<nettime-ann> just out: "Networkologies"

My name is Christopher Vitale, I'm Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute, and the author of the new philosophy book Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age - A Manifesto (Zer0 Books, Sept. 2014).

Networkologies is a new metaphysics in a post-Deleuzian vein, inspired by the potential philosophical implications of cutting edge technologies in artificial intelligence, 'soft' non-binary computation, quantum physics, philosophy of math, and complex systems science. At the cusp of media, technology, and philosophy, the book aims to develop a new set of critical tools in sync with the needs of our increasingly networked times. The text asks the question of what the world would look like if everything in the world was seen as composed of networks of networks, according to the networkological principles of immanence, relation, refraction, and emergence, each corresponding to node, link, ground, and level of emergence. The results are panpsychist, a generalized semiotic machinology, transvidual postanarchism in politics, pantheistic theophanism in post-theology, an ethics of robust emergence of complexity, and much more.

Recent Praise for Networkologies:

âWe all know that we live in a networked world; but we do not really know just what a ânetworkâ is. In this important and vital book, Christopher Vitale provides us with a full-fledged philosophy of networks. He considers the questions of where networks come from, of how they change and develop, and of what conditions may lead to their (and our) continued flourishing. Networkologies is solidly grounded in the latest science, but it is also a powerful work of speculative philosophy. It gives us both a vision of what we are, and intimations of what we might become.â

â Steven Shaviro, Professor of English at Wayne State University, author of Connected, Or What It Means to Live in a Networked Society, and The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism

âVitale is opening a truly philosophical, typological and topological understanding of networks in contemporary culture, well beyond the usual technical accounts of Internet development. Entering in a natural dialogue with some masters which have reflected on the concept and practice of relation (Bergson, Deleuze, Simondon among others), Vitale turns himself as a profound new voice which unveils the fascinating philosophical combinatorics of cultural complex systems. Through a series of well-defined tetrads, including immanence/ relation/ refraction/ emergence, and node/ link/ ground/ process, Vitale circumnavigates the explosive contradictions of our times,to offer new perspectives of visualization and integration."

â Fernando Zalamea, Professor of Mathematics at Universidad Nacional de Cololmbia, author of Ariadne and Penelope: Networks and Mixtures in Contemporary Society, and Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics,

Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age - A Manifesto (Zer0, 2014)

CONTENTS:

Part One - Introduction to a Philosophy of Networks

- Living in a Networked Age

- Networks - and Philosophy?

- Building on the Science and Mathematics of Networks

- What is a Network? A Brief Primer

- Complexity, Emergence, and Robustness

- The Brain as Model for Philosophy: Artificial Neural Networks and Beyond

- Network Dynamics: States, Processes, and Tendencies

- Networkological Description: Immanence, Relation, Refraction,

- Emergence, and Robustness

- Network Economics: Networked Models of Value, Meaning, and Experience

- Sync: Understanding, Knowledge, and Thinking

- Evolving Robustness: From Evolution to Liberatio

- Beyond the So-Called "Death of Philosophy"

- Networkological Critique: Networks Beyond Overreification and Cancerous Reproduction

- From Networks to Netlogics: Diagramming the World

- Radical Relational Emergentism: Philosophy as Refractive Crystallography

Part Two - Networkologies: A Manifesto

nodes: access, science, mathematics, image of thought, process, complexity, emergence, relation, fractality, holography, spacetime, immanence, principles, experience, realities, (un)limits, semiotics, mediology, machinology, value, symbolic economies, robustness, practices, metaleptics, sync, understanding, evolution, meta-evolution, hyper-evolution, thinking, critique, deconstruction, reconstruction, post-foundation, refraction, diagram, difference, distributedness, historiography, psychology, panpsychism, liberation, commons, oppression, economics, political economy, politics, transviduality, post-anarchism, pantheism, theophanic post-theology, erotics, praxis, aesthetics, nothing, philosophy, meta-philosophy, history of philosophy, beginning, dream

Christopher Vitale (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, NYU 2007) is Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute. He is the author ofNetworkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age - A Manifesto (Zer0, 2014). He is currently writing a book called The Networked Mind: Artificial Intelligence, "Soft"-Computing, and the Futures of Philosophy, and co-writing a book on the implications of Buddhist philosophy for contemporary Western philosophy and media theory with Tyler Phan, University College London. He teaches film, film theory, media theory, and philosophy, and has taught at NYU, UC Berkeley, Hunter College, and Pace University before coming to Pratt. In addition to his formal academic training, he has studied complex systems science at the Santa Fe Institute for Complex Systems Science in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and studied and lectured at the Ranjung Yeshe Institute for Buddhist Studies in Kathmandu, Nepal.