Modern and postmodern organization

The late modern world is populated by entities with a modern, postmodern or a double nature (in some respects modern, but in others postmodern). We can reveal their nature by studying their organization, organizational principles and value content. Out of the organisms which embody modern and postmodern values, here we will only discuss the problems of the entities which play an important role in the construction and functioning of the Internet, we will chiefly try to analyze computers and the Internet as a whole. We call an entity modern or post-modern if it embodies a sufficient amount of the respective set of values. We do not think it justified to list post-modern and postmodern values here again since they were featured in several places earlier in our book. Here we would like to show the forms of their manifestations in objects, organizational and functional principles in the historically changing worldview of physics.

5.2.1 Organization and modern physics

The objects of the late modern age are mostly modern by nature. The modern object is the construction of the modern individual, which he creates through an egoist methodology; he populates his world with units which have a transparent structure, which are without any “inner” degrees of freedom that can be identified as the source of all indeterminacy and mysteriousness, which are obeying to the effects of the external environment without any delay (that is, which are without a memory) and which can be controlled completely. The nature of the modern entity is simple, unchanging and eternal. Its typical example is the object of classical mechanics: the mass point.

They mostly made use of the help of the divine clockmaker for constructing, moving and starting the clockwork made of mechanistic objects in harmony with the modernist value system. This is a timeless world (or imagined as timeless). Its harmony seems to be secured by the eternal recurrence of capital.

(Somewhat) surprisingly, modern constructions are efficient in the interpretation of many modern problems, but they cannot be used in numerous cases. For example, it is striking that the observable natural processes always lead towards a favored direction, machines which seem to be faultless break down, mechanisms devised for an eternal recurrence slow down or stop; the whole magnificent structure is threatened by deterioration and decay.

Because of problems which cannot be interpreted in the mechanistic worldview, the mechanistic explanations which work with causal determination are complemented by ideas operating with teleology aimed at achieving a stable state.

In the 50s and 60s of the 19^thcentury, they could not find the model of the changed circumstances of the societies afflicted with the general economical and political crisis in mechanics, thus the rule of the mechanistic worldview faltered and this created favorable circumstances for the development of a new worldview. In thisthermodynamic worldview the (world) system is the dominant entity, the components of which areunstructuredobjects which are defined only in an abstract manner and which are inseparable from their environment, albeit they have a certain abstract relation to it. The whole system is teleological and moves in one direction, that is, it evolves. Similar ele-ments are defined even already in Hegel’s philosophy and later in the philosophy of life, but its scientific content was manifested in phenomenological thermodynamics. In this viewpoint, instead of the concepts of mass and force, the abstract concepts of energy and entropy characterize the changes and the striving for equilibrium creates a distorted concept of order: heat death. While the mechanistic worldview assumes that man is active and nature is passive in the relationship between man and nature, the relationship is reversed in the thermodynamic worldview:

Late modern organisms

(objects) and man simply suffer the effects of the environment. The viewpoint of classical thermodynamics seemed to be appropriate for interpreting many natural processes, but it offered a quite unfavorable perspective by presenting the natural process of reaching equilibrium, that is, for example the decay of various human constructions as the inevitably effective consequence of existence. The thermodynamic worldview only gives an explanation of the crisis, but it does not obviously help overcome it.

We can hope for a program of overcoming the crisis and a more harmonic relationship between man and nature (an active man in an active environment) from the synthesis of the mechanistic and the thermodynamic worldviews.

The objects of thisstatistical mechanisticworldview arecomplexby nature; even if they were reduced to a few characteristics in their concrete reality, at least they possess more characteristics as abstract possibilities; they are dependent on their environment and have an internal structure. The global processes of the global system developing from the multitude of such objects through various interactions obey specific laws of evolution: we can talk about evolution but not teleology in connection with the developing order (Prigogine – Stengers 1995). The central element of this statistical, population or dialectic worldview is dialectics, which interprets the concrete coexistence of the following opposites: one-many, necessary-accidental, concrete-abstract, harmony-struggle, local-global, causal-teleological. We can encounter its various versions in evolutionary theories, discussions of structure development in classical physics, theories of complex systems with various motivation, social theories, psychology, economy and many other theories.

Both the thermodynamic and the statistical mechanical worldview are alienated from the modernist viewpoint of the mechanistic worldview and can be regarded as expressing postmodern values. The concept of diversity plays a key role in both worldviews. It can be shown that these worldviews – both from a historical and a logical point of view – are closely connected to the worldviews of societies in a crisis, what is more, because of the identity of their value worlds, thermodynamics and statistical physics can rightly be regarded as the “sciences of crisis” (Ropolyi 1992; 2000a). At the same time, since we characterized the postmodern value system as the value system of the crisis, it is obvious that postmodern values are embodied in the understanding of objects and organizational principles of thermodynamics and statistical physics.

The methods used in the analysis ofnetworksare also derived from statistical physics to a large degree (Albert – Barabási 2002; Barabási 2005b; 2005c; Pastor-Satorras – Vespignani 2005). The organizational principles of net-works built up of spread out but interconnected objects take into account similar regularities, but instead of point-like or localized objects, they use the principles in the systems of situations, flows or relations. The networks dis-cussed with the help of statistical physics are equally useful tools in the description of communication networks and the Internet (Barabási 2005a).

5.2.2 Constructions and constructors

In the statistical viewpoint, the “supporting medium” of the examined organism is regarded as an active participant in the mechanism of organization, which is expressed by the fact that the process of the creation and functioning of the organism is usually called organization, self-organization or self-design. With this approach, they are opposed (to different degrees) to the various ideas explaining genesis relying onconstruction. Perhaps we can divide the approaches which use the various variants of construction intofourbig groups.

WEAK STRONG

THE CONSTRUCTION

Evolutionary tinkering Social constructivism

IMPERSONAL

Radical constructivism Modernism

PERSONAL

Table 9: The classification of constructivist approaches

First of all, it is suitable to differentiate between groups operating with strong and weak construction. According to approaches working with strong construction, the construction of organisms follows a preconceived plan.

However, we can call the method in which our only claim is that the genesis of organisms is not a naturally given process weak construction. Strong construction is necessarily a teleological process; on the other hand, weak construction is not necessarily one.

The natural consequence of constructions is the appearance ofconstructorsin the process: conscious agents con-trolling or supervising the construction. The modern worldview works with strong construction and we can

Late modern organisms

identify the modern individual or God imagined in a similar role as the constructors. In fact, the idea of strong construction is decoded into the concept ofmachines. In this way, all machines are obviously tools of power. Of course, the computer is one, too; what is more, as we will see soon, the computer is a typical power machine.

Weak construction usually works with impersonal constructors. We can regard Jacob’s evolutionary tinkering (Jacob 1986) as representing the evolutionary process as a typical form of weak construction. According to this idea, the computer network which creates the Internet is constructed in this way: contingency plays an important role in its development, the web does not change in order to realize an originally given plan and it does not have a constructor who we could name (Turkle 1995). It seems that Searle also talks about weak construction (Searle 1995) and autopoiesis (Whitaker 2001) also belongs to this group.

Social constructivismrepresents the third group of constructions. On the one hand, in this approach an impersonal constructor is at work (usually social interests and values), on the other, despite of this fact, we can regard it as a strong construction since they expect the unconditional predominance of an originally given social value system in the construction process.

Finally, it seems that the fourth possible relationship between the constructor and the construction is expressed by the various constructivist approaches of Kelly, Piaget, Glaserfeld, Gergen and others which work with psycholo-gicalmotivations in which the constructor is thepersonhimself, nevertheless, the construction is weak (Botella 2000). The so-called radical constructivism has a similar basis and occupies a somewhat similar position.

In the following discussions we would like to demonstrate on the one hand the functioning of social constructivism and weak construction conceived as evolutionary tinkering, on the other, we would like to shed light on the value content of computer networks. First of all, let us mention that while examining the relationship between computers and society, it the social effects of computers which are chiefly studied. However, here we will try to analyze just the opposite and our question is whether particular social relations, value systems or interests appear in the principles of construction and functioning of computers (and computer networks). If yes, how can social relations are repres-ented in the hardware and software of computers? Can the basic principles of computer building and social organ-ization be connected to each other? We can only give a substantive answer to these questions, and in fact we can even only raise them if we apply a social constructivist viewpoint of the philosophy of science and technology while analyzing the problem area. In what follows, this is precisely what we will do and we will try to show that computers are tools which express the values of modernity while computer networks embody postmodern values.

A few years ago, the audience of a discussion list focusing on Hegel’s philosophy was debating whether elements of Hegel’s dialectics were used in the creation of computers. Some firmly claimed that “the Hegelian concepts of existence and nothingness are the basis of the whole information technological revolution; Hegel foresaw the binary system which could become the basis of modern technology (…) The computers are tools which are capable of using the most abstract categories very fast and this ability of theirs has fantastic consequences”. In our view, it is at least questionable that we can connect these “Hegelian” ideas to the principles of computer building, but it would be probably worth it to refer to other Hegelian ideas. For we can recall one of Hegel’s basic system building principles, and as a special paraphrase of it, say thatsociety wants to recognize itself in the tools which develop in social processes. In other words, society only accepts those technological tools and makes the mass production and long term preservation of those technological tools possible which can be in harmony with the value and interest system of the given society and which express and recognizably represent them. In their everyday usage, these tools adjust to the social environment more and more, and they can develop further while changing together with it and can acquire a long term existence.

The followers of the social constructivist viewpoint are trying to present concrete social processes in which such harmony can be created. According to their basic principle, technological tools and even the whole of knowledge

“are the product of human activity, just as the state is” (Shapin – Shaffer 1985; 344). Thus, it is quite understandable that thesocial circumstances which determine the society of a given age and thetechnological circumstances which determine the technological tools of the age aresimilarin a certain sense, since both relation systems are sustained by human activities influenced by the same values and interests of the given age. Following Hegel, we can recognize and describe the common ideas expressed in computers and in society; and accepting the basic principles of social constructivism, we can also ask about the reasons which determine this common content. On the basis of all this, perhaps we can also point out that it is not the building and the functioning of computers which has Hegelian roots but much rather, social constructivism.

Late modern organisms

Several studies successfully describe the development of the “socialized” scientific and technological tools of the 17^thcentury, which harmoniously fit the contemporary social environment (Shapin – Shafer 1985; Freudenthal 1986). Theclockworkmetaphor summarizes perhaps the most important relations of the age. The clockwork is not a simple time measurement device but a universal automaton; in fact, all existing entities can be regarded as clockworks: living organisms, the human body, the soul, and even the whole world. The idea of the calculator was created in this intellectual atmosphere: both Pascal and Leibniz designed such mechanism. It is notable that the calculating automaton is completely in harmony with the whole system of the clockwork world, that is, it is obvious that the first concepts of the computer as special clockwork were created under the influence of themechanistic paradigm and they faithfully reflect its value system. In what follows, we would like to show that essentially, the computers of our days are essentially built based on the same mechanistic principles: most essential characteristics still represent the value system of 17^thand 18^thcentury mechanistic philosophy, that is, the ideology of modernity.