[-empyre-] network critical: immanent effects

Sun Mar 18 21:54:37 EST 2012

Dear Ana Valdés,

Thank you for your question. I was answering to Simon Taylor's question about "what the network city might look like? an anatomy of utopia?". You are right we are into a long tradition of co-existence in the city. The Internet partly continues the history of the city. We can locate in its history parts that are related to the phenomena that we observe now. The ottoman city was a very interesting congregation of distinct communities for example. What I want to emphasize in this remark I did was that there is quite a difference between social network or other Internet protocols and state laws. No separation is absolute and no unity is homogeneous; nevertheless the rigidity of an Internet protocol not only determines the function of a community: the community cannot exist without it. It is not always (it is less and less) that we decide the platform's functionality. We are in a community as users of a platform only if we accept it totally. This paradigm gives to the formation of the next cities a way to operate toward this direction. A user is always linked rightly to the performance of a platform. I think that together with the formation of the Internet as the space of commerce par excellence we will witness an analogous transformation of the city. This description can prepare different forms of resilience or resistance, but it shapes a big image in a describable formation so that we think a bit more about it.

Aristide Antonas

On Mar 18, 2012, at 9:50, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Antonas, I apologize if I ask you to develop what you mean with "they city will be a network city and it would not look like a realized utopia."
> Are not all cities networked cities? Is not a city a hub of networks, connecting people to each other, services, open spaces and houses?
> Again, if we got back to Henri Pirenne's analyze of the Mediterranean cities, it was veru clear that they were networked cities.
> Ana
> 
> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Antonas Office <antonasoffice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Simon Taylor,
> 
> Thank you for bringing Albert-László Barabási in the discourse. I am very interested in your observations. My idea about your question will be that the ruling concept in this distinction between the network and the "real" world is the concept of protocol. In the net we seem to be used to be voluntarily restricted by strong, operative protocols that we accept in order to give meaning to any connection. We have not seen what this acceptance will bring as an after effect to "reality". States, constitutions and legislation were systems of protocols that seem very old to operate in this condition. Companies are quicker: they are already adapted in many senses to this different "protocol world" where, when it is question of connection, we obliged to accept a strong system where communication is predefined and categorized as a restricted system of answers to specific questions or an affirmation of a interchangeable, chosen (between others) platform. The concept of protocol that became so strong on the Internet seeks its possible incarnation in "reality" while the net and the real lose the meaning of their distinction. Your questions, Simon, show this dead end: what would mean today the concept of urban protocols? How the concept of protocol will be grounded on our existing cities in order to transform them to something we do not know yet. It is in this condition that the concept of the citizen would have to be restructured while the lighter, operative and irresponsible concept of user will define the acting role of a lost urban subject. 
> 
> I am going too quickly to conclusions; my city is changing rapidly too. It will be a network city and it would not look like a realized utopia. A question that will be important will be analogous to the one concerning the Internet; will the market prescribe the protocols of connectivity in the city or can we think other possible systems of civility, within this given frame? Who will be the subject who would fight for what urban protocols?
> 
> Aristide Antonas
> Athens
> 
> 
> Sent from antonas iPhone
> 
> On Mar 18, 2012, at 3:28, simon <swht at clear.net.nz> wrote:
> 
>> Dear <<empyreans>>, Ana Valdés, Teddy Cruz, Aristide Antonas,
>> 
>> I am inspired by the discussion to add these speculations, on the theme of crisis and continuity as much as resilience and resistance. It occurs to me that time is at issue here and I have in the following assayed a way of addressing this, whether timely or not. Forgive its speculative suspension. To go on at any further length seemed to threaten redundancy as well as relevance.
>> 
>> But I hope at least a little of the latter is found here: I would also ask what the network city might look like? an anatomy of utopia?
>> Albert-László Barabási has written two beautiful books dealing with network theory. It is in the second, however, that what was only latent in the first becomes clear. It is brought out in three ways: in this book Barabási shows that he is a writer; Bursts deals with network effects in time; and where the real world application of network theory worked by way of analogy in Linked, in the second, and under the auspices of time, it is the real       world that takes over.
>> 
>> My question is: at the very time that we are most connected, why is it that we are most isolated?
>> 
>> It is as if they are part of the same problematic, as if the network connecting us itself provided the anatomy for our       isolation, as for our connection.
>> 
>> It is also as if the very time were part of the problematic and the question had as much to do with its realism - its adequacy to reality - as the reality of what is purported and what purports to be current, present, relevant, even critical: the current "crisis."
>> 
>> We are caught in a movement between Barabási's two books. From the analogical real world application of network theory to the immanence of communicating networks in a real world in time. Moreover, the intensification of this critical moment, of this moment of crisis - the intensification of the crisis, then - could itself be a network effect, in Barabási's words, a burst. That is, the fact of there being power-nodes operating in a spatialised network produces a concatenatory effect in time. Time is not indifferent, but broken or cut by moments of crisis: bursts of intensity, self-intensifying and self-exacerbating according to network effects.
>> 
>> The very time, however, is it one of crisis or continuity? How to judge, when the space-time network is so resilient, has been engineered to be so resilient, as to withstand, continue and even thrive in times of crisis!
>> 
>> The crisis of these very times may be prolonged indefinitely, exactly continuous with and in continuity with the network.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Simon Taylor
>> 
>> www.squarewhiteworld.com
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