I am pointing at these references to remind us that the ubiquitous presence of the network, as a practice, as a collective, and as a metaphor that seeks to explain the rest of the world around us, is a relatively new phenomenon. The idea of network as a set of connected people emerged in the latter half of the 20thCentury. In the second half of the industrial 19th Century, the term network was used for understanding an extended, complex, interlocking system. As in ‘to cover with a network.’ The idea of a network as a noun is older where in the 1550s, the idea of ‘net-like arrangements of threads, wires, etc.’ was first identified as a network. The first etymological trace of the network is in 1887, where it was used as a verb, within broadcast and communications models, to talk about an outreach. What predates the network? Because the network is a very new word. In all these poetic mechanisms of network, there is perhaps the core of what we want to talk about today – the tension between the local and the global and the way in which we will understand the Internet and then the frameworks of governance and policy that surround it. We belong to networks – network as a collective. We engage in networking – network as a verb. The network cannot be held or materially felt.Īnd yet, the network touches us. You can produce momentary snapshots of it, but you can never contain it or limit it. You cannot really touch a network or name it. A network is benign, and like the digital, that foregrounds the network aesthetic, the network is inscrutable. Especially within the realms of the Internet, which, in itself, purports to be a giant network, the network is self-explanatory, self-referential and completely denuded of meaning. īut, what does it mean to say that we are a network? The network is a very strange thing. Because, I am sure, that if we were to go for the most neutralised digital term to characterise this collection that we all weave in and out of, it would have to be the network. In particular, I want to look at the notion of the network. I want to look at this inability to name collectives and the confusions and ambiguity it produces as central to our conversations around digital thinking. The blog entry was originally published in DML Central on Apand mirrored in Hybrid Publishing Lab on May 13, 2014.Īre we an ensemble of actors? A cluster of friends? A conference of scholars? A committee of decision makers? An array of perspectives? A group of associates? A play-list of voices? I do not pose these questions rhetorically, though I do enjoy rhetoric.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |