Abstract - The Information Society 35(4)

ARTICLE

The Internet as network, world, co-construction, and mode of governance

Feenberg, A. 2019.

The Internet is unlike anything else in the history of technology. It is neither a tool nor a machine, but a network. As such it is a new type of technical system. It resembles the telephone system in some respects, but it also has similarities to broadcast networks that distribute entertainment, shopping malls that distribute goods, and transportation systems insofar as it opens new “worlds” to its users. What is more, the users of the Internet take on new capacities and identities through their participation in the network, most obviously the unprecedented absorption in mediated social relations exemplified by Facebook. This Perspective article will attempt to put some order in the understanding of the Internet in terms of three theoretical approaches, loosely interpreted to suit this new object. These approaches are actor network theory, the phenomenological concept of world, and Simondon’s concepts of individuation and concretization.

 

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