[Post in progress] Title of the talk is a quote from Castells. Will talk about some of the mechanisms in networks, looking at relationships between organisations rather than between individual people.

German sociologist has listed twenty-six distinct definitions of “information”, and Arne suspects that “network” might be a similar kind of concept, the sort of concept you should just forget about trying to find a single defintion of.

Although network theory has been very efficient, there are problems with it too. We haven’t been able to use networks as organisational toolf/methods.

Advantages of network organisation: Scalable, interactive, flexible, tailored, branded, global, alliances, increased specialisation.

Communication used to be expensive. Coordination used be done through meetings, telephone, paper. We’re very strongly marked by these methods and have trouble not using them. Traditional kinds of coordination favourise organisations with few connections, few ties. Also there’s goign to be information filtering because it’s expensive to give out information, and that also means lots of people are kept out of the loop, not given information.

With the internet: communication is cheap. But how should we use it? New technologies tend to emulate old, expensive technologies, like IP-phones. Castells: “The network is the message.” 75% of productivity gains in the next five years will come through improved collaboration, better connections. Right now Microsoft Office doesn’t do collaboration well at all, but they’re working on it and it will become essential.

Economy is the understanding of scarce resources in a society.

Digital services: “products” become services when they’re online. E.g. a book is tax-free if printed on paper (in Norway) but if you put it online it’s a service and so if you sell it you have to add tax.

Increasing returns – it’s trivial to make more copies so you make mroe and more money the more you sell.
Diminishing returns – you actually lose money if you sell more than so and so many of a product. It costs as much to make another box as I earn more.

E.g. I sell you a phone. I make a cut.
THEN I add you to my network. That costs me nothing.
The more people in my network, the more you’ll ring. So I make more and more money.

(though I dunno, surely more and more customers also requires more questions to be answered, more servers and so on, but I suppose this is simplified)

The net can reduce some of the standard transaction costs – like searching for a product, negotiating, deciding etc.

Commodification: more and more products becoming standardised. E.g. content management systems. Digital services globalised.
[bit I was too tired to follow, sorry :/]

Anecdot about his kids who never plan ahead, they’re used to instant coordination with their friends. How would we plan an organisation that supports this? Today’s organisation either assume we can’t do this or they pretty much stop us from using these abilities and require slow planning.

3 thoughts on “notes: Arne Krokan on “The network is the Organisation”

  1. kyan gadac

    Jill wrote:
    (though I dunno, surely more and more customers also requires more questions to be answered, more servers and so on, but I suppose this is simplified)
    … the devils in the details. … there’s no such thing as a free cliche…I think there’s a degree of enthusiasm for the wonders of networks at work here.
    But the anecdote about kids bought to mind Noongar(Aboriginal) networks which are based on kinshiip, which extends family neworks to the whole of the world. Noongar people talk about ‘Noongar grapevine’ and ‘Noongar time’ to describe the person who knows when to turn up. Without being asked. Early settlers in W.A. were bewildered by there seeming irrational behaviour. Rishing of on a whim. it seemed to them. But in the light of this new enthusiasm, perhaps they are the people who we should be asking about the internet. Perhaps ‘Noongar time’ has come!

  2. Jill

    That’s fascinating, I might look into that. Thanks!

  3. […] Dette siste er et interessant fenomen, fordi det etterhvert blir vanlig at mange personer formidler direkte fra ulike seminarer og foredrag. Det er mange ?•r siden Jill Walker blogget direkte fra et foredrag jeg holdt p?• Universitetet i Oslo, og siden har det tatt om seg. Jeg blogget fra Internetworld i London i slutten av april, og flere blogget direkte fra Nkul som gikk av stabelen ved NTNU med en rekke foredrag og seminarer i begynnelsen av mai. […]

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]