PowerPoint Presentation Lecture

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(net)workrhizomes fdm 20c introduction to
digital media lecture 15.04.2003
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• reading technical texts (latour)
• positive and negative modalities (latour)
• who is tim berners-lee?
• an abbreviated reading of the world-wide web by
  berners-lee, et al.
• what are URIs, universal resource identifiers?
• what is HTML, the hypertext markup language?
• what is HTTP, the hypertext transfer protocol?
• visualizing the web as a collaboratively author
  hypertext and/or technology and also as a
  heterogeneous network of people and machines
• standards iso, ietf the w3c
• visualizations mapping the web

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outline

• general idea for today networks are not just
  technologies they can also be used as tool for
  understanding sociotechnical systems (i.e., as a
  semiotics)
• what is the problem latour is trying to address
  with actor-network theory?
• how can the world be visualized as sets of
  interconnected (actor-)networks?
• actor-networks
• some things they are not (only)
• what are they?
• as networks/rhizomes?
• as inconnected actors (i.e., actants)?
• general questions as actor-network questions
• a reading of latours clarifications

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general questions

• what problem does this research address?
• who is/are the author/s of the text?
• who funded this research?
• what is the economics of the work (i.e., who will
  buy it?, sell it?, use it?)
• who are the dramatis personae of the article?
• othering who are we? who are they? whats
  a what and who is a who?
• who is the intended audience?
• which texts are cited in this text?
• what is the stated genealogy of the technology?
• where was the text published?
• what is thinking? what is reading? what is
  writing?
• what narrative strategies are employed in the
  article?
• what is the stated motivation of the research?
• prior to their appearance in this text, who spoke
  or wrote which statements to whom? where? under
  what conditions?

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problem dichotomy nature/culture
culture
nature
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problem dichotomy technology/society
society
technology
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problem dichotomy human/machine
machine
human
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problem dichotomy real world/internet
internet
real world
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proposed approach to the problem

• world as network and/or world as rhizome
• look for attachments between people, between
  words or texts, between machines, between people
  and machines, between texts and machines, between
  people and texts, etc., etc.

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the approach attachments not dichotomies

• from bruno latour,
• science in action
• how to follow scientists
• and engineers through
• society (1987)

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the actor-network approach

• from bruno latour, science in action how to
  follow scientists and engineers through society
  (1987)
• ...picture the following comic strip we start
  with a technical sentence which is devoid of any
  trace of fabrication, construction or ownership
  we then put it in quotation marks, add to this
  speaking character another character to whom it
  is speaking then we place all of them in a
  specific situation, somewhere in time and space,
  surrounded by equipment, machines colleagues
  then when the controversy heats up a bit we look
  at where the disputing people go and what sort of
  new elements they fetch, recruit or seduce in
  order to convince their colleagues then, we see
  how the people being convinced stop discussing
  with one another situations, localizations, even
  people start being slowly erased on the last
  picture we see a new sentence, without any
  quotation marks, written in a text book or
  technical manual or piece of software similar
  to the one we started with in the first picture.

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example text as network as hypertext
from geneviéve teil bruno latour, the hume
machine can association networks do more than
formal rules?, stanford humanities review,
volume 4, issue 2
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example text network 1
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example text network 2
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example text network 3
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example text networks 1 2 3
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example networks of people (i.e., social
networks)
from Studying Online Social Networks by Laura
Garton, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry
Wellman, Journal of Computer- Mediated
Communication, Vol. 3, No. 1., June 1997 social
network before the introduction of a CMC system
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example networks of people (i.e., social
networks)
from Studying Online Social Networks by Laura
Garton, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry
Wellman, Journal of Computer- Mediated
Communication, Vol. 3, No. 1., June 1997
social network six months after the
introduction of a CMC system
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example networks of people and text (e.g.,
citation and co-authorship networks)
this image is from the system ReferalWeb by
Henry Katz et al. at ATT Research http//foraker.r
esearch.att.com/refweb/version2/RefWeb.html
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example sociolinguistic networks
from Warren Sack, Conversation Map,
www.sims.berkeley.edu/sack/cm/
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example networks of machines(i.e, technical
networks e.g., computer networks)
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rhizomesociotechnicalinguisticulturalnetwork

• deleuze and guatarri on rhizomes
• Let us summarize the principal characteristics
  of a rhizome unlike trees or their roots, the
  rhizome connects any point to any other point,
  and its traits are not necessarily linked to
  traits of the same nature it brings into play
  very different signs, and even non-sign states.
  ...

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actor-networks they are not (or not only)...

• technical networks The first mistake would be to
  give it a common technical meaning in the sense
  of a sewage, or train, or subway, or telephone
  'network. ... A technical network in the
  engineer's sense is only one of the possible
  final and stabilized state of an actor-network.
• social networks ...actor-network theory (hence
  ANT) has very little to do with the study of
  social networks. ... Whereas social networks add
  information on the relations of humans in a
  social and natural world which is left untouched
  by the analysis, ANT aims at accounting for the
  very essence of societies and natures. It does
  not wish to add social networks to social theory
  but to rebuild social theory out of networks. It
  is as much an ontology or a metaphysics, as a
  sociology. Social networks will of course be
  included in the description but they will have no
  privilege nor prominence...
• (anglo-american) actors ... the word actor has
  been open to the same misunderstanding as the
  word network. 'Actor' in the Anglo-Saxon
  tradition is always a human intentional
  individual actor and is most often contrasted
  with mere 'behavior'. If one adds this definition
  of an actor to the social definition of a network
  then the bottom of misunderstanding is reached
  an individual human -usually male- who wishes to
  grab power makes a network of allies and extend
  his power -- doing some 'networking' or
  'liaising' as Americans say...

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actor-network theory as fusion

• The difficulty of grasping ANT is that it has
  been made by the fusion of three hitherto
  unrelated strands of preoccupations
• a semiotic definition of entity building (cf.,
  isotopy)
• a methodological framework to record the
  heterogeneity of such a building
• an ontological claim on the 'networky' character
  of actants themselves.
• ANT asserts that the limits of these three
  unrelated interests are solved when, and only
  when, they are fused together into an integrated
  practice of study.

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actor-network theory networks

• Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a change of
  methaphors to describe essences instead of
  surfaces one gets filaments (or rhizomes in
  Deleuze's parlance). More precisely it is a
  change of topology. Instead of thinking in terms
  of surfaces -- two dimensions -- or spheres --
  three dimensions -- one is asked to think in
  terms of nodes that have as many dimensions as
  they have connections. As a first approximation,
  ANT claims that modern societies cannot be
  described without recognizing them as having a
  fibrous, thread-like, wiry, stringy, ropy,
  capillary character that is never captured by the
  notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres,
  categories, structure, systems. It aims at
  explaining the effects accounted for by those
  traditional words without having to buy the
  ontology, topology and politics that goes with
  them.
• This is the most counter-intuitive aspect of ANT.
  Literally there is nothing but networks, there is
  nothing in between them, or, to use a metaphor
  from the history of physics, there is no ether in
  which the networks should be immersed.

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actor-network theory actors (actants)

• ANT makes use of some of the simplest properties
  of nets and then add to it an actor that does
  some work the addition of such an ontological
  ingredient deeply modifies it. ... A network in
  mathematics or in engineering is something that
  is traced or inscribed by some other entity --
  the mathematician, the engineer. An actor-network
  is an entity that does the tracing and the
  inscribing. It is an ontological definition and
  not a piece of inert matter in the hands of
  others, especially of human planners or
  designers. It is in order to point out this
  essential feature that the word 'actor' was added
  to it.

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actor-network theory actors (actants)

• An 'actor' in ANT is a semiotic definition -- an
  actant --, that is, something that acts or to
  which activity is granted by others. It implies
  no special motivation of human individual actors,
  nor of humans in general. An actant can literally
  be anything provided it is granted to be the
  source of an action.
• cf., the narrative theory and semiotics of
  Greimas on actants and isotopies
• ...actors are not conceived as fixed entities
  but as flows, as circulating objects, undergoing
  trials, and their stability, continuity,
  isotopies has to be obtained by other actions and
  other trials.

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actor-network theory actors (actants)

• Building on the semiotic turn, ANT first brackets
  out society and nature to consider only
  meaning-productions then breaking with the
  limits of semiotics without losing its tool box,
  it grants activity to the semiotic actors turning
  them into a new ontological hybrid, world making
  entities by doing such a counter-copernican
  revolution it builds a completely empty frame for
  describing how any entity builds its world
  finally, it retains from the descriptive project
  only a very few terms -its infralanguage- which
  are just enough to sail in between frames of
  reference and grants back to the actors
  themselves the ability to build precise accounts
  of one another by the very way they behave the
  goal building of an overarching explanation --
  that is, for ANT, a centre of calculation that
  would hold or replace or punctualise all the
  others -- is displaced by the search for
  ex-plicitations cf., Deleuze that is for the
  deployment of as many elements as possible
  accounted for through as many metalanguages as
  possible.

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general questions as actor-network questions

• who is/are the author/s of the text?
• links between people, texts, and institutions
  e.g., universities, companies, etc.
• who funded this research?
• links between institutions
• what is the economics of the work
• capital flows between institions and individuals
• who are the dramatis personae of the article?
• types of actants and their associations and/or
  isotopies
• othering who are we? who are they? whats
  a what and who is a who?
• attachments and divisions between actants
  attributions of agency to some actants (e.g.,
  humans) and not to others (e.g., machines)
• what problem does this research address?
• connections between problems e.g., described
  causal links

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general questions as actor-network questions

• who is the intended audience?
• oftentimes can be answered by examining where the
  text published e.g., scientific journal, popular
  magazine, etc. examine the links between
  publications
• which texts are cited in this text?
• citation links sociotextual links
• what is the stated genealogy of the technology?
• technical networks which machines are (or are
  proposed to be) coupled together?
• what is thinking? what is reading? what is
  writing?
• thinking, reading, writing as means of attaching
  actants together
• what narrative strategies are employed in the
  article?
• what kinds of actants exist in the work? how do
  they remain stable or change over time (cf.,
  their respective isotopies). the longer answer
  to this question is that the semiotics used by
  actor-network theorists (i.e., that of greimas)
  has been used for decades to study narratives of
  many different kinds.
• what is the stated motivation of the research?
• linking a central statement to the other
  statements of fact and discovery

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general questions as actor network questions

• prior to their appearance in this text,
• who spoke or wrote which statements to whom?
  where? under what conditions?
• in this text,
• who spoke or wrote which statements to whom?
  where? under what conditions?
• after their appearance in this text,
• who spoke or (re)wrote which statements to whom?
  where? under what conditions?

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questions a few clarifications

• who is the author?
• Bruno Latour, born in 1947 in Beaune, Burgundy,
  from a wine grower family, was trained first as a
  philosopher and then an anthropologist. After
  field studies in Africa and California he
  specialized in the analysis of scientists and
  engineers at work. In addition to work in
  philosophy, history, sociology and anthropology
  of science, he has collaborated into many studies
  in science policy and research management.
• Professor at the ENSMP/CSI visiting professor in
  the history of science at Harvard visiting
  professor at the London School of Economics
• what is the stated motivation of the work?
• ...to list some of the interesting properties of
  networks and to explain some of the
  misunderstandings that have arisen
• what problem does this research address?
• articulating a methodology for science and
  technology studies
• who funded this research?
• see the website for the ENSMP/CSI
  http//www.csi-mines.org/ see especially the
  list of projects http//www.csi-mines.org/B3/inde
  x.html under each project is a list of sponsors
  or partners for the project many are
  governmental corporate and arts institutions.

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questions (continued) a few clarifications

• what is the economics of the work?
• some of the work is advisory, some is curatorial.
  this particular posting -- sent to nettime --
  must be seen in light of the fact that (a) latour
  is anthropologist of science, but he is also a
  curator (his last show was at the German ZKM)
  and, (b) his work is widely read by artists and
  art students (see the recent collection edited
  for the French national art schools (ENBA)
  instruction in digital media Connexions Art,
  réseaux, media, Annick Bureaud, Nathalie Magnan
  (editors)
• what is the stated genealogy of the work?
• see especially the work of Serres (philosophy and
  science studies), Greimas (semiotics), Deleuze
  (philosophy), Callon (science studies), Garfinkel
  (ethnomethodology), Prigogine and Stengers
  (mathematics and science studies), Foucault
  (philosophy), Lynch (science studies), other
  colleagues contributing to ANT
• who is the intended audience?
• artists, theorists, critics

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questions (continued) a few clarifications

• who are the dramatis personae of the article?
• the theorist and the researcher but, in general,
  this article problematizes the notion of a
  personae by introducing the idea that
  artifacts, machines and other non-human entities
  might be understood as possessing or exhbiting
  agency
• what narrative strategies are employed in the
  article?
• primarily expository
• othering who are we? who are they?
• this is one of the main issues of the article
  looking for (de)couplings between nodes in a
  network (which could be people, machines,
  partial object, and actants of all sorts
• what is thinking/ reading / writing ?
• a means of linking/articulating/coupling actants
  together
• where was this published?
• nettime
• what texts are cited?
• see the genealogy of the text describe above

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conclusions (1/2) terminology

• general idea for today networks are not just
  technologies they can also be used as tool for
  understanding sociotechnical systems (i.e., as a
  semiotics)
• the semiotic term actant can be used to
  describe humans and non-humans

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conclusions (2/2) methodology

• rather than assuming a set of dichotomies, it is
  often more useful to understand how the assumed
  polar opposites of a dichotomy are coupled
  together or mediated through a third party or
  material
• to understand a sociotechnical system (e.g., an
  online discussion) it is useful to find and
  enumerate the actants of the system (which parts
  have or are acribed agency) and find and
  delineate the forces, ideas, actions, materials,
  etc. that couple these actants together into an
  actor-network
• your assigned map of an online space can be
  understood as an actor-network and can be
  visualized like the examples shown today
• see www.cybergeography.org for more examples

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next time artificial intelligence

• the imitation game of alan turing