"Centralized verticality is only one form of organization. The distributed network is simply a..."

“Centralized verticality is only one form of organization. The distributed network is simply a different form of organization, one with its own special brand of management and control.”

-

Alexander Galloway, The Reticular Fallacy

Just moving from a hierarchical structure to a bossless network won’t necessarily change power and politics in work or society. Just moving away from the spoke-and-hub of leaders and followers does not end the power agreements of today’s work culture. This is Galloway’s Reticular Fallacy: the shift from vertical to horizontal, and even to bossless, is not enough. We’re stuck, because we are unwilling to ‘derive an alternative form of sovereignty appropriate for the new rhizomatic societies’.

The new forms of horizontal, flexible, and contingent work are ‘sewn into the mode of production’, not some aspect of new freedoms. They are ‘not the pure and innocent laws of a newer and more just society’: they are just new conventions, new innovations of command and control; where we – through self-management – become both the managed and the Man.

from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/150077049227