Network Fever

Abstract

We are constantly surrounded by talk of networks. Every third message, article, and advertisement seems to be about one network or another. We are surrounded, that is, by talk on networks about networks. It is as if our technologies feed on a kind of narcissistic self-reection. Everyone has become a kind of expert, ready to discuss the different types of nets (computer, television, telephone, airline, radio, beeper, bank . . . or scales (global, national, infra, local, home . . . or modes (cable, wire- less, digital, optical . . . ). And where would we be without our opin- ions about the Internet, a net of nets against which all others are now referenced? How many ways do we have to express our amazement at such a vast space in which any address is just a few clicks away from all the others? Attaching oneself to a seemingly marginal thread soon accesses an endlessly dense weave, as if a walk down a quiet country lane would suddenly bring one to the heart of a metropolis of unprece- dented dimensions. In celebrating this new kind of territory, we recast questions of individual identity in terms of unimaginable levels of con- nectivity, ignoring the equally dramatic rise of new forms of inaccessi- bility to stage an institutionalized simulation of euphoria in which discourse about openness, democracy, free exchange, and speed dom- inates over that of control, surveillance, blockage, sedation, and crime.1