Scopes

Scopes = a concept stressing the visual aspect of the new networks

Description

Brian Holmes, citing sociologist Karen Knorr Cetina, at http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Network-swarm-microstructure.html

"Knorr Cetina stresses the creation of shared horizons in much the way that I described it above, focusing for this particular article on the religious horizon of a shared orientation to "transcendent time" (eschatology). As in previous articles on the microstructures of global finance, she also shows how networked ITCs allow participants of the microstructure to see and recognize each other, and to achieve cohesion by coordinating with each other in time, observing and commenting on the same events, even though the microstructure is very dispersed and not all the participants or even a majority of them are necessarily living anywhere near the particular event in question at any given moment. Cetina very suggestively reinterprets the usual idea of networks as a system of pipes conveying contents, to insist instead on the visual or scopic aspect of contemporary ICTs : from "pipes" to "scopes." Information is important for coordinating action ; but it is the image that maintains the shared horizon and insists on the urgency of action within it (especially through what Barthes called the "punctum" : the part that sticks out from the general dull flatness of the image and affectively touches you)." (http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Network-swarm-microstructure.html)

"Knorr Cetina stresses how networked ITCs allow participants of Global Microstructures to see and recognize each other, and to achieve cohesion by coordinating with each other in time, observing and commenting on the same events, even though the microstructure is very dispersed and not all the participants or even a majority of them are necessarily living anywhere near the particular event in question at any given moment. Cetina very suggestively reinterprets the usual idea of networks as a system of pipes conveying contents, to insist instead on the visual or scopic aspect of contemporary ICTs : from "pipes" to "scopes." Information is important for coordinating action ; but it is the image that maintains the shared horizon and insists on the urgency of action within it (especially through what Barthes called the "punctum" : the part that sticks out from the general dull flatness of the image and affectively touches you)." (http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Network-swarm-microstructure.html)