mapping'. It is known that it is hard to imagine networks without a
graph in mind. Now we speak in terms of 'visualization' which takes us
away from the technicality. There is a growing gap between the
increased visualization and our understanding of these maps, and
networks in general.
Olga Kisseleva:
LANDSTREAM
Land-stream is an experimental program, which creates a representation
of landscape through the analysis of flows (stream) which cross a given
space (land). The work takes a pictorial form, which can be static or
animated. In this landscapes their initial scientific data are
transformed into visual information. Today, when our identity is
defined especially by our position in the network, by the information
which we emit and which we receive, we fix our attention on these
invisible flows and we try to determine their importance, their form
and their direction. Thus, the landscape - land(scape) - is not any
more one simple relief. It becomes an association of the waves and
signals (stream): land-stream.
Wayne Clements:
An Eternal Engine
‘Why does reason not advance smoothly and unhindered?’ A response to
this question explores the creation and destruction of lexical
effluents as by-product of the use of social software. This process is
reconsidered, and presented as a development of a medieval cabbalistic
machine. This machine, in its contemporary form, produces as its
by-product an unwanted residue. This remainder, as the derivative of a
networked machine, is available for re-use. It is argued that instead
of their destruction, these leftovers of the process of knowledge
production are preserved and recycled.
Jacob Lillemose:
Heath Bunting from physical space to the net and back again
With Heath Bunting’s seminal work created from the mid 90s to today as
my focus I wish to discuss the aesthetics involved in his ’translation’
of concepts and practices from the digital space of the net to physical
space. I 1997 at the height of his fame Bunting with Duchampian
tongue-in-cheek declared that he would retire as a net artist. Formally
he did quit the net art scene, but conceptually and in practice he took
his net art to a necessary next level. Thus, he went on to produce a
series of work in nature and urban space that developed notions of
networks and related notions of hacking, sharing, information access
and free culture that were integral to his net art works. I will follow
this artistic development to argue that it challenges us to expand
current aesthetics of net art works beyond the pure digital realm and
that it expresses a productive critique of technology in the society of
information.
Katja Mayer:
Imag(in)ing Networks
Network cultures share imaginations of networks. Despite the lack of a
consistent scientific network theory, a coherent trans-theoretical
trend in today’s network visualization can be observed: even if
underlying data and purposes are very divergent, their images look
similar. They are created from the same technical and graphical
dispositives and produced by similar optimization algorithms for
topological problems within the constraints of digital information
visualization. Images of networks are complex assemblages themselves.
In my presentation I will analyze practices of epistemic image
production in Social Network Analysis in respect to the use of certain
graphical metaphors and aesthetic traditions, which already come
standardized in imaging techniques and therefore escape our attention.
Olga Goriunova:
Internet platforms: cultural production in late capitalism
The talk examines various genres of Internet platforms as instruments
artistic and cultural production manifests and develops itself through
in the digital age. Art platforms and participatory platforms (aka Web
2.0) are analyzed as different techno-ideological mechanisms aimed at
crystallization of a cultural practice or self-realization and
optimization of social life. Further, they are regarded as practices
united by the quest for creativity in the social context. Creativity
embodies the central problematic of today's cultural development: on
one hand, it is traditionally understood as the basic emancipatory
human activity, on the other hand, it is a resource late capitalism
draws upon. The final part of the talk considers failures of Creative
Commons and resulting concepts of Free Culture to grasp the nature of
production of value in the cultural sphere, their inability to draft
the political project of open culture, and considers ways in which
online platforms can be seen as structures mirroring the "circulation
of struggles" and hosting resistances in their momentarily incarnations
of open culture.
Saturday June 30
10.00 – 12.00
Parallel sessions
A: Actor-Network Theory and Assemblage
Moderator: Noortje Marres
What is special about actor-network theory is that it aspires to take
into account the non-humans and emphasize translations or
redefinitions. All entities are transformed by their enrolment in
specific networks, and their capacities and agency derive from this
enrolment. Whilst actor-network theory proposes a dynamic ontology, in
its account the main aim of network-building is to produce stable
spaces. Actor-network theory was developed to account for
socio-technical networks built with the aid of science and technology
(shellfish, vaccinations, statistics, diesel engine, seatbelt), but now
our question is what becomes of this approach when it is applied to
particular new media practices, such as advocacy, publicity and
DIY/domestic media. What are the peculiarities of these media practices
that would be a productive challenge for actor-network theory?
Thomas Berker:
Suffering in Networks. An exploration into conceptions of marginality, conflict and exploitation in network theories.
What is suffering, what is marginality, conflict, and exploitation in a
network? In this contribution I approach these topics using the tools
provided by among others Castells/Sassen, Latour/Law, and
Deleuze/Guattari. The aim of this exercise is to provide an exploratory
taxonomy of how to (re)think suffering in the light of network theories.
Betina Szkudlarek:
Actor-Network Theory - ontologizing realities.
In this paper work of Callon, Latour, Law and other representatives of
Actor-Network Theory is employed in order to explore three different
approaches relevant and valuable for understanding of organizational
processes. I aim at a wide-ranging, yet pragmatic, application of ANT
to the area of organization studies. Tracing back an evolution of the
theory I will try to 'perform' ANT in its distinctive modes. I list and
elaborate on three different forms of social topologies and resulting
from them three distinctive objects that can be enacted; namely a
network, a region and a fluid. Moreover, in my application I attempt to
remodel, adapt and carry out an ANT approach suitable and sensitive to
an analysis of organizational processes.
Michael Dieter:
Open Cartographies, On Assembling Things Through Locative Media
This paper applies the recent work of Bruno Latour on object-orientated
democracy and assemblage theory in order to complicate an
instrumentalist definition of locative technology. In particular, I
want to examine how a reflexive approach, inspired by
Actor-Network-Theory, is able to trace flows of agency across multiple
locations; not simply charting the course through which a triggered
locative media event unravels, but openly diagramming the alternate
layers of actors, space and time operating as
conditions of possibility. This is of critical importance, I will
argue, in order to distinguish the operation of mobile and digital
devices from the imperatives of control, surveillance and commercial
spectacle characteristic of the contemporary urban experience.
B: Networks and Social Movements
Moderator: Eric Kluitenberg
"The whole world is watching," is what demonstrators at the Democratic
Convention in Chicago in 1968 shouted in Haskall Wexler's film MEDIUM
COOL (USA, 1969). Media networks were seen as a critical source for
information, knowledge, and enlightment where you had to make sure you
got your message through. Nowadays, media networks have become a target
of irony, parody, and mockery, and as means of disconnection as well as
tools for connecting movements. Activists rather organize networks
through physical movements from event to event and through material
objects like leaflets. Are we seeing the signs of post-network social
movements?
David Garcia:
Faith in Exposure
The paper will question one of the foundational myths of modernity; the
widely held belief that ‘knowledge will set you free’. I will use
selected visual material from the exhibition I curated entitled Faith
in Exposure, as the starting point for a candid examination of how the
concept of freedom has changed in the era of networks, arguing that
freedom and democracy have actually been transformed since their fates
became entangled with the Internet. These are not abstract arguments,
there is a great deal at stake as in both in the history of media
networks and a wider political history, the concept of freedom enjoys a
unique moral status. From early modernity to this day those seeking
respect, recognition equality and economic social justice seldom make
these claims in isolation but usually as corollaries of liberty.
Charli Carpenter:
Assessing Virtual Networks: Human Rights Advocacy in Real- and Cyberspace.
To what extent do online issue networks serve as a proxy for their
real-space counterparts in structure and substance? My paper will
examine this question through an analysis of the human rights network.
Two specific questions will be explored. First, how closely the
structure of issue networks as represented on the World Wide Web
correspond with actual advocates' understanding of the players within a
specific issue domain? This will be studied by comparing hyperlinks
among advocacy websites in the women's rights networks with survey
responses from actual participants in those networks to determine
whether hyperlinks provide a useful proxy for advocates' understandings
of who the "gatekeepers" in a network are. Second, to what extent does
the online issue agenda correlate to the most prominent issues
described by real-space advocates within a transnational network? To
study this, I will compare the prominence of issues online in these
networks, as determined by a content analysis of advocacy websites, to
human rights activists' survey responses regarding the "most important
issue." This method follows scholars of domestic agenda-setting in
attempting to capture the "agenda" in both online and real-space
transnational sites and examine the extent to which they correlate or,
alternatively, seem disconnected.
Paolo Gerbaudo:
Navigating the World Social Forum. Individual orientation in a central node of the global activists' network
The World Social Forum has created a new "space" and scale for
encounter between civil society organisations and independent
participants. It constitutes one of the most original and visible new
"informal institutions" which have been developed in the context of the
politics of alternative globalisation. It also represents the occasion
for a networking bonanza. This is due to the nature of the World Social
Forum as a central symbolic and material node in a global activists'
network, where the different spatial trajectories traced by
participants' political mobility intersect, together with the
connection to a shared host of alternative media outlets and complex
sets of interpersonal linkages. In this paper I will analyse how the
experience of different individual participants in the forum are
articulated by their position within these different networks, and how
from this location they develop an orientation within the symbolic and
material territory of the forum which help them make sense of their
interaction with it. In particular I will analyse participants' global
orientation - orientation to the event as a whole -, and local
orientation - orientation towards different events held during the
forum - and how they are developed in connection with participants'
position within different networks. Moreover I will consider a series
of communicative and spatial closures which characterise such networks
and the consequences for patterns of mobilisation at both the local and
global level.
Megan Boler:
The Politics of ‘Truthiness:’ Digital Dissent and Satire as Networks of Activism
How have networks of “digital dissent” countered the spin of U.S. media
and politicians over the last four years? What is the role of satire
and “fake” news shows like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? Drawing on
our three-year study ‘Rethinking Media, Democracy and Citizenship’
(including 40 interviews with producers of web-based dissent), I
present viral video clips that address corporate media and politician’s
lies regarding invasion of Iraq and “selection” of George W. Bush. What
are users’ and producers’ motivations for engaging in online political
engagement? Do online participants feel they have a public voice and/or
political efficacy? Our survey and interviews provide new insights
about these crises of truth.
John Duda:
Bodies and Swarms: Networks, Multitude, and Biology
Whereas political theory since at least John of Salisbury and Thomas
Hobbes has thought the social body in analogy with natural living
bodies, a new biology of emergent morphology and distributed causality
has made it possible to approach networked political organization as
directly connected to the investigation of vital processes. According
to Hardt and Negri, the activity of the multitude and the life of the
swarm depend on the same underlying dynamics of auto-organization.
Within the context of their political project, this claim demands that
the network can be understood as an efficacious but ultimately
ethically neutral form of organization, while simultaneously valorizing
the political content of the network as such. The new democracy of the
multitude becomes indistinguishable from its technological basis---a
globalized network of multiply connected and continuously communicating
nodes---and yet this basis remains fundamentally implicated in the
logic of late capitalism. Using Hardt and Negri's own comments on
swarms and swarming in "Multitude", as well as biologist Brian
Goodwin's remarks on the epigenesis of the social body in "How The
Leopard Changed Its Spots," I want to confront two competing notions of
the politics of multitude: a positive conception which sees the flesh
of the common in the organization of a new social body, and a negative
conception which understands the multitude to stand for a generalized
disruption, a resistance "without organs". If it is possible to resolve
the ambiguity between the (quasi-)teleology of the self-organized body
and the promise of freedom in the networked encounter, what
implications can be drawn for the design of the political and
technological networks we are engaged in constructing?
C: Mobility and Organization
Moderator: Sebastian Olma
How are we coping with the space of flows, as Munuel Castells described
them? How do scholars these days define the relation between networks
and organization, beyond the early euphoria of the 'virtual office’?
What is the dominant business rhetoric, a decade after the rise of the
network society?
Marga van Mechelen:
Glocalisation as a curatorial and artistic mission.
The subject of my talk, which is related to my (ASCA) research project
Practices in art as network practices, are several conceptions of the
term ‘glocalisation’ and their relation to some recent art projects and
curatorial practices. In recent years old object orientated art
practices are ousted by new global as well as local network practices.
Remote areas got access to the international art discours that
stimulated new democratic structures to bridge cultural, ethnic, social
and gender related gaps, but also the reflection on how being directed
on global issues and at the same time engaged with local affairs. It is
this duality of global/local, often contracted in the adjective
‘glocal’ that I will focus on, asking also questions such as: What kind
of operations are brought into action, who is the addressee and what
are the goals of these art practices?
Robert van Boeschoten:
The executive language: Coding the future.
Making sense of Interactive Media project has a lot to do with the use
of tools in the process of interaction. This is based on a relation
between language and code. What are the embodied signifiers and how do
we find our ideals for the future in it? By looking at the process of
interaction between these two elements, this paper hopes to shed some
light on the creation of value in interdisciplinary work by dealing
with different perspectives.
12:00 - 13:00
LUNCH
13.00 – 15:00
Parallel sessions
A: Anomalous Objects and Processes
Network objects and processes are increasingly characterized by the
presence of so-called “bad objects” like viruses, worms, spam, unwanted
porn, and so forth. The aim of this panel is to address the question
concerning these anomalous objects. In what sense are these bad objects
anomalous? And is there, in fact, a certain logic of anomality
underpinning contemporary network culture; a counterintuitive logic
that escapes the dualisms of good and bad and normal and abnormal? If
so, this would imply that these objects are not etymologically
“anomalous”, that is, “outside series”, “irregular”, “accidental.” The
aim of this panel is to address the question of anomalies by seeking
conceptual, analytic and synthetic pathways out of the binary impasse
between the good and bad and the normal vs. the abnormal.
Jussi Parikka:
Bad Bits: Software and Incorporeal Events
How can software be bad? During the 1980s, a certain incorporeal
transformation took place. Due to the new (economic) importance paid to
software and network processes, various kinds of self-reproductive and
metastable forms of network processes became turned into forms of “bad
bits”, unwanted software. During the 1980s, this meant the birth of
“viruses” as a key category of malicious software, but included also a
host of much further spanning procedures, which exemplified how
software code is always embedded in larger assemblages. Material
processes have their own duration that is not reducible to
signification, but at the same time acts of order-words impose actual
transformations in terms of categories, definitions and events. Deleuze
and Guattari refer to the incorporeal transformation of an airplane
(the plane-body) into a prison-body in a hijacking situation where the
transformation is enacted by the “mass media act” as an order word.
Similarly, a computer virus has been turned in various assemblages of
enunciation (such as mass media acts) into malicious software, a
security problem but also a piece of net art, an artificial life
project or also a potential beneficial utility program. The
presentation approaches this distribution of code across a panorama of
societal contexts and discusses the order-words that delineated,
channeled and transformed certain bits into societal concerns, “bad
bits.”
Richard Rogers:
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it? A
new media approach to the study of state Internet censorship.
The research approach put forward here is an exercise in reorienting
the study of state Internet censorship. Until now the dominant approach
may be described as one that treats Websites as books. To think in
terms of single Websites as blocked or accessible in particular
countries, like books banned or not banned, also follows from how most
filtering software works – it blocks sites from pre-installed URL lists
(blacklists). The paper first provides a brief critique of the current
approach to Internet censorship research. Generally, here, the Web is
not thought of as comprising discrete sites only, that should be found
individually and listed as well as described as one would do when
hosting a directory. Rather, the Web is considered to be an information
circulation space, where ‘routing around censorship’ is
labour-intensive. The question becomes how Internet censorship research
changes when one begins with hypermedia assumptions. Subsequently,
three new media-style approaches to Internet censorship research are
introduced: related site dynamic URL sampling, redistributed content
discovery and surfer re-routing. The paper includes a discussion of the
double-edged implications of such Internet censorship research,
including its value to the censor.
Tony Sampson:
On Anomalous Objects of Digitality. An introduction.
Networks are becoming increasingly accidental. Estimates vary, but
between 40-80% of daily email traffic is considered surplus to need
(spam, viruses, worms etc). However, despite the obvious frustrations,
these anomalies often contradict the ostensible friction-free essence
of electronic networks and can be understood as novel events,
expressive of an open and transformational milieu. Along these lines,
this introductory paper draws upon a collection of articles due to be
published in The Spam Book (Parikka & Sampson, 2008) in order to
highlight ways in which symbiotic network processes not only
destabilise the identity of the network, but also challenge the
familiar substance/accident dichotomy.
B: Networks and movements: an interdisciplinary conversation
Moderator: Mario Diani
What is the interplay between online and offline relations with and
among networks? This session looks empirically into whether collective
actions should be thought about in terms of networking. Is there a
possible tension between physicality of social movements and intangible
quality of networks?
Claudia Padovani & Elena Pavan:
Between Issue and Social Network. Insights from an ongoing research on mobilization on Communication Rights in Italy.
Presented by Elena Pavan.
In the knowledge age, information, communication and related
technologies are not only instruments to foster, coordinate and sustain
collective action but have become also a site of struggle around which
advocacy networks are shaping and developing, nationally as well as
trans-nationally. Common discourses, strategies and actions in this
context develop both online and offline. A network approach to the
investigation of these dynamics seems useful in order to portray the
continuous interplay among different levels of practice, the creative
use of technologies and the potential impact of mobilizations. This
work focuses on the Italian context and shows how issue and social
network approaches can productively be jointly applied in the study of
communication rights mobilizations. Research questions will be
addressed concerning the meaning of networking activities, their
features, the meaning of ties (or of their absence) and the role of
technology in fostering practices of social networking.
Giorgia Nesti & Matteo Cernison:
Advocacy networks and policy networks in the European Union: the case of media pluralism.
Presented by Giorgia Nesti.
European governance processes are often labeled as ambiguous. The EU
institutional context is marked by high complexity, due to the
technical nature of the issues at stake;but is also characterized by
weakness, due to its political structure, where political parties and
representative institutions are underestimated. In order to cope with
complex issues and to gain consent and legitimacy, the European
Commission has engaged civil society (i.e. interest groups) in policy
networks. What emerges is a polycentric system of policy-making where
governmental and non governmental actors, mainly from the business
sector, take relevant technical decisions and exert influence on policy
regulation. Taking European policy for media pluralism as a case-study,
the paper is aimed at: a) mapping governmental and non governmental
policy networks currently emerging in the context of European media
regulation; b) assessing their potential impact on decision-making; c)
exploring political implications for the development of a democratic
European polity.
Stefania Milan:
Networks of radical tech collectives: Social logic and technological
dimensions of emancipatory practices in the field of digital
communication.
In response to the commodification of digital communication
infrastructures and the subsequent threats to the privacy of
individuals and groups, over the past few years we witnessed the
emergence of a number of autonomous groups whose aim is to counteract
the politics of surveillance enacted by states and capital by providing
alternative communications channels. Both tool and part of contemporary
social movements, they embody a strong emancipatory mission: free
fellow activists from the burdens of commercial web services and
empower them through the creative use of free software. Core values
include self-organisation, self-determination, equal access and free
flow of information. Examples include the Italian server Autistici,
offering web-hosting, email accounts and list-serves, the
British-German Plentyfact but also more established groups as the
British GreenNet. Drawing from a number of interviews with radical
techies, the paper will present an overview of the European radical
tech collectives, their connections, social logics and technological
dimensions.
Francesca Forno:
Consumption Styles and Digital Networks in Italy.
ICTs have been said to play an increasing important role in the
development of alternative political repertoires of action and
campaigning. ICTs do not just have an instrumental function.
Differently form 19th and 20th century newspapers and underground
press, websites provide multiple sources of identification available,
being a permanent setting of representation for groups and individuals.
Focusing on the way ICTs are used by organisations engaged in the
promotion of alternative ways of consumption grounded in solidarity
principles, the paper exemplify how the Internet and Internet-based
methods can be used to study the formation of new social and political
actors and actions.
Claudius Wageman & Manuela Caiani
The extreme right, networks, and the internet: a comparison of the
multi-organizational field of the extreme right in Italy and Germany.
Presented by Claudius Wageman.
'Networks' are increasingly important for the extreme right. On the one
hand, right-wing extremists use the internet in order to fix dates;
arrange events; and to communicate quickly and effectively with each
other. This way helps avoiding too much visibility with hostile forces.
On the other hand, the right-wing sector in general increasingly relies
on network organizational structures. Fix structures are avoided, since
they would permit state authorities to intervene against them. Through
social network analysis based on web linkages between organizations,
our paper aims to explore the structure and the nature of the
multi-organizational field of the Italian and German extreme right,
both with regard the communication and the organizational dimension.
C: The Global and the Local
Moderator: Reinder Rustema
It's easy to deconstruct McLuhan's 'global village' and even more so to
reject place-specific metaphors such as 'digital city' and 'homepage'
as retro constructs. If we downplay the totalizing syntheses of the
local and global, we run the risk to misunderstand important cultural
dynamics within networks. Instead of pushing 'the local' as a universal
solution for today's problems, we have to carefully re-assess the
interaction between 'place' and 'flow'. The importance of language,
cultural identities, gender and race are not 'politically correct'
items in some discursive chess play but are valuable elements in a
patchwork of case studies that tell us how networks are both embedded
and escape the traditional understanding of locality.
Ramesh Srinivasan:
Conceptualizing Semantics and Ontologies in a New Network Era
This talk will explore several dimensions of my global cross-cultural
collaborative research with ethnically-diverse populations, the focus
being the study of how technologies may be sculpted to represent
diverse epistemologies held by ethnic, indigenous, and diasporic
populations. I shall argue that as the syntax and structure of cultural
discourses fundamentally differentiates communities, systems also must
acknowledge such differences. Databases can begin to take on attributes
of complex adaptive systems, and the 'universality' of top-down web
systems can be de-bunked. This movement shall be described relative to
several of my field-based ethnographic projects with indigenous
communities, including a. The National Science Foundation funded
Emergent Databases collaboration with the Zuni, NM. b. Historical work
done with the Native tribes of Southern California
and c. Ongoing work with South Asian migrants in the Los-Angeles
region. Each of these projects weaves ethnographic, system design, and
participatory action-type methods to uncover data that reveals the
power of database-driven systems to serve local sociocultural realities.
Jana Nikuljska:
Communicative Societies in a Networked World.
Societies differ in the ways they communicate, within themselves and
with others. They vary in the grounds on which communication is
established, what its drivers are once initiated, what is productive
and what destructive in nurturing communication, and so on. Macedonia
is very much a communicative society. An experience is not truly
experienced, until it is shared. And the collective experience for the
past decade – in which visa requirements from very liberal were made
extremely stringent – has been an inward one, where much of the
information about the outside world was gathered and aspects of
communication within Macedonian society were harnessed through the Net.
Social software has complemented a traditionally and intuitively
embedded sense for networking. Old and new aspects of communication
have mixed in a unique local experience.
Deborah Wheeler:
The Political Importance of Internet Cafes in Jordan and Egypt.
This paper provides an overview of the kinds of people hanging out in
internet cafes in Jordan and Egypt. It profiles their use, in terms of
how many hours they spend on line, what they do on-line and in their
own words, how such access has changed their lives. This paper
concludes with an analysis of what internet use among the masses might
mean for the future of Arab politics, specifically for the persistence
of authoritarianism in the region.
15.30 - 17.30
Closing session conference
Noortje Marres:
The special effect of issue-affectedness. On being sensitive to the normative charges of networks.
In recent times, the concept of the network has served as a heuristic
for deflating the normative dimensions of social life. It has assisted
in the marginalization of notions like ‘class’, ‘domination’ and
‘discipline’ as it opened up a world that is no longer troubled by a
constitutive problematics, but consists of an open-ended set of lateral
connections. However, an earlier theoretical tradition, namely American
Pragmatism, in a sense made the opposite move: it placed networks at
the center of social theory in order to account for the social problems
of technological societies. Thus, John Dewey argued that to develop a
grasp of the challenges of industrial life, we must focus on the
everchanging distributions of effects of industry, migration and
innovation that keep disrupting social life. In this talk, I will take
the pragmatist commitment to do justice to this dramatic dimension of
industrial life as a starting point for formulating a few requirements
for network theory. Firstly, I will discuss the importance of not
distinguishing too strictly between various types of networks
(transport, communication, and substance flows). As actor-network
theory has suggested, it is precisely out of the interferences among
heterogenous connections that issues arise. Secondly, I will highlight
one modality of connection in particular, that of affect. Importantly,
pragmatism suggested that social problems are articulated in events, in
which distributed actors are demonstrably affected by an issue. This
raises the question of how, in such events of ‘issuefication,’ social
ties become charged with this affect of issue-affectedness. Finally, I
discuss the ambivalence of networked forms of issue formation. As
affective charges may not translate into anything else, due to the
unreliability of network connections, issue-affectedness may easily
turn into a deception to be resisted.
Matthew Fuller:
Requests, Recommendations and Standards: RFC10 and reflexive engineering.
Cultural theory is always looking to find that moment when it can say ,
'Ha! This engineering stuff, it has an embedded cultural
predeterminations, we will be the sweet angels who reveal them'. RFC
10, a foundational document in the development of the Internet is a set
of rules of thumb for the discussion of network architecture which
explicitly includes cultural concerns and the ethic of an open network.
This text will be used as a basis for the discussion of the cultural
effects of Requests, Recommendations and Standards and the development
of the semantic web.
http://www.networkcultures.org/networktheory/index.php?onderdeelID=12&paginaID=75&itemID=197
