the player behind and a brave new universe

The technology of the network site is an important question to consider. To do so I'd like to use the terms “actor” and “node” differently than some literature I've encountered. I am concentrating on a conceptual distinction between them. The difference between actor and node is not much. Just a different idea of seeing who is behind the other in a given set of circumstances, not ongoing perpetual definitions where one is actor and the other a node, after all an actor is a node too, but likely something else or just as likely the node it's the actor of too.

We go on to integrate this to the concept of a node in it's place as part of a network. I use the word actor as the essence of action and control. The node, in this case forms as an abstract of interest; a site of the interaction, in the network to which the node belongs.

In this view the actor, what MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) game players refer to as “the player behind”, controls the node. In the familiar example of an individual on the internet can be seen as an “actor”, “acting” for a node of the internet (the computer).

As the abstraction of technology increases to a logical extremity the issues surrounding this loose definition will become outdated, however for now it serves to abstract and frame the concept of the node from the technological layer (technological network and node) and the actor in the essential layer (essential network and actor).

If language is one of oldest technologies, it can serve as a good example against which we can juxtapose our current and familiar experience. In this case the nodal points of language can be be typified by easily visible and materially grounded examples such as: the face of the spoken word, a book, magazine or blurb. In contrast, as the post-modern network society experiences the networks of internet nodes and other high-tech networks, the new technologies allow for new schizophrenic relationships between the technical nodal layer and essential actor. No more single node single-ish actor. Instead easily modern examples include multiple identities in the form of profiles on different social networks.

As the techno-social milieu becomes increasingly sophisticated via the leveraging of technology the abstraction layers affecting flows allow for less insight into the essential. Companies become facebook friends, aggregation news sites feed only show other sites, the single human actor has differing social modes on IM vs SMS etc.

The importance to determine the reality from the representation is practically only served by it's utility, and interestingly the utility does not seem so much affected by human or non human actor or node; so far the world has been served by the status quo regardless of type.

The media today is a good example of what occurs when actors re-engage specific societal networks by re-establishing nodal points within a differing network and the dynamic of interactions.

To flesh out this using a familiar example we can look towards mass media interests which control certain nodes by way of a website. When a web page is requested by a user, the nodes interact technically, that is a socket connection is established between the client and server machines and data is passed over the internet. Essentially however, the media content; representations, signs and symbols are likely digested by the reader; a semiotic exchange between actors occurs. This technical node is invisible to the actor, and thus does not inform their agency or identity.

In the old paradigm of mono-directional media the television and radio antennas ruled supreme. The actor to actor semiotic exchange tipped by technological advantage to the side of the hub nodes; mass media.

Today the technology offers no such inherent distribution model. Instead the technology is itself distributed and designed to function as a unison of parts. Yet, implicated in essence as much as technology, the actors of mass media re-engage with the actors belonging to networks of citizens, consumers, individuals, relations etc. This re-engagement occurs with a relatively similar dynamic of semiotic interaction which marked the old mono-directional technologies; a lay over of the essential societal constraints.

As these flows continue to adjust their directional proportions, more so than the “producer/consumer”, web 2.0, writer/author, peer to peer exchange that is going on currently; what is occurring is the techno-social milieu is shifting, in some ways it has already shifted. Shifted in a way that primitively suggests it's re-aligning societal networks in a technologically facilitated re-alignment.

A company could never talk to you, though the marketing people tried. Today a company can have a Facebook page- the technologically is allowing for homophily of type. Different networks are converging and as they flatten, the difference between the actors becomes less and less as they become superimposed on their networks. As topologies intertwine the homophily of type is already highlighted- from companies with Facebook pages to ones in second life. To those who exist in that world representation has taken multiple additions to reflect and “improve” the real.

These examples serve a point- as our worldly notions of identity, humanity, social relationships and are being exposed to new technical networks, the essential Being as an actor has opportunity for re-creating a node, or nodes, on new networks; ones that will at best and worst implicate the formation of a phoenix in the likeness of representation of reality. A brave new universe.