<nettime> Re[2]: Organised Networks: Transdisciplinarity and New Institutional Forms

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

Brian and Felix have opened up rich mines in this thread, but for now  
I'd like to turn to your posting Albert.

For me, democracy is the territory of the state and its failure. For  
that reason, I find that to think networks is think beyond democracy.  
Certainly when speaking of the networks we are invoking (do they  
really need a name, I wonder?) we are  not speaking of the state,  
even if they are shaped in direct and indirect ways by the force of  
the state. Thus in speaking of networks, I'm not so keen to speak of  
democracy (even though I have in the past). Now, I'm more curious to  
unravel this notion and practice of a non-representational governance  
within networks. Such an activity is not going to be helped so much  
through reference to core values and functions, as you suggest.  Like  
identity, the former veers towards essentialism, while the latter  
suggests instrumentality.  Networks are looser than that.  They are  
unpredictable attractors.  If they have values, then they are  
intuited rather than identified per se. Perhaps they resonate some  
kind of structure of feeling.

And for sure, there's a media ecology at work in all this. I don't  
like this word 'swarm' though.  It became dirty for me once  
Leadbeater started hustling it about the think-tanks and creative  
departments of government, incapable of an idea of their own.

Ned


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