[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> NetHierarchies & NetWar

[josh zeidner <jjzeidner@yahoo.com>]

 Willard,

   some very interesting words here...

> we
> will need a new 
> network logic, and a great deal of it is already in
> place, as I have been 
> documenting.

  where?

>  It is not so much that networks are
> 'new,' but rather that we 
> are only gradually coming to understand them, to
> recognize them, and to see 
> how this understanding, this perspective has been
> coming into focus for 
> several centuries. 

  very good point.

> Inversely, in is important to
> understand what 'impaired' 
> this understanding of network logics, and how this
> impacts research, 
> politics, and interpretation.
> 
> In the case of the quote above: a 'lower level' is
> not so highly 
> constrained simply by being 'lower.' The 'higher
> level' so free by being 
> higher.  Why should they be?  Because it makes for
> an interesting contrast? 
> TThis is an assumption that acts as blinds to what
> is truly going on.

  VERY TRUE.  So do we still have this word:
"freedom"?

> 
> Think about the cells in your body.  While they are
> 'smaller' than you, to 
> what extent do you constrain 'their' activities. How
> would you describe 
> your 'power' over them?  Now we can  deal with some
> of the cells one by one 
> in certain instances, but we really do not have the
> resources to deal with 
> vast masses of their tiny, yet critical and dynamic
> populations.  Higher 
> up, 'we' deal in approximations, in statistical
> judgements, choosing from 
> only among some of the activities going on.  In
> fact, the 'cells' have a 
> lot more 'freedom' than we might normally imagine,
> and even the boundaries 
> of the body, so dear to technoromantics and
> first-generation cyborg 
> theorists, begin to, what is the word?- loosen up,
> unravel, become entwined 
> in dynamics in which the boundaries of the body are
> no longer clear.  Our 
> cells must be renewed, and with a few small
> exceptions, we become 
> 'physically' new people every few years, with only
> our self-evolving 
> staying the same (I will postpone a critique of
> autopoiesis, until a later 
> date).

  This is what I really wanted to comment on.  There
is a bit of disparity concerning the meaning of the
word 'autopoesis'.  It appears that social theorists
use the term to mean something like 'self
regenerating' , or 'self-regulating'.  To aim at the
most simplistic articulation I can manage: a system
who's relations allow for self-perpetuation from
within environmental boundaries.  It would seem that
Maturana had a completely different purpose for this
word.  His conception was that 'autopoesis' mean: a
system whos internal represention dictates and creates
its environment and its place in it.  His research
indicated that nervous systems are not so much in the
process of relaying information to a central structure
for mediation, but rather in the process of just the
reverse, of applying its own structure to the 'outside
world' and hence creating/defining both the
environment and the observer at once( self creation or
autopoesis ).  Perhaps this is what you were planning
on commenting on at a later date.  The description of
the body-as-system existing despite the replacement of
its component parts is not really related to what
Maturana was doing.  I make this statement because I
have found this classification to be quite common.




> While you might then endow 'agency' to one
> level our another, to our 
> 'self' which 'decides' to become multiple or simply
> one, this would be a 
> mistake.
> 
> Who is in charge?  Who is the agent?  An answer
> depends on how you pose the 
> question to a network. A NetArt theorist might pose
> it one way, a cyborg 
> theorist another.  However, those who look at,
> theorized, and researched 
> complex networks and networks of complexity, whether
> in economics, biology, 
> or ecology, realize that agency in networks is
> neither arbitrary nor 
> determined, since these words don't quite fit.  We
> can control our cells, 
> to some extent, and they us, to some extent. Indeed
> 'the technologies of 
> scale' are allowing us to understand the
> organization of cells in more and 
> more contexts, and thus to intervene in their
> activities in more and more 
> ways.  But who is in charge?

  That would depend on what you think 'you' are!  A
set of relations?  One could analyize someones
personality to the extent where they could deconstruct
thier impulses, habits, etc and determine that they
are nothing more than a set of deeply ingrained
relations...  are 'you' in charge or are you simply
the subject of these relations?  Lets not limit the
network structure to information technology!

  I find it interesting that you constantly muse on
the meaning of 'boundary'.  Deleuze exhaustively
explored the area of what 'territory' or boundary
means( with his usage: deterrirotialization ).  The
current issues in sociology/economics( many that you
have concisively described )  seemed to be centered
around dissolving boundaries as a problematic.  Open
Source advocates point out that when the boundary of
Intellectual Property is erased, the end result of
development, or the DESIRE, of a development
initiative is met in a fraction of the time( notice we
can no longer use profitability as a metric OR a
motive here ).  However, the business people point out
that what they are doing is not 'valid business', and
in a way they are right, it surely will not make as
much money as Microsoft, and of course the question of
WHO makes the money, what you are selling, and what it
means to be a commodifiable product come to light. 
But again we cannot really compare an open source
community to a corporation, and as you say, they are
not really binary opposites.

  For instance, take a slime mold.  A slime mold is a
fairly interesting creature because it exists as a
bacterial colony at some points, and as an organism at
other points.  It literally goes from being a slimy
growth on a rock to a creature that can move like a
slug.  Now what IS the slime mold?  A set of cells
that at one point lived quite independantly of each
other?  Is one cell a slime mold?  No.  But a set of
cells IS!  maybe a slime mold doesnt even exist,
possibly its just a figment of our imagination.  We
created the slime mold.  But anyway, this is more of a
tirade than a discussion of the problems in definition
of cell/body.

http://www.ag.usask.ca/cofa/departments/hort/hortinfo/yards/slime2.html

  Personally, I think that Deleuze has taken the
theories you have pointed out to a much more profound
level.  Such theories engage the problems of the 20th
century through 20th century dialectic.  Deleuze
handsomely abandons that as well...

  -josh

 ps. if you wish to reply, please cc
jjzeidner@yahoo.com .


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