1 – Rise of Network Culture – This reading covers a very brief history of network culture and discusses impact and future trajectory in refrence to capitalism, social media, and society in general. Varnelis talks about the “dot.com” and “web2.0” using the term Kondratieff cycle (pg4) to explain they are upswings on a new cycle (new to such a degree that it “does not figure itself as an ‘ism’). I would say the next upswing of this new cycle which we are currently experiencing (or will be very soon) is the birth of Cryptocurrency – This being decentralized digital currency which operates independently of a central bank or government. These currencies are just entering the world stage, with digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Etherium being leaders in this new economic concept. This new form of capital shares many concepts discussed by Varnelis about digital capital such as “the change in capital in which transnational corporations turn to networks for flexibility and global management, production, and trade.” If Cryptocurrency was to take off and become a world wide currency not centrally controlled, it would change not only the global economy, but possibly change the reality of countries.

Q: As the world continues to upload more of itself onto the internet, the more human reality is also found/tied to the internet (aka Network Culture.) As this happens, the internet becomes another worldly space, which is almost inhabitable. At what point does that space replace country boarders, and remove the need for a location identity? (example: “I don’t live in the USA, I live in the internet realm of shared information and decentralized currency)

Q: Varnelis talks about the network between people and machines, an machine to machine, creating a large web which replaces abstraction. on page 2 it says “A supercomputer, smart phone, laptop, iPod, wireless router, xBox game platform, Mars rover, video surveillance camera, television set-top box, and automobile computer are essentially the same device” – This is sometimes refereed to as The Internet of Things, or IOT. It seems like there is the internet of humans, which are humans interacting with machine (websites) to connect to other humans, and then there is the internet of things, which is the network of machines connecting to a human to reach another machine (example: app on phone used by human to turn house lights off). Is this a fractured path from our eventual fully networked world? Do these concepts need to be viewed as separate phenomenon or are both blanketed by the title of Network culture?

Q: On page 8, Varnelis talks about identity politics as the last frontier of the public sphere, which was eventually colonized by marketers as well, giving birth to the Networked Public. I do not understand why the end of uncommodified public space leads to a Networked public. Is it to say that when the public sphere has become entirely privatized it somehow creates a network?

Q: (pg 10) “Lacking a common platform for deliberation, they reinforce existing differences. Moreover, new divisions occur. Humans are able to maintain only a finite number of relationships and as we connect with others at a distance who are more like us, we are likely to disconnect with others in our community who less like us.”

I found this particularly interesting as it can help explain so many issues in the USA today especially including the divide between the Left and Right political views and other current topics like Black lives matter vs Police brutality, and Feminism, etc. The more we isolate and barricade ourselves among the media outlets and people who share our opinions, it becomes an incubator of ignorance and intolerance. How can this possibly be reversed as the world continues to move down this path of selective inclusion on the internet?  It seems to be the product of the decentralized network which have specific nodes where data collects. There would need to be a shift or fundamental change to a distributed network where all information flows evenly, but I dont know if that is possible when it comes to the internet.

 

1
Mapping the paradigm shifts that the network culture engendered, Kazys Varnelis touches on the changing nature of the subject. From the illusion of its autonomy under modernism, and its schizophrenic fragmentation under postmodernism, it seems like the subject’s fragments are currently being dispersed through and/or outsourced from the network.

– First of all, I do not see how there is a “division between the self and the net” (pp.6), as such a condition is rather suggestive of their hybridization.

– Secondly, how can the subject defend his or her place in society, if he or she is no longer its last indivisible unit, in charge of a core individual agency? If Deleuze’s ‘dividuals’ are constituted through multiple micro-publics at the same time, how can one defend one’s personal and cultural integrity within the whole of networked society?
Reversing the question, is there any point in doing so anymore? Should we rather reflect on how this seemingly distributed subjectification could empower a meta-subject, one that is an integral part of a networked community? I am thinking about examples of collective action enabled by social networking platforms and the emergence of a hivemind.

With regards to the hivemind – written roughly a decade ago, Jaron Lanier’s Edge essay titled “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of New Online Collectivism” is a critical take on the potential mishaps of the then emergent digital collective. He used the example of Wikipedia to suggest that, although it began as a utopian endeavor to democratize knowledge by handing its authorship over to the networked public, examples of bias, misrepresentation and e-vandalism became commonplace. He concludes:

“(…) it ought to be possible to find a humanistic and practical way to maximize value of the collective on the Web without turning ourselves into idiots. The best guiding principle is to always cherish individuals first.”

2
On a similar note, Varnelis uses the example of Wikipedia to talk about a new mode of production that is not based on capital (pp.10). Being co-authored by the networked collective (?), Wikipedia is a product of non-market production that Varnelis notes is non-alienating. In this light, it seems like Marx’s theory of alienation, inherent in capitalist production, does not apply here. However, to what extent is this another myth of the Internet? For instance, digital labor is arguably alienating, obscuring the worker. Digital workers are usually invisible, not recognized as such, or unaware of their role as voluntary content providers.

3
The biological understanding of electric technology was foundational for the Delians. According to Wigley, they conceived of a global city as a body, hyperextended in the landscape by means of physical and non-physical networks (pp102). Metabolism resonated in this approach, in the sense that the city became anthropomorphized, understood as a networked structure of ‘organs’.

However, Doxiadis prescribed that settlements should grow only in one direction (pp.88), with their ‘heart’ following a linear trajectory of movement across the landscape. Why would he suggest this, since linear growth is not common in nature? Is this a surviving influence from a modernist urban planning vocabulary? Notably, Athens’ problematic urban fabric is a result of an uncontrolled exponential growth during the decades of the 50s – 70s, which manifested itself in a radial, organic manner. Could Athens have served as a counter-example of his theory? Interestingly enough, when he later designed for Detroit, he used a radial spider web as a model.

REQUIRED

Mark Wigley, “Network Fever”, Grey Room, No. 4, Summer 2001.

Kazys Varnelis, “The Rise of the Network Culture”,Networked Publics, MIT press, 2008.

RECOMMENDED

Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, “Prologue” and “Introduction”, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, Routledge, 2001.

Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Protocols, Control and Networks”, Grey Room, No. 17, Fall 2004.