From “The Rise of the Network Culture”:

Q1:

“In network theory, a node’s relationship to other networks is more important than its own uniqueness. Similarly, today we situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the interstices of multiple networks composed of both humans and things. This is easily demonstrated through some everyday examples. First, take the way the youth of today affirm their identities. Instead of tagging buildings with expressive names, teens create pages on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.”

In this example Varnelis implies that in a pre-networked culture, graffiti was the form of self-affirming identity. The anonymity of this as a practice/art form contradicts how most “social networking” sites perform socially (and is more akin to forms of internet communication that rely upon aliases, like most message boards, chat-rooms, etc.). What aspects the connection between graffiti and social networking go beyond the superficial concept of “individual expression”?

Q2:

” Art—so long a bastion of identity and expression—changes in response to this condition. Rather than producing work that
somehow channels their innermost being, artists, musicians, videographers and DJs act like switching machines, remixing sources and putting them out to the Internet for yet more remixing.” … “An iPod is nothing less than a portable generator of affect with which we paint our environment sonically, creating a soundtrack to life.”

Although Varnelis seems to imply that these are outright new changes brought upon by “networked culture”, I am not so sure that is the case. Through observation, it seems that this is not so much a different condition than it is moreso an acceleration of was is established before. The network acts as a catalyst/accelerator. Is the former or latter, idea closer to the point the author is forming?

Q3:

Varnelis at points refers to the public sphere as “colonized”, speaking to its privatization (and the recognition of this by the ‘owners’, through marketing); does marketing always directly play a hand in this as much as it does in identity politics (as he states is the case)?

01_Wigley_pg85_ In describing the attendees of the cruise, many different disciplines were included outside of architecture (very different from CIAM); Was this interdisciplinary push a genesis for network connection, requiring more communication between individuals? Or was it the opposite, that interdisciplinary study only became possible because of developments in communications networks?

02_Wigley_pg86_ McLuhans view that technology has “shrunk the planet to the size of a village, creating a ‘tremendous opportunity’ for planners” brings up the works of contemporary economists and theorists Richard Florida and Thomas Friedman.

Friedman’s book The World is Flat, expands on McLuhans points and theorizes that communication technology removes geographic and other location-based conditions from the economy. Florida, on the other hand, responds with Whose your City?, and says that the world is still ‘spiky,’ with concentrated points of culture and economic power in cities, and that technology won’t smooth out these outliers.

Both theories have been the subject of much debate for the past decade. Many have created a hybrid model in the wake of both, saying that yes, technology acts as an equalizing force, but you still cannot ignore the unique advantages tied to a specific location. The Ted Talk Actually, the world isn’t Flat by Pankaj Ghemawat (link) demonstrates this idea and backs it up with data that says the world economy is still quite separated, and not as universally connected  as some would think.

While increased interconnectivity can be agreed upon as inevitable, to what extent is McLuhans original idea of a world-village feasible? Will technology enable a global network that connects all? Or, will society stop short of this network because of spiky nexus points that override the rest of the nodes?

03_Varnelis_fig.1_ The visualization of Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed networks I think ties into the point above on flat/spiky environments. If we are currently in the decentralized configuration, is society trending more towards a centralized organization? or a distributed organization?

As a corollary, can multiple different networks exist and overlap simultaneously? Would a centralized authoritarian political power be successful in a distributed economy? Is a democracy viable in an economy that is centralized and controlled by vertically integrated companies?

Network Fever
From Fuller, McLuhan and Doxiadis, they all try to make new theory in “Network”. The author mentions that “Doxiadis draws the discipline of architecture in the same way as he draws the city.

1.Doxiadis said “Organism”, how he presented in real world at that time?

2.The article mentions many times about “Ekistic” that they created. Archigram also make instant city in that time. I can relate some case in instant city, however, I’m confuse about “Ekistic”. Is any example can illustrate the “Ekistic” in real world?

The Rise of Network Culture
The article mentions that “networked connection replaces abstraction. Information is less the product of discrete processing units than the outcome of the networked relations between them….”, it also mentions that “network culture succeeds postmodernism.”

1. I can not figure out why network succeeds postmodernism, is any example?

The Rise of Network Culture – Kazys Varnelis

1 – Varnelis talked about the growth of non-market production and open source software, and the pushback from large corporations such as Google or Amazon extending the scope of their copyrights. However, how does this apply to education? As the network grows, how does this challenge or change our relationship to institutional education? As more colleges offer online classes, and even homeschooling does not require a parent to have an education background, will there be pushback from major institutions which want to preserve their educational settings as large campuses, or will the network of experts and ameteurs change how we learn? for example, the mass youtube culture of makers who “teach” methods of fabrication, casting, software use, etc.

Network Fever – Mark Wigley

1 – On page 88 they discuss the city as a network, and buildings as shells in that network. Architecture of networking becomes about pure function, since networks are pure use. How does architecture as shell adapt to pure use? Is this the catalyst for the division of the design of the “skin” of a building from the design of the interior?

2 – On pages 104-106 they discuss the “Nerve Design” ideas of bio technical research with the emphasis of the biological. How does architecture scale up something like a nervous system and use it for design? Do projects of the “walking city” which emphasize the diagonal connections between nodes and focuses on circulation have enough information about the activities of inhabitants when they are not moving? Do those “nodes” have enough importance or are they much lower on the hierarchy?

The Rise of Network Culture – Kazys Varnelis

1. “If a traditional twentieth century model of cultural communication described movement of information in one direction from a source to a receiver, now the reception point is just a temporary station on information’s path.” Varnelis described that dragging images from the Internet into Powerpoint is an everyday occurrence and it is hard to remember the work of the photographer. Does the notion of “aura” get lost with the advancement of network culture?

2. Fredric Jameson mentioned “late capitalism would produce post modernism, a cultural  logic dominated by the schizophrenic play of the depthless, empty sign.” What does he mean by this?

3. “Much like the contemporary media outlet, both the self and the artist of today is an aggregator of information flows, a collection of links to other.” Does artist’s individuality still exist if art is a result of remixing sources and putting it out to the public sphere again for more remixing?

The Rise of Network Culture

What is the difference between digital culture and network culture? Can we understand the digital culture is the development of physical object, and the network culture is the connection among all object? If this is the case, what kind culture will be the combination of these two? Or the idea of network culture is already the combination. “If appropriation was a key aspect of postmodernism, network culture almost absent-mindedly uses remix as its dominant form.” Remix of everything? Is there which connection between the postmodernism and network culture can happen at modernism and digital culture?

Network Fever

“Doxiadis’s basic image of a building is a minimal form, a single thick semicircular line defining a shelter containing a dense internal life that is extended out by the wandering tentacles of different forms of circulation. Buildings are but “shells” for movement patterns that reach out far beyond them. Whereas buildings house function, networks are pure function, function without shell. If modern architects are serious in their commitment to function, they will have to reduce their fixation on shells and become responsible for networks.”

If architecture is only the shell and which should be flexible, what will happen to typology? Maybe the typology is developing among the change of the shell. Will Doxiadis’s image have similar result/ product as the living bubble?

In both reading, at some points, they all addressed the idea that city as a growing object, such as the network communication and the organism. I agree this idea, but just like the organism, by the law of nature, any organism will die. Will a city die? What will cause decease? Lack of comminuting? Lose of population?

Net art diagram from MTAA

Any excuse to use that image, I’ll take it.

1. In Network Fever, Wigley’s narrative history of the spread of “network thinking” was interesting. He also does a decent job of selling the lifestyle of hanging out discussing ideas on a boat all day, then visiting heritage sights and eating and drinking the night away. Seems pretty pleasant. The network he initially describes here, however, is very centralized one. There is a group of ‘luminaries’ who convene together, only to disperse and send their message to others. Is it possible that these early proponents of ‘network thought’ were influenced by this star, or hub and spoke, model of network so that their thinking and proselytizing was influenced by it? What if they were not this elitist group, but a decentralized or distributed network to begin with, would they have a different story to tell?
2. The talk of city growth was interesting, particularly the postulation that the city center should extend along a path, and not be surrounded by concentric rings of later expansion. I’m reminded of Dubai, which extends along the coast of the Arabian Gulf, and continues to expand along the waterfront, or nearby, instead of extending deep into the desert. This growth has created a series of micro sites in the city that are constantly being torn down and rebuilt, as one Emirati told me, “we were once nomads, but now we make the bricks become nomads.” I’m not sold on the idea that imposing any sort of structure on a city from the get-go is good, and it’s better to follow the organic hybrid model that was positioned in the reading. How can we reconcile planning with what best serves communities? How do you balance the needs of a city vs the needs of a neighborhood?
3. Varnelis warns at the end of the article about installing “a new regime of big aggregators” in place of the monopolies that used to manage network communication via the phone lines. We’ve clearly reached a point where these aggregators have swiftly become the dominant gateways to information on the web. With Facebook and Google acting as the gateway to the majority of web traffic (I saw an article earlier today, but can’t find it at the moment), these aggregators are the bottleneck in the network of information. If the network is the latest and most pervasive type of media we have created/encountered/identified, what can supersede that; what comes after the network? Or have we reached a point of diminishing returns on new extensions of our nervous systems? EDIT : found the article I was referencing above : The Web began dying in 2014

Network Fever:

( Page 87) ‘Doxiadis launched the field of ‘Ekistics’. The idea was to think at the largest possible scale by domesticating vast amount of global information. If the data could be controlled, cities could be controlled.’ 

Doxiadis saw settlements as continually evolving organism and statistical analysis of data as an important tool for city planning.

In the book, SMART CITIES: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for A New Utopia, Anthony Townsend talks about smart urbanism, where he focusses on the definition of smart cities that use information technology and networks with big data to address timeless urban problems. Some of the concerns of such smart city development plans as he discusses are the role of stakeholders and decision makers in top down model , over simplistic way of looking at complex problems , digital divide, creation of exclusions and growth of networks that control the flow of resources.

Q) How can we position the concept of smart cities of today from a standpoint of the field of Ekistics launched by Doxiadis?

The rise of Network Culture:

1)

Varnelis in his discussion about the impact of network culture on art talks about it as:

‘Rather than producing art that somehow channels their innermost being, artists, musicians, videographers and DJ act like switching machines, remixing sources and putting them out to the internet for yet more remixing.’

Though Varneli’s opinion about the shift in the focus of art to simulation and reproduction in post modernism, seems agreeable, his idea about the impact of network culture and referring to artists as switching machines seems hard to agree on.

Q) What is the impact of network culture on self-expression? Has the participative framework of communication and the remix model of art in network culture opened more possibilities for creating and sharing products of self-expression or has it transformed artists as links or nodes to the information flow?

2)

As Varnelis quotes Manovich, ‘If a traditional twentieth century model of cultural communication described movement of information in one direction from a source to a receiver, now the reception point is just a temporary station on information’s path’

Also Varnelis talks about the remix model and the fascination of reality , ‘Instead of nostalgia and allegory network culture delivers remix and reality, shuffling together the diverse elements of present day culture, blithely conflating high and low.’

How does this new model of communication and emergence of concepts of remix and reality affect authenticity? Softwares like face2Face, that demonstrate the creation of fake videos, is an example of a blurring line between real and fake in a communication model with a distributed configuration of sources. How does this impact on one’s perception of the reality?

face2Face video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttGUiwfTYvg

The Rise of Network Culture by Kazys Varnelis

1. On the first page and third paragraph of Varnelis’ chapter, he briefly describes Charlie Gere’s theory of the transition to the digital age as a socioeconomic phenomenon that associates it with an extension of capitalism. He then says that “…the digital culture that Gere describes is rapidly being supplanted by network culture.” My question deals with this association of technological transitions as socioeconomic transitions as well, and I was curious about how much our “network culture” today embodies a capitalist ideology?
2. I’m interested in “networked publics” as he describes them when explaining Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire. He mentions that they call them the “multitude” and are characterized as the counter-force which challenges the system. From my understanding they are referring to the phenomenon of mass uprisings originating over large networks like social media, and it reminded me of the recent revolution which took place in Egypt in 2011, because it was largely a result of calls for protests over social media. How does the emergence of this phenomenon of “networked publics” change the way in which we interact with the world?
3. Varnelis says,
   

   “In [Jameson’s] analysis, the thorough capitalization of art, culture, and everyday life led to a new condition in which any separation between interior and exterior, even in the subject itself, disappeared and, with it, the end of any place from which to critique or observe. Late capitalism, Jameson concluded, would produce postmodernism, a cultural logic dominated by the schizophrenic play of the depthless, empty sign.”

   I am a little confused by what he means by postmodernism here; is it referring to the same postmodernism we think about when discussing Architecture? He later on says “Modernism’s concern with its place in history was inverted by postmodernism, which, as Jameson points out, was marked by a waning of historicity, a general historical amnesia.” But from my understanding, in Architecture, Modernism was more concerned with the rejection of history, while post-modernism, through images and memory, sought to bring back historical references into Architecture. Is postmodernism and modernism, as far as Jameson explains, being used differently in this context?

The rise of Network Culture

1. When Jameson talks about late capitalism and late capitalism is an extension of post-modernism, what does he mean by the phrase”Would produce postmodernism, a cultural logic dominated by the schizophrenic play of the depthless, empty sign” and “The subject became schizophrenic, lost in the hyperspace of late capital.  Why is he using the word “schizophrenic” to emphasize the outcomes of late capitalism? (page 3)
2.  In the network theory, why do “we situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the interstices of multiple networks composed of both humans and things”? It is true that with the current generation we focus heavily on affirming our identities rather than focusing on other issues, but can we be blamed for wanting to focus on these things that are somewhat important to us? (even if its superficial in a sense) didn’t the generation set our generation to explore these realms they fought so hard to invent?
3. Network capital talks about outsourcing as an example for revolutionized communication and the main question is does this “Leapfrogging hinder our communication markets? is leapfrogging no the idealized way for growth? or due to the rapidity of network cultures, this is inevitable to happen and should it be seen as normal? (Page 11)