HIPERMEDIA

In La Condition Postmoderne, Lyotard (1979) explained the nature of the
social tie according to a conception of modernity and emphasized how this is based
on a technocratic vision in which
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the harmony of needs and hopes of individuals or groups with the functions that the system
provides is now a part of the functioning of the system itself; the real target of the
system that is self-programmed as an intelligent machine, is the optimization of the
global relationship between its input, that is its efficiency. (p. 25)7
Therefore, if we want to slightly exaggerate, we can state that the idea of a social
capital of a community makes the tie an economic characteristic that can be exchanged
like a good weighed on the balance of social relationships. The mechanic solidarity
of the community as substrate to the aggregations leads to the calculated capitalization
of social relationships. Here, we find a notion of community based on
individuals playing their roles and whose bond is mainly based on a “contract” signed
with the others. It is a schematic and grotesque vision that embodies one of the characteristics
given to the term community; here, new communication technologies favor
the construction of K-lines: forms of social intelligence that help individuals to establish
ties with their neighbors.
Anyway, I would suggest we associate the K-lines that build up structured communities
to the metaphor of sociality lines (S-lines). So, telematic networks allow us to
find forms of “organic solidarity,”8 to share memories and affinities without following
forms of rational aggregation.We face a rhizomic structure that allows us to combine
our belongings and to superimpose our friends, free time, and interests. I assume that
thanks to K-lines you can speak about S-lines that are formed thanks to new communication
technologies. In cyberspace webs, we face forms of societies that are mainly
empathic that consequently would oppose contractual societies, even if their copresence
were impossible.We are far from of a mechanicalistic and calculated logic. Emotion
and spontaneity become essential parameters of “being together.” The Web and
its intrinsic dynamics give us many examples of this phenomenon of community as
an aesthetic accident. Therefore, we observe the creation of a community whose
strongest tie is based on the empathy between its own members, passion, and emotion.
Michel Maffesoli clearly explained this communal aesthetics that differentiate
modernity and postmodernity:
The proletarian, the bourgeois could be “historical subjects” with a duty to carry out. Any
theoretic genius, artist and politician could send out a message whose content showed
the direction to be followed. Both existed as abstract and inaccessible entities, that proposed
an objective. . . . This is the difference between abstract and rational periods, and
emphatic periods. The former are based upon the principle of individuating, separating,
the latter are based upon melting within a communal theme, that I would define neotribalism.
(Maffesoli, 1988, p. 22)
Maffesoli’s thought allows us to theorize new forms of aggregation: The phenomenon
of new tribalism does not have a mechanic and targeted structure in which individuals
play social roles and congregate according to the logic of contract. Instead,
we have more complex, organic, and open societies in which people play parts and
come together in affective tribes. Rather than merely considering our communal participation
in connection to social capital, we can also think of it in terms of dépense (G.
Bataille); we let ourselves go and live in a sort of osmosis with the tribes we belong to.
This belonging is not stable, but it is at the same time glittering; the tribe is an
event, a temporary materialization born to the sharing of passions. And if in the case
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of a community we have a strictly structured society, when we speak of tribalism, we
speak of a floating society, imbued with a vitality that defines human unions.
Maffesoli defined this process by using the expression ethics of aesthetics: You observe
sociality forms based on an ethos, that is, a relative behavior that is grounded on the
sharing of an aesthesis, of emotions and passions.
Through the interactions taking place in cyberspace, we face the creation of several
communities: The Internet, a matrix for new human relationships, allows the encounter—
virtual and/or real—between people who share some affinities. Yet these
forms of social aggregation do not necessarily turn into tribes that are an expression
of a fusion, a “warm sociality.” Therefore, new communication technologies allow, at
the same time and in a synergic and contemporary movement, the creation of “communities”—
that is, structured aggregations between individuals, which are targeted,
hierarchical, and instrumental—and the materialization of “tribes”—that is, more
ephemeral forms of association transversal and emphatic among people who play in
the theatre of everyday life. Communities are made up of K-lines; tribes are made up
of S-lines. They are different forms that can live together but that do not coincide.
That is why it is necessary to distinguish them.9