Re: <nettime> Organised Networks: Transdisciplinarity and New Institutional Forms

[Ned Rossiter <n.rossiter {AT} ulster.ac.uk>]

hi Felix, sounds like you're grumpy today.

On 10 Apr 2006, at 15:17, Felix Stalder wrote:
>  to speak of an organized network, makes no sense to me. All  
> networks are
> organized, by definition.

That's right.  And it's point Geert and I noted in the first line of  
our 'dawn of the organised networks' essay: http:// 
journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/lovink_rossiter.html

So in speaking of organised networks I'm (we are) also wishing to  
mobilise a rhetoric and argument that enables a range of distinctions  
to be made: from the short-termism of tactical media, to the  
hierarchically heavy networked organisations (unions, state,e tc).

The term also wishes to signal and describe collaboration between  
networks as part of a process of scalar transformation.

I think it's pretty clear that the networks we are speaking of are  
not those of the state, firm, union,etc.  And as such a different  
language is required to distinguish between these networks.  The four  
basic forms you refer to could be another way I guess, but they sound  
dull to me.


>> The social-technical dynamics of ICT-based networks constitute  
>> organisation
>> in ways substantively different from networked organisations (unions,
>> state, firms, universities).
>
> Again, this makes no sense to me. All large-scale contemporary  
> networks are
> ICT-based.

Sure Felix, but these forms of organisation also preceded ICTs. They  
established themselves over relatively long periods of time.  And as  
you note, they are large scale. Aside from unions, they also tend to  
adopt IPRs - another key difference with orgnets.

The networks in orgnets co-emerge with ICTs - even if there are  
continuities with earlier forms of organisation - and they have  
tendency to be small scale.  Institutions have collective memories,  
no matter how much reform and organisational change has occurred.   
There are identities peculiar to institutions, even if that identity  
is no more than a brand.  How might the collective memories of (org)  
networks shape their possible futures?

So again, I think it's useful to try and make some distinctions  
between networks. There have not been so many instances of the kind  
of networks like nettime, fibreculture, ephemera, iDC, etc  
collaborating with each other. At least that's not something I'm  
aware of. And it's something I'd like to see happen and experience.  
What would happen in the event of such collaborations? What can be  
done? What might the long-term possibilities be for orgnets? The term  
orgnets is an attempt to describe a process in formation.

Ned



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