| Titre | "Réseaux" et "Large Technical System" : concepts complémentaires ou concurrents ? | |
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| Auteur | Jean-Marc Offner | |
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Revue | Flux |
| Numéro | no 26, octobre-décembre 1996 | |
| Page | 17-30 | |
| Résumé anglais |
The history of the concept of network should not be confused with that of "network" objects. At the beginning of the 19th century, with Saint-Simon, the history of the network concept was tied to ideas of flow and organic totality; at the end of the same century, network enterprises, particularly in electricity, invented a new paradigm around the principles of web and universal service. The network economy was born. After the Second World War, network became synonymous with information commutator, as high-speed connections liberated from spatial requirements were made possible. Today, the network is an idealized form of transactional management and a tool in decentralized co-ordination. Aside from its semantic ambiguity, networks have no inherent vocation for overwhelming size. When networks develop, they may be either intensive or extensive; they may respect institutional boundaries or create their own functional space. But metaphors of the tentacular octopus or the spider inexorably building its web do not hold up to historical analysis. The notion of the Large Technical System, on the other hand, does bring up the question of necessary and uncontrollable growth. Behind the critique of size, is it not rather the types and modalities of control of these networks-LTS which come under question? Centralized or self-managed networks set up différents sorts of questions for both networkers and networking. Source : Éditeur (via Persée) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/flux_1154-2721_1996_num_12_26_1197 |
