The Explosion of Network Techniques and the Myth of the Network between Science and Democracy. Legal Implications

The Explosion of Network Techniques and the Myth of the Network between Science and Democracy. Legal Implications Professor PhD. Habil. Diana DĂNIȘOR1 Abstract The network has become a dominant form of contemporary thought, its constitutive metaphor reinvented during the explosion of networked techniques - the Internet and planetary telecommunications networks. It seems to draw the invisible infrastructure of contemporary society. The figure of the network tends to define the ways in which thought works, being ubiquitous in all disciplines, from biology to sociology, from law to computer science, etc., for the hidden structure of the complexity of today's society is the network that dominates and shapes it. The network itself produces social change, being conceived as a technique that provides connection and as a political-moral operator that provides meaning and is identified with a social and democratic revolution. In contemporary society everything is networked, from transport to energy, from telecommunications to information technology, even human relations have become 'networks'. The network, as the explanatory structure of the contemporary capitalist system, constitutes the 'new morphology of our societies', converging towards a 'meta-network of capitals', as the new figure of power, with the whole planet caught in its net, leading to the suppression of state control over society and the economy and the destruction of the sovereign nation state through the destruction of hierarchies. Keywords: network metaphor, networking techniques, democracy, logos, moral responsibility. JEL Classification: K10, K19 1. Introduction The development of networks is the equivalent of a political revolution. The telecommunications network is, for the social body, the equivalent of the nerve network for the human body, its functioning ensuring its survival. 2 Industrial development and the steam engine made it possible to invent self-regulating mechanical networks (telegraph, railways), communication techniques and the computer made self-organising networks possible. These, as intelligent networks, went from the pyramidal model of the hierarchical network of actors (broadcasting network) to the anarchical dispersion model (computer network), to end up in the switched telephone network, egalitarian and interactive image.3 In contemporary society even human relationships have ended up becoming networks 4. The new figure of power, the "meta-network of capitals"5, is trapping the whole planet in its net, leading to the destruction of hierarchies and the sovereign nation state as we know it. The invention of information technology has allowed the notion to evolve towards a form of network autonomy capable of self-organisation, heralding the end of the nation-state: "For the first time in history, the primary unit of economic organisation is no longer a subject (...) the unit is the network, composed of a diversity of subjects and organisations that are constantly changing as they adapt to environments and structures."6 But the lack of hierarchy that the network assumes is only an appearance, an illusion, as is the network ideology, supposedly non-hierarchical, transparent and egalitarian. 2. The network, metaphor turned myth The word network is used to designate a variety of phenomena and objects, taking on new meanings with the symbolic importance of the Internet. Gradually detaching itself from the concrete objects it originally referred to, enriched by the extension of metaphorical registers, the network Diana Dănișor - Faculty of Law, University of Craiova, associate member of the Romanian Academy of Scientists, Romania, . 2 Alvin Toffler, The New Powers? Savoir, richesse et violence à la veille du XXIème siècle, Fayard, Paris, 1991, p. 144. 3 Jean-Louis le Moigne, La théorie du système général. Théorie de la modélisation, pp. 180-182, https://archive.org/details/JL.Le Moigne_theorie-du-sys-general_theorie_modelisation_1977, accessed 11 December 2022. 4 Manuel Castells, The network society. L 'ère de l 'information, Fayard, Paris, 1997, p. 525. 5 Ibid, p. 531. 6 Ibid, pp. 236-237. 1 Perspectives of Law and Public Administration Volume 12, Issue 2, June 2023 223 makes it possible to describe and understand new forms of coordination, control and cohesion, circulation, social exchange, and the conceptualisation of the links between the local and the global, attempting to account for contemporary social change.7 Today's Romanian language is a faithful mirror of society, constantly searching for itself in terms of lexical identity. The word network comes from Lat. *rĕtĕlla, diminutive of rĕtis8 , meaning "braid of threads of yarn, string, wire, etc., worked with large meshes; net, netting" 9 . This definition of netting refers to the technique that highlights it: weaving. As far back as mythology, the net is observed as a weaving technique. There was a time when the notion pre-dated the term web, the mythological use of the metaphor of weaving representing the links the gods weave between the invisible cosmos and the visible world, the web being "the invisible link between the visible places of the physical body" 10. The net, whose etymology is Latin retis11 , was composed of regularly braided threads, and was a wide-meshed fabric used to catch certain animals. It is necessary to insist on the size of the weave, which implies the connection, and the size of the catch, which aims at control. From the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the notion acquired a figurative, metaphorical meaning, being applied to the analysis of the human body, especially the circulatory apparatus, becoming "the visible place of an invisible organization"12, being enriched with new dimensions: circulation and fluidity, its genealogy showing the close link between body and organism13. In the 19th century, the body metaphor moved into the field of engineering, where it was transformed from a given network into an artificial network, as engineers became aware of the enormous prospects that the application of the network concept opened up in their respective fields and was increasingly used in everyday life. If the doctor observes it, the network being for him a living tissue, the engineer conceives and constructs it, thinking of it as an organism, but becoming an artificial, constructed network, an artefact, an autonomous technique independent of the body. And now the network designates the intermediate place and link between continuous circulation and blockage, between "a paradise of circulation and exchange and a hell of control and surveillance"14 . The history of science and technology notes the profoundly reticular nature of natural and social organisations, the general form of the network arising from the concrete problems facing natural realities and social constructions and serving to designate a wide variety of objects and phenomena (roads, railways, etc.). The term is use (...truncated)