Publisher's Synopsis
While Internet and mobile technologies and their related social practices have made networks central to contemporary life and thought, much remains unanswered concerning the opportunities and risks networks present for social life, not least how to understand the political-economy of new transnational constituencies such as Wikileaks, Anonymous and The Pirate Bay. Network Life is the first book to synthesize the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda with Fernand Braudel's long duration world-economic history and Charles Tilly's sociology and democracy theory to provide a new theory of political and economic networks. The central argument of this book is that contemporary networks need to be understood against an extended historical context in order to see clearly how the political and economic changes they inaugurate differ from those of previous centuries. - - It identifies as a key transformation the shift in relations between hierarchical organizations and 'flatter' more egalitarian networks called 'meshworks,' relating this shift directly to widespread institutional crises. Using examples including the activities of Wikileaks, the recent exploits of the - 'Anonymous' network associated with 4Chan, and the ongoing copyright wars between media oligopolies and assemblages like The Pirate Bay, the book vividly portrays the opportunities and risks of networks for social life, relating the globalization of networks of small-scale social actors to the emergence of a wave of democratization and corresponding crises of representative authority and national sovereignty. -
