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Network Culture: Politics For the Information Age
In an age of email lists and discussion groups, e-zines and weblogs, bringing together users, consumers, workers and activists from around the globe, what kinds of political subjectivity are emerging? What kinds of politics become possible in a time of information overload and media saturation? What structures of power and control operate over a self-organising system like the internet? In this highly original new work, Tiziana Terranova investigates the political dimension of the network culture in which we now live, and explores what the new forms of communication and organisation might mean for our understanding of power and politics. Terranova engages with key concepts and debates in cultural theory and cultural politics, using examples from media culture, computing, network dynamics, and internet activism within the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements. Network Culture concludes that the nonlinear network dynamics that link different modes of communication at different levels (from local radio to satellite television, from the national press to the internet, from broadcasting to rumours and conspiracy theories) provide the conditions within which another politics can emerge. This other politics, the book suggests, does not entail the production of a new political discourse or ideology, but the invention of micropolitical tactics able to stand up to new forms of social control.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 6, 2021
I can't remember how I came across this or why I picked it up. It seems to me an ungrounded utopian vision that is severely dated -- written in 2004, it posits a way in which wage labor could be moved beyond.
Her thought overall seemed best summarized in a 2015 talk: "how to mobilize the liquidity made possible by financialization to nurture instead of exploit the social processes that feed the financial capital born of the social web. Value produced would not be surplus but social." (https://www.artandeducation.net/class...).
Well, sure, and donkeys might fly. Got any ideas about how we wrest digital (or any) labor from the oligarchs of internet 2.0 and mobilize it for workers themselves? Maybe somewhere, but not here.
Her section on communications and biopower now also reads as possibly prescient but without tools to assist us. She argues that openness and transparency in democracy are critical, because public opinion is the new superpower. Turns out that's true, but I didn't see anything here that tells us what to do when power structures have been captured (in the US) to avoid influence by majority public opinion, the means of shaping public opinion have been captured (I'm looking at you, Russia), and those structures are impervious to public opinion (i.e., we cannot even get impeachment of a president for incitement of insurrection).
Her thought overall seemed best summarized in a 2015 talk: "how to mobilize the liquidity made possible by financialization to nurture instead of exploit the social processes that feed the financial capital born of the social web. Value produced would not be surplus but social." (https://www.artandeducation.net/class...).
Well, sure, and donkeys might fly. Got any ideas about how we wrest digital (or any) labor from the oligarchs of internet 2.0 and mobilize it for workers themselves? Maybe somewhere, but not here.
Her section on communications and biopower now also reads as possibly prescient but without tools to assist us. She argues that openness and transparency in democracy are critical, because public opinion is the new superpower. Turns out that's true, but I didn't see anything here that tells us what to do when power structures have been captured (in the US) to avoid influence by majority public opinion, the means of shaping public opinion have been captured (I'm looking at you, Russia), and those structures are impervious to public opinion (i.e., we cannot even get impeachment of a president for incitement of insurrection).
April 3, 2023
Cultura de la red es un clásico contemporáneo. Su traducción y publicación por parte de Tinta Limón, más de quince años luego de su primera edición en inglés, es un hito que debe ser agradecido.
A lo largo de 200 página, Tiziana Terranova intenta mapear y describir una nueva cultura, en el sentido de una formación sociopolítica compleja que se comienza a establecer a fines del siglo XX, en el inicio de Internet. A través de los distintos capítulos, pasa de pensar la metafísica fundamental de la información en la nueva era, por las formas de control blando que se ven implicados por ella, la estructuración de una nueva relación social (el trabajo libre) y, finalmente, el diagrama general del biopoder comunicacional. El marco teórico es claramente foucaultiano-deleuziano, con aportes del autonomismo y el operaísmo, pero informado por una variedad de fuentes: desde Manuel Castells hasta Richard Dawkins.
Pese a la claridad con que la autora desarrolla sus argumentos en cada capítulo, sentí que el libro necesitaba una mejor clarificación del pasaje de un punto a otro. Es evidente que los terrenos en los que se mueve Terranova implican los pilares fundamentales de la cultura de la red que describe, pero la relación lógica entre ellos es, a veces, imprecisa.
Más allá de esto, el libro sorprende por su vigencia, aún pese a los cambios científicos y tecnológicos desarrollados desde 2004 (amén de los económicos y políticos). Incluso en momentos en que se referencian elementos cuyas consecuencias han sido más reducidas de lo que podía creerse en ese entonces, el análisis de Terranova logra encontrar una reflexión relevante que demuestra que las hipótesis generales que planteó son absolutamente actuales.
A lo largo de 200 página, Tiziana Terranova intenta mapear y describir una nueva cultura, en el sentido de una formación sociopolítica compleja que se comienza a establecer a fines del siglo XX, en el inicio de Internet. A través de los distintos capítulos, pasa de pensar la metafísica fundamental de la información en la nueva era, por las formas de control blando que se ven implicados por ella, la estructuración de una nueva relación social (el trabajo libre) y, finalmente, el diagrama general del biopoder comunicacional. El marco teórico es claramente foucaultiano-deleuziano, con aportes del autonomismo y el operaísmo, pero informado por una variedad de fuentes: desde Manuel Castells hasta Richard Dawkins.
Pese a la claridad con que la autora desarrolla sus argumentos en cada capítulo, sentí que el libro necesitaba una mejor clarificación del pasaje de un punto a otro. Es evidente que los terrenos en los que se mueve Terranova implican los pilares fundamentales de la cultura de la red que describe, pero la relación lógica entre ellos es, a veces, imprecisa.
Más allá de esto, el libro sorprende por su vigencia, aún pese a los cambios científicos y tecnológicos desarrollados desde 2004 (amén de los económicos y políticos). Incluso en momentos en que se referencian elementos cuyas consecuencias han sido más reducidas de lo que podía creerse en ese entonces, el análisis de Terranova logra encontrar una reflexión relevante que demuestra que las hipótesis generales que planteó son absolutamente actuales.
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February 5, 2017Read the chapter "Communication bipower" for my Advanced Theories of Communication course.
Terranova is an eye-opener, but I lost count how many times he said milieu in that chapter. Also, how can you take someone who says avant-garde seriously?
That aside, I liked what he had to say about images and the mass(not specifically media but that too), and George Packer's opinion on the negative effect of communication(technology).
Terranova is an eye-opener, but I lost count how many times he said milieu in that chapter. Also, how can you take someone who says avant-garde seriously?
That aside, I liked what he had to say about images and the mass(not specifically media but that too), and George Packer's opinion on the negative effect of communication(technology).
June 29, 2015
This book really stands the test of time, especially considering its subject matter. Some parts are a bit technical, perhaps too much so, but there are some brilliant insights and broader conclusions littered through this very good book.
November 8, 2019
It's hard not to give this book 4 stars. There are arguments here that at the time of its publication, nobody would have been the wiser. But now, in Information Science and New Media studies, some of us would. So, in some ways this book is excellent. It is a very lucid look at what I would consider one of the more interesting accounts of power in an online world while everyone else was raving about the possibilities of perfectly democratic publics online. This book was grounded in a history of literature where everyone else thought the Internet was a gift from heaven.
That said, this is somewhat of an Deleuzian interpretation of biosemiotics, cybernetics, and Claude Shannon's communication model, but with nontrivial effects for the metaphysics of the theories it considers. It potentially reorients theories towards a strawperson of the theories it questions rather than augmenting it for a different goal of interpretive consideration of an abstract notion of speculative or virtual digital futures. At least when Deleuze questions prior theories, he does so explicitly for the purpose of saying "If theory A had known of theory B, we would see a conclusion that looked as such..." or "If theory B had avoided theory C, and instead considered this other notion, we would see a reorientation of what we think of as the Enlightenment." This is not what Terranova does however. She claims to have understand what Shannon, the cyberneticians, and computational biologists have done.
While I understand the underlying tone of this and can make sense of it, the fact that this tone despite its augmentation of what these theories do carries through to the logical structure of the book later becomes problematic for some of the details of this book's intentions. But again, largely, this book is outstanding! It explains a lot of things that we might think of as intuitively true today, but with a detailed interpretation of why that happened through historic theories of communication and information.
That said, this is somewhat of an Deleuzian interpretation of biosemiotics, cybernetics, and Claude Shannon's communication model, but with nontrivial effects for the metaphysics of the theories it considers. It potentially reorients theories towards a strawperson of the theories it questions rather than augmenting it for a different goal of interpretive consideration of an abstract notion of speculative or virtual digital futures. At least when Deleuze questions prior theories, he does so explicitly for the purpose of saying "If theory A had known of theory B, we would see a conclusion that looked as such..." or "If theory B had avoided theory C, and instead considered this other notion, we would see a reorientation of what we think of as the Enlightenment." This is not what Terranova does however. She claims to have understand what Shannon, the cyberneticians, and computational biologists have done.
While I understand the underlying tone of this and can make sense of it, the fact that this tone despite its augmentation of what these theories do carries through to the logical structure of the book later becomes problematic for some of the details of this book's intentions. But again, largely, this book is outstanding! It explains a lot of things that we might think of as intuitively true today, but with a detailed interpretation of why that happened through historic theories of communication and information.
April 23, 2020
I had previously translated into Bulgarian chapter 3 from this book but - shame on me - had not gotten around to reading it in its entirety. It's a very complex and thoroughly researched book from which I learned a lot. The language is quite dense, particularly for someone not versed in philosophy or information sciences but there's no vagueness, no bullshitting as with much of academic literature skirting different disciplinary fields.
November 7, 2008
From the First Paragraph
This is a book about (among other things) information and entropy, cybernetic and thermodynamics, mailing lists and talk shows, the electronic Ummah and chaos theory, web rings and web logs, mobile robots, cellular automata and the New Economy, open-source programming and reality TV, masses and multitudes, communication management and information warfare, networked political movements, open architecture, image flows and the interply of affects and meaning in the constitution of the common. It is a book, that is, about a cultural formation, a network culture, that seem to be characterized by an uprecedented abundance of informational output and by an acceleration of informational dynamics.
Terranova is a fantastic intellect and this book does justice to this paragraph and more.
This is a book about (among other things) information and entropy, cybernetic and thermodynamics, mailing lists and talk shows, the electronic Ummah and chaos theory, web rings and web logs, mobile robots, cellular automata and the New Economy, open-source programming and reality TV, masses and multitudes, communication management and information warfare, networked political movements, open architecture, image flows and the interply of affects and meaning in the constitution of the common. It is a book, that is, about a cultural formation, a network culture, that seem to be characterized by an uprecedented abundance of informational output and by an acceleration of informational dynamics.
Terranova is a fantastic intellect and this book does justice to this paragraph and more.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews