Organized networks : transdisciplinarity and new institutional forms

The social-technical dynamics of lCT [information communications technology]-based networks constitute organization in ways substantively different from networked organizations (unions, state, firms, universities). My interest in this paper is to say a few things about the process of scalar transformation and transdisciplinarity as they relate to the invention of new institutional forms. having established these background conditions, processes and practices, I will then move on to the topic of autonomous education. Institutions function to organize social relations. It follows, then, that the social-technical dynamics peculiar to a range of digital media technologies (mailing lists, collaborative blogs, wikis, content management systems) institute new modes of networked sociality. It is easy to dismiss this process of emergent institutionalization. Many would assert that it simply results in a bureaucratization and rigidity of social-technical communication systems whose default setting is one of flows, decentralization, horizontality, etc. I would suggest such knee-jerk, technically incorrect responses risk a disengagement from the political and thus from politics.