User:Glovink

Introduction

 * Orgnets as new institutional forms immanent to the media of communication
 * Shift from tactical to strategic
 * Sustainable models for networks
 * Emergence of network society and use of internet
 * Decline in capacity of modern institutions (unions, govt, firms, universities) to manage social-technical relations in digital era
 * A need for new institutions

Organized networks are best understood as new institutional forms whose social-technical dynamics are immanent to the culture of networks. Organized networks are partly conditioned by the crisis and, in many instances, failure of primary institutions of modernity (unions, firms, universities, the state) to address contemporary social, political and economic problems in a post-broadcast era of digital culture and society. In this sense, organized networks belong to the era and prevailing conditions associated with post-modernity. Organized networks emphasize horizontal, mobile, distributed and decentralized modes of relation. A culture of openness, sharing and project-based forms of activity are key characteristics of organized networks. In this respect, organized networks are informed by the rise of open-source software movements. Relationships among the majority of participants in organized networks are frequently experienced as fragmented and ephemeral. Often without formal rules, membership fees, or stable sources of income, many participants have loose ties with a range of networks.

The above characteristics inevitably lead to the challenges of governance and sustainability for networks. And it's at this point that networks start to become organized. With a focus on the strategic dimension of governance, organized networks signal a point of departure from the short-termism and temporary political interventions of tactical media.

As a political concept, organized networks provide what urban theorist Saskia Sassen calls an 'analytical tool' with which to describe 'the political' as it is instantiated within network societies and information economies. The social-technical antagonisms that underscore 'the political' of organized networks are instantiated in the conflicts network cultures with vertical systems of control: intellectual property regimes, system administrators, alpha-males, tendency toward non-transparency and a general lack of accountability.

+ techno-socialities whose modes of organization & forms of expression are immanent to the networked condition special to digital communications media + emphasis on horizontal, mobile, distributed, decentralized, sharing, open cultures/communication, situated, project-based (suffer from short-termism), focus on tactical rather strategic dimension (for better & worse) + mistake to assume these are tension free zones

Roots of Organized Networks

 * Include brief overview of 90s media labs; their failures/limits in the case of ZKM, their success in the case of Sarai
 * Failure of mailinglist and newsgroups cultures
 * Post-dot.com
 * Post-ngo

Conditions of Organized Networks
-elaboration of why / how new institutional forms are needed; how their dynamics are internal to media of communications -new economic models