View source for Collective Individuation as the Future of the Social Web


'''* Article: Collective	Individuation:	The	Future	of	the	Social	Web. By Yuk	Hui	and	Harry	Halpin. Digital Studies, 2013.'''

URL = http://digital-studies.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HuiYuk_and_HarryHalpin_FINAL_CollectiveIndividuation.pdf


=Description=

"We	are	in	the	epoch	of	networks.	The	world	is	now	rapidly	being	perceived	as	a	vast	 space	of	interlocking	networks	of	seemingly	infinite	variety:	biological,	productive,	cybernetic,	and	– most	importantly	of	all	– social.	The	image	of	the	network,	with	its	obvious	bias	towards	vision,	has	become	the	paradigmatic	representation	of	
understanding	our	present	technological	society	as	a	holistic	entity	that	would	
otherwise	escape	our	cognitive	grasp.	Yet	no	image	is	ideologically	neutral,	for	the	image	of	the	network	is also a	mediation	between	the	subject	and	object	that	inscribes	– or	pre-programs	– a	certain	conceptual	apparatus	onto	the	world,	namely	that	of	
nodes	and	links	(or	in	graph-theoretic	terms,	vertices	and	edges). This	is	not	without	consequences:	due	to	its	grasp	over	our	imagination,	the	network	constitutes	the	horizon	of	possible	invention,	as	Simondon	showed	in	Imagination	et	Invention. Yet	where	did	the	concept	of the	network	itself	come	from?	Despite	the	hyperbole	over	the	dominance	of	digital	social	networks	like	Facebook,	the	concept	of	the	quantified	social	
network	pre-dates	digital	social	networks,	originating	from	the	work	of	the	psychologist	Moreno	in	the	late	1930s,	and	we	argue	that	what	the	advent	of	the	digital	computer	
has	done has primarily	been	the	acceleration	of	the	pre-digital	conceptual	apparatus	of	networks.	Although	no one	can	deny	its	now	global	influence,	the	fundamentally	ontological	presumptions	of	the	social	network	has yet	to	be	explored	despite	its	
present	preponderance.	To	borrow	some	terms	from Bernard	Stiegler,	how	does	the	
what	of	Facebook	constitute	our	who?"


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