Sam and Ellis have been arguing that if no humans were online, the internet would still exist and there would still be activities (by bots, etc.) and that a medium as form is different from the content. There is a main difference between technological actants and human actors: Humans are anticipatory, thinking systems that have morals and can actively plan the future and choose from different options of behaviour according to their judgements. Hegel pointed out that active thought distinguishes the human from the animal. Humans are different from natural and technological system. Hence if everyone went offline, the internet as physical system and the objectified knowledge stored in it would still be around. But no-one would actively use that potential knowledge, nobody would produce new knowledge. The internet would be completely useless, hence it only makes sense, it gains its meaning only by social activity of humans. There would be no knowledge-in-action, all dynamics would get lost, there would just be deterministic processes initiated by bots which are not knowledge processes because technologies are not knowledgeable actors. I like the idea of Giddens of humans as knowledgeable actors: technologies are not knowledgeable. The reason why I oppose Latour and ANT is that this difference between human and non-human gets lost, this is undialectical thinking. A "dead block" internet still exists, but doesn't develop, without development there is no real Being as Being is always a dynamic, ever-changing dialectical process. Christian Am 17.10.2006 17:35 Uhr schrieb "Ellis Godard" unter <egodard@csun.edu>:
But a dead block would still exist. If everyone went offline simultaneously for a few hours, the Internet wouldn't stop existing for that time. It wouldn't even be inactive; bots and pings live on. So either you expand "human activity", or concede to the separateness.