W STRONĘ EKOLOGII SIECI

"Steps to an Ecology for the Networks" The article will move from theoretical tools coming chiefly from philosophy, arts and ecology in order to research the condition of today’s man in relation to data and infrastructural networks, which are growing in complexity and which he - paradoxically? - experiences by means of interfaces that are growing in simplicity and in ‘symmetry’ . If ‘Anthropocene’ is a widely recognized and accepted word for those who study today’s world, not enough attention is dedicated to researching models for interactive artifacts different from the user-centered one, which produces experiences that are only apparently ‘personalized’ while instead they are becoming more and more conformed, also because they can be technically reproduced , as Norbert Wiener suggested by taking into the cybernetic context Benjamin’s famous essay. The focus will be on those experiences putting the subject in relation to networks and taking place especially in interfaces (for personal computers, for mobile devices, etc.). For this purpose, key concepts such as those of ‘subject’, of ‘identity’ and of ‘individual’ will be employed, with specific references to their definitions in Deleuze and Guattari’s two volumes on Capitalism and Schizophrenia (and maybe even more in Guattari’s Caosmose), in Gilbert Simondon, in Roberto Esposito and in the New Materialism. As regards the models describing the complexity of networks, of digital data systems and of interaction, the main references will be found in Luciana Parisi, Matthew Fuller, Alexander Galloway and Branden Hookway. After having synthesized a model which attempts to represent the contemporary human condition ‘in the network’, there will be offered strategies and examples that can induce a critical thinking for the man/user ‘in/of the network’, in order to make him/her aware of his/her ‘subjection’ and to promote strategies of liberation. For example Giorgio Agamben, starting from the concept of ‘dispositif’ in Foucault and in Deleuze, and bringing it into the context of the ‘sacred’ which permeates all of his philosophy, suggests that today’s man needs to ‘desecrate’ the dispositifs or devices that subject him, which can begin with becoming aware of their nature and of the possibilities they offer beyond those they are sold for. Great part of the - usually anonymous - hacking practices can be considered as desecrations, for example when they turn tools originally designed to control into ways and contexts different from the original, as in the case of the mosquito ringtones . New critical tools are thus joining those related to the category of the uncanny : rather than making the subject reflect (also literally) upon her/his relation to objects and to her/his counterparts, these new tools re-position her/him in the world on the same plane as the animal, the vegetal, the mineral and - more and more often - the digital kingdom. Examples of this attitude can be found in Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia (2008), by now widely recognized as one of the most influent books for contemporary philosophy and arts, and in Pierre Huyghe’s exhibition (2013-14) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris: there, the visitor wandered in a welcoming and yet self-concluded ecosystem, deprived of any hierarchy and populated by minerals, plants, animals (a dog, bees), videos, videogames and human performers (almost indifferent to visitors), forced to question her/his role in that complex and in part incomprehensible system of relations.