Abstract
There has been an accumulating critical literature on the utopian visions of the Internet, with attempts at theorizing Web 2.0 and its social and political implications. Networks Without a Cause focuses on this theme but makes a unique contribution by effectively capturing the technological specificities of Web 2.0 amidst the larger issues of technocapitalism, while not erasing possibilities for organization and change. The book reviews a wide range of critical works on the Internet and argues against the insufficiencies of the cyclical and paralytic media theorizing that fails to reflect current technological realities. Instead, the book advances “criticism in action” (p. 74), a direction that sees Net criticism as a productive act that is “linked to the ability to change the object of the study” (p. 70). Here, criticism manifests as a form of political activity and organization emergent from the network condition and that critique current communication protocols through action. Lovink extends the discussion of the concept of “organized networks (orgnets)” which he developed in his earlier book, Dark Fiber (Lovink, 2002). Departing from the concept “network organization” where networks serve as merely tools for organizations, “orgnets” is a conceptual proposition that captures institutional forms of cooperation among artists, activists, programmers, and designers, focusing on transformative, “strong bonds” of self-organized, freely cooperating entities that move the production of culture into the Internet.
We have also entered the phase of the “taken for grantedness” of mobile phones (Ling, 2012), the device that marries Web 2.0 with mobility in our daily lives. The book further argues that this integration of mobile technologies into the fundamental structure of society should be accompanied by a sustained, active critique. This suggests a continued assessment of our uses, potentials and risks, and rethinking the politics, protocols, and specificities of the mobile dimension of our current media experience.
The book encompasses a variety of interrelated issues underlying Web 2.0: information overload, crisis of multiple selves in SNS, comment culture, radio Web 2.0, online videos, techno-politics at Wikileaks, and the search phenomenon. In organizing the discussion around such themes, the book is able to discuss the unique characteristics of the Internet while capturing contemporary examples to illustrate practices and challenges. This chapterization also makes it very useful for reading the material both in its entirety, or for analysis of individual topics.
One notable limitation of the book however is that it notes the “hyper growth of the Internet users outside the West” (p. 75), yet offers minimal discussion on network cultures and initiatives beyond Europe and the United States, thus seeming to trivialize network cultures in other parts of the world. Perhaps though, it can be seen as his invitation to others to test how these concepts resonate in other contexts. However, I was anticipating more elaboration of the conceptual formulation that distils the characteristics of various “orgnets” across the globe (including those that work on the mobile dimension), the circumstances by which they can develop and what makes them work (or not). Nonetheless, these concerns do not lessen the important contributions the book achieves in terms of the depth of issues it covers and the way such issues are foregrounded by lived activist practices amidst technological realities, a style that illuminates exactly the form of criticism it advances.