Grounding Networks
by Niels-Oliver Walkowski
on the 14. Januar 2012, 14:36 o'clock
Great critique by +David Berry on the occasion of a review of three publications which tell the utopic story of networks. It emphasizes that the idea of networks remains a model (or I would argue an epistem) to approach to reality in showing its limitations, black boxes and hidden power structures. Coming more from Networks as a Culture Technique for the organization of social space, software development etc. from a Science Theory point of view on could continue to head to a direction Berry touches at the end of his review saying:
the network as an explanatory approach offers a particularly enticing view of society for those who want to argue for a break or discontinuity with what has gone before.
This point illustrates the strategic use of the network metaphor in discourse. Nevertheless within scientific discourse (actor network theory) for example the network can have repressive function withdrawing somebody the control over his discursive object. Implementing the network perspective for a special object complicates the use of this object as a whole. As there is no metaphysic answer to what is a whole and what is compound (Wittgenstein) but only a situative pragmatic the notion of strategy as argumentative strategy appears again. There is nothing out there which is more a network than it is monolithic. How we treat it only reflects our discursive and strategic goals.
The Poverty of Networks. The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 515, ISBN 0 300 12577 1, pbk £11.99 Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open …