Netværkssamfundet: Organisation og konstituering - hinsides netværkets uskyld

The Network Society: organization and constitution – beyond the network’s innocence” discusses the relation between the rationality of organizational forms in large technological systems, i.e. the computer-mediated network, and the issue of social and historical constitution. Cornelius Castoriadis’s notion of the “imaginary institution of society” is applied as basis for a critical insight vis-a-vis the widespread assumptions of the computer-mediated network as quasi-technological “signature” of social and historical self-organization, e.g. by ‘mediation’ of notions of connectivity etc. On this background it is argued that the computer-mediated network cannot be constituted socially and historically by references to the notions of technological self-organization.
However, the 90s widespread visions of self-organization as medium for technological ‘convergence’ with social and historical forms does point to a new issue: the imaginary of the artificial. In conclusion the author relates this insight to a critical evaluation of the computer-mediated network’s role in  globalization processes. In a debate with Manuel Castells opus magnum for the network society, the notion of the imaginary of the artificial is put in critical context as an indication of the inherent instability of globalization processes