Untitled - socium.ge

Informationalism and the network society 35connection between networks that allow the control of these networks by themeta-program of shared values expressing structural domination. Hence,blocking control of the media by oligopolistic business by challenging therules of the US Federal Communication Commission that allow greaterconcentration of ownership. Or blocking the networking between corporatebusiness and the political system by regulating campaign finance or by enforcingthe conflict of interests between being a vice-president and receivingincome from your former company, which has benefited from militarycontracts. Or by denouncing intellectual servitude to the powers-that-be byacademics using their chairs as platforms for propaganda.More radical disruption of the switchers affects the material infrastructureof the network society: the physical and psychological attacks on air transportation,on computer networks, on information systems, and on the networksof facilities on which the livelihood of society depends in the highly complex,interdependent system that characterizes the informational world. The challengeof terrorism is precisely predicated on this capacity to target strategicmaterial switches so that their disruption or the threat of their disruption disorganizespeople’s daily lives, and forces them to live in a state of emergency –thus feeding the growth of other power networks, the security networks, thatextend to every domain of life. There is, indeed, a symbiotic relationshipbetween the disruption of strategic switches by resistance actions, and thereconfiguration of power networks towards a new set of switches organizedaround security networks.Resistance to power programmed in the networks also takes place throughand by networks, and these are also information networks powered by informationand communication technologies (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001). Theso-called “anti-globalization movement” is a global/local network organizedand debated on the Internet, and structurally switched on with the medianetwork. Al-Qaeda, and its related organizations, is a network made up ofmultiple nodes, with little central coordination, and also directly aimed at itsswitching with the media networks, through which they hope to inflict fearamong the infidels and raise hope among the oppressed masses of believers(Gunaratna, 2002).It is characteristic of the network society that both the dynamics of dominationand of resistance to domination rely on network formation and networkstrategies of offense and defense. Indeed, this is consistent with the historicalexperience of previous types of society, such as the industrial society. Thefactory and the large, vertically organized industrial corporation were thematerial basis for the development of both the industrial bourgeoisie and thelabor movement. Nowadays, computer networks perform the same functionfor global financial markets, transnational production systems, “smart” armedforces with a global reach, terrorist resistance networks, and networked social