Challenging the Network Ideologies

The chapter shows how the narratives and the imaginaries conveyed by the historical paths of both successful and forgotten networking projects are still alive and how the narrative structures lying behind these stories meaningfully persist and penetrate the present and the imagined future of networked societies. As permeable and enduring stories, network histories and legacies are embedded in the contemporary social imaginaries contributing to the extensive promotion and institutionalization of network ideologies. Today, this transitory propriety of the imaginary operates in favour of a few powerful commercial actors who tend to replicate and keep alive the Internet myth. It is because such narratives have a deep influence on the development and the cultural representations of networks, that a theoretical reflection on the limits entailed in any deterministic perspective, and especially in network ideologies, is much needed. The chapter suggests to go ‘beyond networks’ in order to challenge the network ideologies and to re-read history, thus to change, juxtapose and challenge the Internet myth.