[Air-l] A definition of the internet + ANT

[Christian Fuchs]

Sam and Ellis have been arguing that if no humans were online, the internet
would still exist and there would still be activities (by bots, etc.) and
that a medium as form is different from the content.

There is a main difference between technological actants and human actors:
Humans are anticipatory, thinking systems that have morals and can actively
plan the future and choose from different options of behaviour according to
their judgements. Hegel pointed out that active thought distinguishes the
human from the animal. Humans are different from natural and technological
system. Hence if everyone went offline, the internet as physical system and
the objectified knowledge stored in it would still be around. But no-one
would actively use that potential knowledge, nobody would produce new
knowledge. The internet would be completely useless, hence it only makes
sense, it gains its meaning only by social activity of humans. There would
be no knowledge-in-action, all dynamics would get lost, there would just be
deterministic processes initiated by bots which are not knowledge processes
because technologies are not knowledgeable actors. I like the idea of
Giddens of humans as knowledgeable actors: technologies are not
knowledgeable. The reason why I oppose Latour and ANT is that this
difference between human and non-human gets lost, this is undialectical
thinking.
A "dead block" internet still exists, but doesn't develop, without
development there is no real Being as Being is always a dynamic,
ever-changing dialectical process.

Christian


Am 17.10.2006 17:35 Uhr schrieb "Ellis Godard" unter <egodard at csun.edu>:

> But a dead block would still exist. If everyone went offline simultaneously
> for a few hours, the Internet wouldn't stop existing for that time. It
> wouldn't even be inactive; bots and pings live on. So either you expand
> "human activity", or concede to the separateness.
>