Notes on: Latour, B (2010). Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor – Network Theorist  International Seminar On Network Theory: Network Multidimensionality In The Digital Age, Feb 2010, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Los Angeles, United States. hal-00972865 Dave Harris Network is 'of use whenever action is to be redistributed', as many examples show in science and technology, when black boxes are opened after some accident or catastrophe, such as the Columbia shuttle disaster which involved a large network including NASA and its organisation. There are examples in epistemology as well, for example Newton did not write as an isolated person but was 'the centre of a huge web' (3) of information. The shows that 'the production of object and of objectivity is… Portrayed simultaneously in the world and inside their networks of production'. Networks become not just things that have the shape of the net but 'a mode of enquiry' connecting 'unexpected beings necessary for any entity to exist'  (4) registering formally invisible elements, stirring the deployment of attributes of a particular substance, that substances are not self-contained but subsist through a complex ecology of its own. There is now a 'matter of concerns', which include political ones. The definition of an entity, 'an agent, an accident, an actor' means deploying its attributes or network, rather like defining a wave call possible 1930s — an entity can be 'seized' as an actor or as a network, corpuscles or wave, reversibly. The development of IT has expanded this notion. Sloterdijk as said that the network is a poor metaphor because it offers only nodes, edges and occasional circles and we need to draw instead 'enclosed and habitable spaces and envelopes'. The art of Saraceno is one solution (illustration on 5 — sort of spheres made up of spiderwebs), very dense connections 'until Annette ends up being indistinguishable from a cloth', although the actual artwork consists of elastic tenses which can be pushed and pulled to show effects. Saraceno is actually one of those called 'ecological artists'— ecology is 'the deployment of all the attributes necessary for any self-contained entity to subsist… To be self-contained — that is to be an actor – and to be thoroughly dependent — that is to be a network — is to say twice the same thing', although philosophers have not grasped this, having been misled by issues like the verb to be in the problem of identity rather than investigating the verb to have in the notion of properties. There is now a new incarnation in real life nets and webs and planets, including Gaia. Nets also subvert the notion of distance [and the other subversions like levels], and the universal is now localiseable, something produced by the network. Digitalin tea has increased the material dimension networks: 'the more digital, the less virtual and the more material a given activity becomes' (6) — no GPS without satellites, no drones without headquarters, no banking without Internet connections and so on. It is now totally unlike the imaginary mental world that could be conjured by reading a novel. Similarly the skills needed to pass, started by Garfinkel could only once be qualitatively described, but now avatars on the web can be 'counted, dated, weighed and measured… Fully incarnated' (7). What was once possible only to be imagines can now be rendered fully visible and describable. This is also characteristic of networks — they are mostly composed of 'voids', they can be interrupted, they are dependent on the material conditions, they cannot expand beyond local conditions. As a result they 'get rid of phantoms such as nature, society or power, notions that before were able to expand mysteriously everywhere at no cost' The implications for social theory are considerable, for example in ending the split between individuals and societies, which emerged only because the available data was discontinuous, this led statisticians, for example to 'focus on the individual as little as possible in order to get as quickly as possible at the aggregates', and thus inevitably to 'grant to those aggregates some sort of existence by themselves', which is where collective phenomena in Durkheim began. Once this is realised, 'social theory is finished. Political implications have been considerable as individuals fight for the rights. Tarde, however had a different tradition, stressing that the stress between individual and society was 'simply an artefact of the rudimentary way data are accumulated '(8). Digital data has now brought about a different conception of collective existence, a new way of tracing it, as we navigate from individual profiles to aggregates of thousands of profiles, going both back and forth. This was not possible in the old days of aggregated statistics, because the individual had disappeared, lending the aggregates a more substantial reality. Computer screens make it much easier to do this now. This has ended the abstract nature of debates between individuals vs society. We are now aware of the complexity and the possibility of 'multiple fully reversible combinations' of individuals and aggregates (9). The navigational tools themselves to occupy centre stage. The data scape, the navigational skills, and AMT itself has had an effect on the classic arguments, with its two levels and their discontinuity [in the sciences that Tarde denied two levels rather than occupying one individual level, which is what Durkheim alleged]. The whole notion that the whole is superior to its parts is due to the discontinuity in data collection. Individuals are reduced to a few properties. Certainly Los Angeles society, say looks massive and intimidating compared to  individuals, but it has not separated itself out, as Durkheim argued, become sui generis. The whole split depends on a lack of information about individuals and their interactions, the conduits which have produced the whole, and the collective existence. We can now instead study individuals, of a new kind, not atoms, but profiles 'made of long lists of properties', accumulated in a diverse number of ways. These profiles also blur the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research, because finally individual data can be quantified, although not in the usual sense. Certainly the sense of individual interaction has to change, since individuals are now defined by lists of other individuals necessary for their subsistence, as in the link between actors and networks — an individual is defined as someone son, someone's friend, someone's employee and so on. These identities can be preserved by social network software is permutations, so we can move beyond the notion of an individual as a self-contained atom. 'No wonder that… When entering any interaction, though simplified and castrated atoms of produced unintended consequences: too little was known about them in the first place' (11). Interaction itself is misleading because action is itself to distributed to be defined like this [a s m ple two-way] i hello weaken your The notion of the whole also needs to be modified, and a collective ceases to be sacred and superior. It can even be 'inferior, something smaller than the parts', as Tarde said. It is less complex than individuals who make up [because it's now a summary type aggregate]. We have to reject the usual metaphors of collective phenomena: (a) organicist metaphors (b) invisible hand as a kind of calculator (c) an emergent structure. All these begin with atomic individuals and a lower level. A preferred metaphor would be one based on the way standard circulate, fashion, or epidemics, and these are much easier to visualise digitally. Some data will of course be inaccessible, but this does not the usual metaphors unassailable. Some digital simulations can actually help provide data, and some architects and planners have devised digital platforms to assist 'collective or participatory design'. The social and superior misses what an organisation is and limits what can be done politically. There might be new collaborations between sociologists and others, for example biologists opposing 'the equally misleading notion of an organism' (13). It helps oppose scientism where physicists 'try to make individual human atoms just as simpleminded as atoms in physics or ants in entomology'. This must simply ignore the large amount of information that we already have on individual profiles and offering simple models of interaction. Entomologists now understand the building of elaborate structures like the anthill 'without relying on any notion of super organism' and we should do the same societies, a much better way to imitate the natural scientists. This is the way to make progress from studies of insect societies There are problems, including the difficulties of visualising the mass of data. At the moment, we have to click through all the modes and edges, and the poor visual displays of the Web (14). We need a much more informative and convenient datascape, but one that does allow the crucial reversibility between mass and individual data. The second problem is to fully allow for controversies, a matter of 'the epistemological question of obtaining authority while bypassing the distinction between rational and irrational voices' (15). A case study here is the debate about evolution and climate. Some resort conspiracy theories, others to the 'positivist narrative that Earth's climate speaks directly to… Scientists'… Two types of fundamentalism'. Neither require a network of attributes. He has developed his own school to map controversies on science of politics (MACOSPOL). The intention is to reinvent the newspaper in digital form, in order to make a public actually appear. The notion of a network will be crucial