Re: <nettime> Organised Networks: Transdisciplinarity and New Institutional Forms

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.org>]

Perhaps I'm missing here something obvious, but I always thought that networks 
are a basic type of organization (as are hierachies, markets, and communes, 
in fact, standard theory assumes that there are only these four basic forms). 
So, to speak of an organized network, makes no sense to me. All networks are 
organized, by definition. 

> The social-technical dynamics of ICT-based networks constitute organisation
> in ways substantively different from networked organisations (unions,
> state, firms, universities).

Again, this makes no sense to me. All large-scale contemporary networks are 
ICT-based. In fact, ICT is what allows them to scale and hence have a chance 
to successfully compete with vertically integrated hierachies (the only 
organizational form, up to very recently, that scaled well).

Also, I always thought that unions, the state and its bureaucracies, 
universities, and old-school firms were prime examples of hierachical 
organizations. If they are not, what is? And it what sense is a union a 
networked organization?

I'm getting a head-ache, and this is only the first sentence.

Felix






----http://felix.openflows.org------------------------------ out now:
*|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity, 2006 
*|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed. Futura/Revolver, 2005 


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