Networks, Societies, Spheres – Reflections of an Actor-Network Theorist

Although the word “network” is now ubiquitous and most of the time associated with IT, it has a much longer history and a deeper philosophical import. The paper reviews some of the meaning of the word in the so called “actor network theory” an especially what the new technique of digital tracing does to social theory. The argument is that the tracability of the social allowed by the notion of network has dissolved the two end points of social theory –the individual and the society- to replace it by a navigational experience that might stop at the aggregate or at the element without giving them any privilege.