Interpreting Networks: Hermeneutics, Actor-Network Theory & New Media

David J. Krieger · Andréa Belliger

Jun 2014 · Digitale Gesellschaft Book 4 · transcript Verlag

Ebook

208

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Eligible

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About this ebook

After postmodern critique has deconstructed, decentered, and displaced order and identity on all levels, we are faced with the Humpty Dumpty question of how to put the pieces back together again. This book brings together the seldom associated discourses of hermeneutics, actor-network theory, and new media in order to formulate a theory of a global network society. Hermeneutics re-opens the question of unity in a fragmented world. Actor-network theory reinterprets the construction of meaning as networking. New media studies show how networking is done. Networks arise, are maintained, and are transformed by communicative actions that are governed by network norms that make up a social operating system. The social operating system offers an alternative to the imperatives of algorithmic logic, functionality, and systemic closure that dominate present day solutions to problems of over-complexity in all areas. The world of meaning constructed by the social operating system is a mixed reality in which filters and layers replace the physical restraints of space and time as parameters of knowing and acting. Society and nature, humans and non-humans come together in a socio-sphere consisting of hybrid, heterogeneous actor-networks. This book proposes reinterpreting hermeneutics as networking and networking as guided by a social operating system whose norms are based on new media. There emerges a theory for a global network society described by different concepts than those typical of Western modernity.

About the author

David J. Krieger (Prof. Dr. habil. habil.), Philosoph, ist Direktor des IKF – Institut für Kommunikation und Führung in Luzern. Er war Mitbegründer des Instituts für Kommunikation und Kultur an der Universität Luzern, wo er sich in Religionswissenschaft und in Kommunikationswissenschaft habilitiert hat. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen in den Bereichen Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie, Systemtheorie, Hermeneutik, Informationstheorie, Digitale Ethik und Neue Medien.

Andréa Belliger (Prof. Dr.) ist Co-Direktorin des Instituts für Kommunikation & Führung in Luzern und Prorektorin der Pädagogischen Hochschule Zentralschweiz. Sie ist Verwaltungsrätin in verschiedenen Unternehmen in den Bereichen Gesundheit, Finanzen und Banken, Sozialverwaltung, Energie und Bildung sowie als Beraterin für Unternehmen und Behörden in allen Aspekten der digitalen Transformation tätig. 2018/19 wurde sie unter die Top 100 Women in Business in der Schweiz gewählt und war für den Female Digital Leader Award nominiert.

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