Virtuality, Space, and Control.
By Carlos H. Betancourth LL
Columbia University

Abstract.

I will discuss Electronic Environments in relation to issues concerning the Urban Condition; the Acceleration of Change and The Geography of Power. In so doing, I will refer this discussion to design and architecture. In order to do this, I will look at the implications of Virtuality and Virtual Spaces for organizations in which Information, is the main raw-material of work. Since design maybe one of these organizations, I hope this will be of relevance to design organizations. I will read the implications of virtuality for such organizations by looking at the structure of virtual space. Next, I will deal with the implications of virtuality for both, the concept of space and architecture. I will then derive the main limitations of virtuality from its effects on space. I will also try to see how these consequences of virtuality on space and architecture may cause us to re-think what we mean by an 0rganization. I will then suggest ways by means of which electronic environments can help us to overcome the limitations of virtuality. I will end with some comments on some of the main limitations of this electronic environments.

The Structure of Virtuality

Lets briefly look at the structure of the worldwide computer network known as the internet. Unlike telephone calls or fax transmissions, which link specific machines at identifiable locations, a lightning-fast exchange of electronic mail links people at indeterminate locations (Mitchell, 1993, 1995a,1995b;Betancourth, 1994).

The Consequences of Virtuality

By linking people at indeterminate locations, lightning-fast virtual interactions and exchanges in virtual space (video-conferencing, portable telephone, e-mail) de-spatialize interactions. In so doing, they eliminate a dimension of social legibility traditionally provided by spatial cities and their buildings: contrary to what occurs in a spatial city and in a building in which where you are frequently tells who you are, in a virtual exchange there is no such a thing as a better address, and you cannot attempt to define yourself by being seen in the right places in the right company.

What is the role for a government in new communities that are forming in electronic networks? How will lightning-fast, universal communications change the economy and business? How can laws keep up with technologies that blur the issues of intellectual property, copyright and free speech?
What are the main implications of the elimination of a dimension of social legibility for multi-cultural cities?

There are at least three implications that maybe worth outlining already: The first implication that for a lack of a better word we could call cultural and as it relates to the problem of urbanism, may be as follows:
by eliminating a dimension of social legibility, the net in a certain sense may contribute to the dislocation of what R. Sennett calls, the use of image repertoire to interpret urban geography and an encounter with strangers (Sennett, 1992; 1994. But see also Barthes (1978) and K. Lynch (1960). Thus due to this dislocation of a dimension of sociability, it is not an easy nor a quick matter to judge if someone doesnt belong, or is behaving in an inappropriate way in a particular place when that place is the internet (Mitchell, Betancourth, op.cit). Thus, in so doing, the net should also be analysed in terms of what Sennett calls, the problem of dealing with the disturbing sensations which potentially loom in a diverse multicultural community (op.cit) (For a more developed reflexion on this, see Betancourth, 1995a)

The second implication relates to both, economic space and economic organizations:
For economic organizations, whose lifeblood is information, virtuality-that is, the elimination of a dimension of social legibility-, means that work is what you do, not where you go. What this means is then that people involved in virtual exchanges operate on their own, out of no common place-out of sight and perhaps out of touch but on line. And this maynot be without serious consequences for such economic organizations.
For instance, at present, when a company receives an order by e-mail, it cannot be sure that the message actually came from the purported sender, hasnt been tampered with, and was sent on the date claimed (The Economist, 5th-11 August 1995; The Ecomist, August 19th-25th, 1995; Mitchell, op.cit; Betancourth, op.cit).
It follows from here that e-mail is all based on trust. But, if the internet is based on trust, it maybe a good place for academic discourse but useless for electronic commerce. Yet, since the need of virtual organizations and electronic commerce seems to be a part of globalization, solutions have to be found to this problem.
As we are going to argue it below, these solutions implies the emergence of a regulation and planning industry. But, these solutions may be limited in their scope and/or they may conflict with the potentials of the internet to dislocate the use of image repertoire to interpret urban geography and an encounter with strangers. This then may imply that a search for organizational models based on trust rather than on control, may become important.

But, before moving into this, let us first, notice in passing that the structure of virtuality isn't without serious implications either, for the sociological concept of space (as developed by for instance, in Castells, 1972, and in Harvey, 1990): From the point of view of social theory, space is the material support and articulation of practices that are simultaneous in time.Space brings together in physical contiguity practices that are simulta neous in time. This then means that the notion of space is assimilated to contiguity. But, virtuality introduces the possibility of practices that are simultaneous in time, that dont necessarily rely on physical contiguity.
Which is to say that if we are going to account for the existence of material supports of simultaneity that dont rely on physical contiguity, we would have at least to separate the concept of material support from the notion of contiguity (Due to space limitations we would not go into this now).

Virtuality (and globalization) offers then to organizations where infor mation is the raw material of work, the challange of the idea of an activity without a building as its home.Let us now try to imagine the idea of an organization whose lifeblood is information, as a concept; not as a place; as an activity, not as a building.

An Organization as a Concept rather than as a Place:

The participants in such virtual organization, will communicate from wherever they happen to be, via e-mail, mobile phone and video-conferencing. As result of this, it is not necessary for this organization to have all the same people in the same place at the same time. With virtualization it then becomes possible for more work to be done outside the traditional office (NYT, June 25, 1995).Which means that if such an organization was say, a library, a University, or an accounting firm, it would have to consider replacing the grand building with a network of tiny libraries in every town through a region, each linked to a central facility and, to every library in the world if need be. Or to put it in other words:

"the growing part of companies in the economy based on ideas and information dont need a close proximity to good roads and railways that can supply their raw material and deliver their goods to market" (Bhagwati, quoted in Bradsher, 1995):

"Texas instrument for example doesnt have to worry about infrastructure for its computer-chip-designing operation in Bangalore, India. All it needs is a private satellite link" (Bradsher, 1995)

It can then be suggested that these virtual-exchanges inagurate a "new logic of industrial location". Castells, Scott and others (1988) have already re ferred to this locational strategy as the new industrial space. Since this space is characterized by the technological and organizational ability to se parate the production process in different locations while reintegrating its unity through telecommunications linkages, and micro-electronics based preci sion in the fabrication of components, we could also refer to this space, as a new industrial virtual space.

But as libraries and international companies disperse their operations, as they set up factories, service outlets, subsidiaries, affiliates, subcon tractors, etc, overseas, what are the sort of questions and dilemmas they are faced with? That is, if tele-technology makes possible a new kind of organization, what are the main characteristics of such organization? And which are the main barriers to such organization and its form? I would like to propose to deal with this question by briefly looking at the architectural consequences of virtuality.

Virtual Organizations

Several writers ( Baden-Fuller 1992; Hampden-Turner 1990; and, Handy, 1989; 1994; 1995), have argued that when intelligence is the primary intangible, inexhaustible asset of an organization, the idea of virtuality implies that large part of organizations will be made up of ad hoc mini-organizations. The organization becomes more like a collection of project groups. These projects groups are collated for a particular time and purpose, drawing their participants from both inside and outside the parent organization. Some of these project groups maybe permanent, some temporary, and some in alliance with other parties.

"Engineers in the USA can work on a project during the day, then send it electronically for more work in Asia while they sleep"(Bradsher, 1995)

Such organizations, instead of adding functions, substract or sub-contract them. They may constitute networks of production and management, whose flexibility needs not to internalize workers and suppliers, but to be able to access them when it fits, and in the time and quantities that are required in each instance. This flexibility then means that proyect groups in such organizations and virtual exchanges, maybe then activities rather than buildings..

Thus, instead of being a castle, a home for life for its defenders, a virtual organization will be more like an apartment block, an association of temporary residents gathered together for mutual convinience.The apartment block may in fact, not have a physical existence, because the project groups or clusters don't have to be in the same place or even employed by the same organization. Some companies are no more than temporary project groups, put together from various sources with a specific task to do, meeting mostly by video conferences, e-mail and voice mail. Such virtual organization may be discerned more easily on the computer screen than in the physical world. Carried to its limits, such a company is hollowed out, its staff reduced to a minimum, its activities carried out at dispersed locations, the organization itself becoming what Handy has called an "unseen organization" as a "nexus of contracts". At this point one shoud ask and wonder about whether a company is, in the future, going to be anything more than a box of contract. Is a box of contracts a sustainable basis for efficiency and control, or is it a recipe for disintegration? What will hold such an organization back from becoming such a box of contracts? Such a dispersal and disintegration of economic activity also mean that companies run into questions of maintaining centralized control. Moreover, as a box of contracts, a virtual organization search for wealth might have destroyed wealth and split society in two. The challange is then to control an organization that is notthere in any sense in which we are used to. How can management hold the virtual corporation together? How can this challange be met, is a question I would like to deal with next, by looking at the spatial and architectural consequences of virtuality.

The Space of the virtual organization.

How is then this flexibility and adaptability of the virtual organization, better served? Another way to ask the same maybe: what does represent the the "natural units" for economic growth in the future?
Professor Sassen has suggested (1991; 1994) that this flexibility and adaptability is better served by a combination between agglomerations of core networks and global networking of these cores, and their dispersed, supplementary networks, via telecommunications and air transportation. Roberto Unger, has also referred to such kind of industrial reorganization as a vanguardist types of industrial reguimes, with networks of small and mediumsized firms linked together in systems of so-called cooperative competition (Unger, 1994; 1995). Small and medium-sized firms, or decentralized divisions of larger firms, compete and cooperate at the same time, pooling financial, commercial, and technological resources.Thus, Ungers, vanguardist types of industrial reguimes, maynot be too far from Ohmaes new region-states of 5 million to 20 million people, possibly crossing international borders.
These new region states represent for Ohmae, the "natural units for economic growth in the future, because they are large enough to enjoy economies of scale but too small to entertain delusions of self-sufficiency" (Ohmae, 1995).
For Unger, this mixture of competition and cooperation makes it possible to combine the advantages of decentralized initiative with those of economies of scale. More generally, it helps create an environment favourable to the acceleration of learning: one in which the contrast between conception and execution weakens. (Unger, 1994. But see also, Storper and Walker, 1989; 1992; as well as Lash and Urry; 1994; and The Economist, Greenpeace: a model for business, August 19th, 1995. For an study on the notion of new regionstates as applied in the case of The Randstad Holland (as "Stad-geweest"), see Betancourth, 1993. See also The Economist, Managing Dutch Cities, August 19th-25th, 1995).
Thus, for Unger (1995), this kind of industrial reorganization has spatial implications: it requires some separate facilities, but also others that are cooperative-for example, shared technology, shared educational facilities, shared social and artistic spaces.

Professor Sassen has also suggested that such networks contribute to strengthen the concentration of high level activities in a few nodes.
Moreover, since dispersal of economic activity overseas means that international companies run into questions of maintaining centralized control, the capacity for global dispersal itself raises the importance of central control functions in agglomerated locations (Sassen, op.cit).

Yet, these advanced services activities also seem to disperse and decentralize to the periphery of metropolitan areas, to smaller metropolitan areas, to less developed regions, and to some less developed countries (for evidence on spatial decentralization of services, see Castells, 1989; Daniels, 1993; Marshall et al, 1988; M. Dunford and G. Kafkalas, 1992). It may then follow from this that what maybe significant about this spatial system of advanced services activities maybe neither concentration or decentralization, since both processes seem to be taking place at the same time throughout countries and continents. What matters the most may then be the versatility of the networks of this spatial system. Which is to say that the Global city maynot be a place but a process. A process by which centers of production and consumption of advanced services are connected in a global network on the basis of information flows (For a further development of this, see Betancourth, 1995a, Betancourth, 1996).

The following are some research questions that maybe of interest concerning the problem above about the flexibility of the network (due to time and space limitations, we will only list these questions):

First; the extent to which this (international) interdependence does or does not erode the capacity of nation states to act effectively. Now, since this interdependence depends in turn on the capacity for instantaneous transmission, we will come back to this issue later as the issue of the implications of such capacity for questions of control.

A second question maybe as follows:
the role of redistribution policies in high income countries-taxation for the benefit of countless claimants; eg, farmers, construction companies and poorer regions-or the socalled traditional national interest as a excuse for subsidy and protection? (Betancourth, op.cit) (and thus of planning) on limiting the further development of such new region states above. Or, the role of bureaucratic regulation from the center and of an extensive web of political commitments in inhibiting change (or the tendency of politically settled communities to build large webs of internal commitments to their various members, thereby greatly weakening their capacity to respond constructively to new challanges and opportunities.).

Third; how does the growth of such region-state spreads to neighboring districts?
Which regions of the world will first take off? Are there prerequisites for success beyond the willingness to open up to world competition? Are region-states flexible (or the flexibility of the network above) because they arent governed as a unit?

The Architecture of Virtuality.

This versatility of the networks may in turn imply that the proyects groups of the above ad hoc miniorganizations maynot have one place to call their own: Organizations collapse and disperse their centers; they spread their center around. There is no need to have all the people with responsabilities across the organization sitting in the same central place. Proyect groups may exist as activities not as buildings, their only visible sign is an e-mail address. Inside the building that do exist, hot-desking maybe increasingly common. In international business video-conferencing maybe the norm. Trains may double as mobile offices, with the commuters doze interrupted by the ringing of personal phones and the bleeping of portable computers. And if virtual exchanges mean that we will be able to call anyone without knowing where they are or what they are doing, the office as the home of the telephone and of the computer-with a secretary to answer it and a line plugged into the wall-will become an antiquated and very expensive notion that organizations can ill afford. But, the formation of virtual business networks and the trend toward the disaggregation of labor above, doesnt imply the end of the office, but the diversification of working sites for a large fraction of the population; its professional segment. Increasingly mobile telecomputing equipment will then enhance this trend towards the office-on-the-run (Business Week, 1994). Thus, for an extra $20 a night Westin Hotels will rent a room that can double as an office(NYT, August 2, 1995).
Power doesnt need to be concentrated in one place. The center can now be well informed but small, it can be strong but dispersed. The nerve center of the organization can be in the chief executives laptop computer-and several others simultaneously.

This new, dispersed center has still, however, got to talk to itself as well as contemplete its screens. Videoconferences, voice mail, e-mail and other technological devices help, but there maynot be real substitute for looking someone in the eye while you talk or they talk. Dispersed centers also mean a lot of travel and red-eyes. These low-bandwith connections cannot fully substitute for face to face contact. And, Assuming that higher-bandwith connections and telepresence (when you are able to initiate a business conversation by shaking hands at a distance), are not yet able to make machine-mediated conversation and companionship seem better bargains than face-to-face, it could be suggested that the physical centers of these dispersed virtual organizations, increasingly begin to resemble club-houses (Or even Hotels, as in the case of companies like The Ernst & Young accounting firm, NYT, op.cit).

Thus, if there is an office in the future, it will be more like a club house: a place, not for doing daily work, but, for meeting, eating and greeting, with rooms reserved for activities, not for particular people. Thus,

" we would like to create a campus-like atmosphere where we can host customers, train employees from around the world and teleconference whenever necessary" (IBM Planning a scaled-down new headquarters, NYT, Real Estate Section, August 20, 1995).

A similar idea of a (virtual) organization as an association of (temporary) residents is also to be found in Ungers characterization of a similar club-house as a dense network of associational life which in turn operates as the enabling condition of economic innovation and good government at the local level. In other words, if people belong to clubs, to churches, and so forth, then they will have a variety of forms by which to make connections outside the family and outside the work place (Unger, GSD News, 1995.). At this point one could think of the designers job, as the design of spaces that encourages connections, and thus as the job of expanding the collection of spatial forms available by which people can think about their forms of connection (Unger, GSD News, 1995. But see also, Sennett, 1992; 1994; 1995, and Betancourth, 1995).

Yet, it seems to us that critical attention will have to be given to this idea of associational life at least, in relation to what Handy calls virtual organizations (Handy, op.cit).
But before we move into this, it seems to us that at this point one may have to begin to wonder what will happen to the cathedrals of corporate power, the towering blocks which shape our sky-lines. And indeed, if those in the center are not all-seeing, we may find them coming physically closer to the ground. A changing skyline may then be the outward sign of subsidiarity and virtuality. Thus, not only companies like Ernst & Young accounting firm run many of their offices just like hotels, allowing employees to check in only temporarily, but the tallest building at MicrosoftÕs headquarters near Seattle soars three stories (NYT, op.cit). IBM is also planning a scaled down new headquarters (See NYT, August 20, 1995). And Visa is making arrangements for cyberfinance (On Visas plans for a cyberhome and a virtual bank and the implications of this low-cost competition for banks still tie to bricks and mortar, see The Economist Sept 16th 1995. p 87)

There are some serious implications for architecture already at work here: The virtualization of space tends to blur the meaningful relationship that previously existed between architecture and society. Because action takes place at a distance, in virtual space, around the world, and across cultures, virtuality not only tends to uproot experience, history and specific cultures as the background of meaning, but it may lead to the generalization of a a-historical, a-cultural architecture. The ideological mission of architecture tends to disappear. There is not any need now to express the value of Western Capital in architecture. Thus, corporate America doesnt need to express itself in buildings (NYT, op.cit. And, NYT, August 20, 1995.). And the media anyway, may provide them with that identity much better. Thus, from the Gothic cathe- drals to todays architecture and by way of virtualization (print, radio, TV, film, video, etc), architecture may have lost its symbolic condition as a strong media. All these above bring us in touch with the limitations of virtuality. These limitations maybe of two kinds: they relate to the loss of a sense of place and to the loss of a sense of control.

The Loss of A Sense of Place.

Information substitutes for high-cost inventory. By speeding the responsiveness of the factory to the market and making short runs economical, better and more instantaneous information makes it possible to reduce the amount of components and finished goods sitting in warehouses or railroad sidings. Just in-time delivery of parts, based on computerized information, seems to be slashing inventories everywhere. These cuts in inventory, not only translate back into smaller space and real estate costs, but also into reduced taxes, insurance and overhead. And even though the initial cost of computers, software, information and tele-communications may itself be high, this savings in space and real estate costs, mean that a company needs less capital to do the same job it did in the past (See also, NYT, op.cit).

Add to this the possibilities that the World Wide Web offer as a medium on which to practice new conventions of advertising: when a company goes onto the web, it has no need to take space from a media-owner. It may hire computer space from an Internet provider, but it can set up its own server in-house which allows access to anyone on the Net. And even though, there are on-line newspapers and magazines in which companies can place advertisements, there is not need to use these either.Thus, the monopoly which media-owners had on advertising space for so many years in the real world, maybe shattered in cyberspace and virtuality. And since advertisers in the net cannot guarantee consumers will come across commercial messages in the same way as they do in print, radio or TV, internet advertising sites will have to serve as shop windows from which you can buy something. The development and adoption of computer security technology will in turn, enable you to click a line on your screen and your credit card number will be transmitted to the company and its product will be with you in the post. Already there are florists, booksellers, record shops and clothing manufacturers offering this service (Canter, 1995). (On the use of the internet as a form of movie promotion, and thus of reaching mass markets, see NYT, August 22, 1995, The media business, p.D6). Add to this that one of the advantages of the net is that everybody can publish. It is a free medium. A user can cut out the middle man-the publisher and the agent and everybody else (See Harpers Magazine, August, 1995).
Again, this suggests the breakdown of traditional commercial structures. Just as companies are being allowed to bypass media-owners, so they can now bypass retailers.

As a result of all this above, and, relatively speaking, information seems to reduce the need for capital per unit of output in a given economy. Computerized equipment not only substitutes for human labor but also for capital. Thus, by saving space and real estate costs, as well as media and retail space, information maybe a threat to the power of finance, media owners and retailers.
At a more specific level, the virtual office (e.g., the mobile office and the office as a clubhouse) above may also be a threat to the executive, for whom a room of his own, or at least, a desk of his own, has been his security blanket for a century or more. For such an executive, a sense of place and a sense of purpose are still very important. E-mail and voice mail and the immediacy they are able to provide, arent for this executive, the same as watching the eyes of others. It may then be expected that few executives are going to be eager advocates of virtuality when virtuality means that work is what you do, not where you go.

What happens when information starts to reduce the need for capital as well as to eliminate a sense of place and of purpose?
Moreover, information-the raw material of the virtual organization-, is also a slippery, intangible and inexhaustible asset capable of being used by many people that-and as distinguished from land and factories-, isnt easy to fence off and defend. And whether those intangible assets are the research in a companys pipeline, the brands, the know-how, or the networks of experience, they amount in the end to one thing: the people. Those people can and often do walk out of the door (notice in passing that for Lash and Urry, there is nothing problematic about this. Lash and Urry, op.cit, p.99).

Thus, the assets of the new information-based organizations are, as result, increaingly fragile. Information is then a raw material that cannot be easily owned.

Given all these consequences of virtuality on space, executives and property, nor only is the virtual organization a difficult thing to hold together, but, a conflict may then emerge between those controlling an industrial society, and those wanting to replace it with a network society. One should then expect that some sort of resistence to virtualization may emerge from all this. And since what seems to be at the bases of this resistence is a loss of a sense of place, the question then becomes: How and for what can we substitute this sense of place? The challange is then to manage an organization that is not there in any sense in which we are used to. The question is then how to hold the virtual organization together? How can you see what you cannot see?

To meet this challange and to deal with this question above maybe important and urgent, because, whether we like it or not, the mixture of globalization and tele-technology means that more and more people will be spending time in, partly unseen virtual organizations and spaces,-out of sight if not out of touch.

For managers this may imply that no longer will their colleagues be down the corridor, available for an unscheduled meeting or a quick progress check. Most meetings will have to be scheduled, even those on video, and will therefore become more infrequent. Managers will have to learn how to run organizations without meetings and without corridors(On the effects of information for the architecture of an organization, see Betancourth, 1988, 1992). But most important: managers will have to get accustomed to working with and managing those whom they donÕt see, except on rare and prearranged occasions. And this maybe harder than it sounds.

Thus, the problem faced by organizations here, isnt only one of how to maintain centralized control(Sassen, op.cit) in conditions of virtuality, but of how the implications of virtuality on space and control above, may require to re-think this very same old notions of control. A problem here is then how does a manager work and manage those whom she doesnt see, when the condition for control is precisely to be able to see them?

The Loss of A Sense of Control.

Now if to work with and manage those whom managers dont see is a difficult task, it is mainly because managers dont want their employees to do their work where it suits them, and then send it down the wire. And this as result of the fact that managers want their employees where they can see them.
Thus, Editors, sitting down a long room behind large plateglass windows, like to be able to see what everyone is doing, to check the work, or to interrupt it whenever they need to give out a new assignment. Which means that managers donÕt trust their employees. As result, organizations are then arranged on the assumption that people cannot be trusted or relied on, even in tiny matters. Oversight systems similar to those described by M.Foucault (1975) are set up to prevent anyone from doing the wrong thing, whether by accident or design (Betancourth, 1988). An organization as a system of checkers, and of checkers checking checkers exists because managers no longer trust people to act for anything but their own short-term interests. An organization arranged on the bases of control and of lack of trust, may become a barrier to virtualization.

It may follow from this above that, virtuality requires trust to make it work. Unger has also suggested that systems of cooperative competition, depend on networks of associational life which in turn are at the basis of the trust needed for people to be able to take risks and to engage in economic and political experimentation (Unger, 1995, p.p.7,8).
Thus, the nature of ownership and control, that is, the so-called social relations of production seems to prevent the further development of the means of production, that is, of virtualization, or in Ungers words, of systems of cooperative competition as vanguardist types of industrial reguimes (Unger, op.cit).
But, since organizations in which information is the raw material of work may be exposed to a constant pressure to virtualize, the question for these organizations then then becomes:
How can you run an organization based on trust rather than control? What are the rules of trust? And whatever the rules of trust maybe, how can they be embodied in virtual exchanges? What are the implications of this virtual requirement for trust, for a concept of 'centrality' grounded on the notion of control? It may then follow from this above, that if we are to take advantage of the virtual organization, we will have to substitute a sense of place for a sense of community, and, to rediscover how to run organizations based more on trust than on control, since virtuality requires trust to make it work. In what follows next we will briefly deal with the principles of trust and how these principles can be embedded in virtual space.

The principles of trust.

Due to space limitations, let me summarize them as follows (But, see Handy; op.cit; as well as Winograd, 1986; Rorty, 1979, 1991; Unger 1995; Sennett, 1995; Fukuyama, 1995; Kotkin, 1993; and Lash and Urry; 1994): What maybe important about the principles of trust, is that, an organization based on trust rather than on control may be an organization of collegues, peers and friends (some sort of Agora. Betancourth, 1994a). For such an organization to have any chance of success, in a situation in which action is action at a distance, its members would have to know each other very well, have total confidence to do their jobs and a shared commitment-almost a passion-, for the same goal.
But, a shared commitment still requires belonging and touch (Handy and Kotkin, op.cit)
. The combination of work and play as it occurs in corporate conference resorts (theme parks) could provide this sense of belonging to a community. In fact, Unger suggests that it is a dense network of of associational life-such as it manifests in the fact of belonging to a club or to a church-, what is at the basis of the trust, needed for people to be able to take risks and to engage in economic and political experimentation. Thus, a corporate conference resort may already be an element within that collection of spatial forms produced by the designer and by which people can think about their forms of connection (Notice in passing that the disagreement between Unger and the other members of the panel discussion on public space, maybe an apparent disagreement. Unger, 1995, op.cit. p13, 14).
Such conference resorts may indeed, become lubricants of virtuality: occassions not only for getting to know each other but also for reinforcing corporate goals and re-thinking corporate strategies. It may then follow from here, that a possible way to avoid disintegration, and thus, a way to gel the goals of small units with the goals of the larger group; or the small and medium sized firms that make up both, Ungers systems of cooperative competition, and Handys ïvirtual organizations, is through trust, bonding, touch and community.

But, notice that since the main limitations to virtuality above, were the loss of a sense of place, what the principles of trust propose in order to overcome these barriers, is to replace a sense of place by a sense of community. What the principles of trust are suggesting is then that an organization conceived as a community understood in turn, as a network of small units or families, or clubs, is the organizational form needed for controlling a virtual organization.

Thus, according to Kotkin,

"at the family-owned Chung Cheong Group, faxes and air connections allow for the monitoring of literally dozens of businesss scattered from Los Angeles to Thailand without the need for a central control system or a formal board of directors".(op.cit:27-28. Emphasis added)

Now, before moving into the possible limitations of this approach, let us see how these principles can be translated into ïelectronic environments( We have already suggested some of the prototypes by means of which, these principles can be translated into physical environments).
How is the concept of a company, meaning a fellowship, a group of companions, a club-house, re-translated into an electronic environment? This may imply to create communities that one can describe but that dont necessarily belong to any place. How are these virtual villages and cities created?

Electronic Environments.

Today, the term Cyberspace seems to denote the world of current electronic networks which users are said to experience as a surfers paradise, agreat good place of infinitely pleasurable anarchy.
The myth of freedom on thesuperhighway is a commonplace of contemporary media comment(Negroponte, 1995;Gilder, 1995).Yet, the idea of networks as common ground without boundaries,fences or no entry doesnt seem to mix well with the principles of trust required by the virtual organization above. These principles require specialized software and a secret password to log on in the first place. Secret passwords, subscription accounts, credit card numbers, Aliases and software surrogates, are all attempts to construct an electronic identity (Mitchell, 1993; Betancourth 1994a). Secret passwords then embody the principles of trust required by a virtual organization: they maybe able to guarantee an organizational architecture made up of constant groupings.
Moreover, surrounding information, with copy-right, electronic passwords and codes maybe also a way to own this slippery, intangible, inexhaustible substance capable of being used by many people at once.

Thus, Lash and Urry (1994; pp 163-164) have argued that advanced services (software, personal finance, education and health, business services, the culture industries and parts of hotel, catering and retail services), which play an increasing role in the contemporary accumulation process and restructuration, are governed by copyright law, which is literally the exclusive right to make copies, copies of an idea(emphasis added, chb).

Thus, the typical kind of use of intellectual property rights in the culture industries is to copy intellectual property, through copying it and selling it. The main production process is then the copying of already acquired intellectual property. This intellectual rights and property are in turn the main form of capital in the culture industries:it is the main element of constant fixed capital which transfers value to the product.

Lash and Urry (op.cit, chpt 5), seem to be suggesting here, that it is this system of governance by copyright law what in turn generates a counteraction by centralized finance and distribution against disintegrated production; that is, against what Handy above (op.cit) calls, virtuality. This counteraction in turn guarantees that power remains or even gains in concentration: there is then an irreducible core in the culture industries and this core is not even the creative process which is also outsourced and disintegrated, but, the exchange of finance for rights in intellectual property.

Thus, firms can only exploit or make money from cultural objects, when they have been juridically converted into intellectual property. Only when firms are able to exclude other entrepreneurs and consumers from rights to the use of cultural objects can the culture industry survive (Lash and Urry, op.cit, pp134. Emphasis addded, chb). Or, in the words, of The Economist, at present, publishers, studios, software firms and the rest make most of their money from controlling the distribution of their products. They do this by invoking copyright law (publishers, software firms) or restricting availability (TV and cable networks (The Economist, July 22nd-28th 1995. Emphasis added, chb).

We could in turn paraphrase Professor Sassen above, and add that, on the one hand, and as result of this system of governance, the need to control distribution strengthens the concentration of high level activities in a few nodes' and thus that, the capacity for global dispersal itself raises the importance of central control functions in agglomerated locations (Sassen, op.cit. See also NYT, July 23, 1995). That is, as production is increasingly outsourced to leave a core of finance and distribution functions, the cultural industries become business services (lash and Urry, op.cit, p 142).

And on the other hand, it could also be suggested that due to this very same system of governance that contribute to strengthen the concentration of high level activities in a few nodes, the need to control distribution, transform the net into some sort of city, since in a sense, passwords and the like, are ways to fence off and defend that on which, wealth and power maybe based, namely, the property of information ( Cavazos 1995).

Thus instead of the freedoms currently claimed by internet users what we seem to have is also a growing industry of cyber-space regulation and governance, which is designed to counter the perceived ability of hackers, virus bombers, software pirates (e.g., the recent Chinese software piracy), and computer pornographers to subvert the new world order (On The communication decency act, see Bennahum, 1995).

The Net Reconceived as A Cybercity/Electronic Agora:

The Rights Industry, and The Question of Control.

The myth that cyberspace cannot be policed reflects the perception that up to know it has not needed policing. The requirements of the virtual organization may change all this. And indeed, as spatial cities, that arenÕt only condensations of activity that maximize accessibility and promote interaction, the net can also be designed as such cities, that is, as a (non-architectural) structure for organizing and controlling access and owning information: in the net, you enter and exit places by establishing and breaking logical linkages, not by physical travel. The rights-industry becomes the architect and the planner of the net as such structure of access and exclusions: The rights industry also subdivides the net into districts, neighborhoods, and turfs, legally partitioned by property lines and jurisdictional boundaries, and segmented into nested enclosures by fences and walls. It is in this sense that one may talk of the net as a Cybercity and as an Electronic Agora (Mitchell, op.cit, Handy, op.cit). Such cybercities and electronic Agoras could then provide that form of belonging and touch, of community and extended family, required by the virtual organization.

Now, even it is very important to look at the implications for the culture of the networks of this redesign of the net as a cybercity of access and exclusions by the rights-industry (Betancourth, 1994), attention would have to be given to the following:
Recall that for Lash and Urry (1994), advanced services are governed by copyright law, that is, by the exclusive right to make copies of an idea and of anintellectual property and to sell it (Lash and Urry op.cit, p.163-164).
But, because, making and distributing copies are tasks that computers and networks perform with ease, some people may argue that it is impossible to protect digital media from counterfeiters(The Economist, op.cit)
Thus, even if you surround, fence off and defend information with fences and wall that is, with a cybercity of electronic passwords and codes, sooner or later some hacker, some software pirate, will come along and set information loose just for fun (which brings us back not only to the problem of a conflict between those who would keep information frozen as property and those who would let it free, but also to the issue of the resistence of net users against the making of electronic-objects).

The Economist calls this situation, The Distribution puzzle: Once products are turned into digits, however, it is much harder to control distribution...much of the same material will be accessible for free on the internet..and as more information moves on-line, the distribution channels are simply going to break down (op.cit. emphasis added, chb. See also, The Economist August 5th-11th,95). Add to this the problem that controlling the power of the media by controlling the source and the channel, maybe limited by the fact that nobody is able to regulate the way in which the addressee uses the message (Barthes, 1988 Eco, 1990), and what we have here is an inability to control distribution that deserves further attention than Lash and Urry seem to be willing to give to it (But see the NYT August 6, 1995 Money and Business Section, on sport programming as a commodity that is marketable anywhere in the world and cannot be duplicated, as films and TV programs can be).

And in fact, even if Lash and Urry seem to recognize the existence of something like software and tape piracy (op.cit, p135), at no point this doesnt seem to have an effect on their argument: thus, at no point in their argument publishers who sell their wares on-line seem to risk losing control of presentation and copyright(The Economist, op.cit): agents still are able to influence production decisions such as the physical appearance of the book (lash and Urry, op.cit, p.117).
Yet, banks, now among the keenest diversifiers into on-line services..will have even less influence over the quality and security of their services(The Economist, op.cit). Moreover, one of the advantages of the net is that everybody can publish. Thus, you can cut out the middle man-the publisher and the agent and everybody else who is said by Lash and Urry to influence production decisions (On this See Harpers Magazine, August, 1995). Worse, as services such as banking move to a common interface (eg, Intuits software) their brand strenght will be diluted. If customers bank with Intuit or Microsoft, they may come to care less and less about the identity of the real bank at the other end of the line..nobody looks for the brand name on a film or CD-ROM; nor will they on-line(The Economist, op.cit). Yet, for Lash and Urry, not only, in the culture industries, value added results from semiotic skills as well as from image (p137, op.cit), but, the selling of brands become in their account the paradigm for the culture industries.
But, if what constitutes the critical mass of contemporary accumulation processes are advanced producer services (Lash and Urry, op.cit, p.164), and if what characterizes these advanced producer services is the selling of brands p.138, op.cit), how is one to account for this contemporary accumulation processes, if it is so that, the brand-strenght of these services can be diluted when they sell their wares on-line?

Moreover, if on the one hand, the location of central control functions in agglomerated locations(Sassen, op.cit) and on the other, the redesign of the net as a city, to fence off and defend the property of information, are the ways to guarantee the control of distribution, but if, the digitalization of cultural products together with the impossibility of controlling the way in which the addressee uses the message, makes it harder to control distribution, how are these spatial and electronic strategies affected?

In other words, if, the cultural industry and its firms can only make money from cultural objects when they control distribution by invoking copyright law (eg, the explotation of exclusive rights in intellectual property, by the copying and selling of an already acquired intellectual property; exclusivity meaning that competitors cannot copy a firms intellectual property in a given territory. Lash and Urry, op.cit, p 136. Emphasis added, chb), but if due to digitalization and the randomness in the variability of interpretation, there is not any guarantee that firms would be able to exclude other entrepreneurs and consumers from rights to the use of cultural objects (eg, the same broadcast material to be made available on-line by the Microsoft and NBC venture, is always accessible for free in the internet; a sort of non-territory. Consumers may also be able to copy intellectual property with the help of audiotaping, photocopying and videotaping), how is then accumulation and survival guranteed in this industry[1]?

It is difficult to see how the location of central control functions in agglomerated locations(Sassen, op.cit), could help to solve this problem. In other words, there isn't guarantee that central control functions in agglomerated locations would be enough to to exclude competitors and consumers and so that a firm could exploit the copyright it has paid for, since, they would have to be able to exclude them from the net, and the net isnt a territory (Betancourth, Mitchell, op.cit). Moreover, digitalization makes it difficult to fence off intellectual property:
Passwords, software agents, electronic agoras, cybercities and cities of bits, and the rights industry, may not be enough to fence off and defend cyber-pro-perties and cybercommunities. Hackers, virus bombers, software pirates and computer pornographers are always able to overcome these cyberwalls and cyberfences:

"A $10 million computer fraud against citibank appeared to be the first successful penetration by a hacker into the systems that transfer trillions of dollars a day around the worlds banks".., "But banking experts said similar breakins were bound to occur with more banking business being done electronically at a time when more powerful personal computers are available..The Hackers work for a company based in St. Petersburg, Russia, were arrested in London, The Netherlands and Israel, and and they tapped into citibanks central computer at 111 Wall Street and made transfers from the accounts of several customers into accounts opened by accomplices at banks in California, and in Israel. Money was also transferred into these accounts from the acount of a citibank cuistomer in Buenos Aires" (NYT, August 19, 1995; Citibank Fraud Case Raises Computer Security Questions. See also, Whitfield Diffie, WashingtonÕs Computer Insecurity, NYT August 19, 1995).

And if as Lash and Urry argue (But see also, Toffler, 1995), intellectual rights are the main form of capital in the culture and software industries, since they add the greatest amount of value to the product, what we are talking about here isnt just about the explotation of capital rather than of labor, but about the possibility that information, digitalization and the net, maybe a threat to the power of finance, media owners and retailers (See, The Loss of A Sense of Place; p 5-7 above).Thus, if what characterizes contemporary accumulation processes is an increasing rate of innovation and thus an increasing participation of information technology in innovation, it would be appropriate to expect, not only that copyright law becomes more important, but that cybercities become more widely available (See, Digital Watermarks, in The NYT, August 7, 1995. See also The Snails revenge in, The Economist, August 5th-11th, 1995)
Yet, since, hackers, virus bombers, software pirates and computer pornographers are always able to overcome these cyber-walls and cyberfences, these processes maynot be free from very important social tensions (Tuffler, op.cit). Moreover, and as we are going to argue it below, this expansion of copyright law and of cyber-cities may not be without serious implications for the process of reflexivity in economic organizations which in the words of Lash and Urry is so fundamental to those very same process of innovation, accumulation and growth.

At this point the ideal of tele-presence as a guide for research in virtual reality may also become relevant, concerning mechanism for the control of distribution (See Mitchell and Betancourth, op.cit. See also Heim, and Betancourth, 1994a). And indeed, Telepresence in the context of a virtual organization could provide those forms of bonding and of touch required for a virtual organization to be able to work: with telepresence you will be able to initiate a business conversation by shaking hands at a distance or say goodnight to a child by transmitting a kiss across continents(Mitchell, 1993; 1995a, 1995b).
Thus, when video rather than text is exchanged, the conventional boundaries of identity lost with the written word, maybe reestablished (Betancourth; Mitchell, op.cit. Stallabrass, 1995; Harpers, 1995)

And this sense of belonging to a community could in fact substitute for the loss of a sense of belonging to a place, which was defined above, as one of the main barriers to the virtual organization. The virtual community as a network of families may then be a way to control the virtual organization. But the question remains as to the implications of these virtual communities.

The Limits of The Virtual Community as a network of Families.

The principles of trust and electronic environments, aim at reducing manageÕs fear of lossing control in conditions of virtuality, by replacing a sense of place for a sense of community, and a sense of control by a sense of trust. In so doing they may in fact, reduce the barriers to virtualization. But, at the same time, they also introduce some sort of electronic agoro phobia, that is, the fear of open space and masses of people; the fear of exchange, of discussion and of contact with the multiple (Betancourth, 1994a). And this may not be without implications for the culture of the networks, when the later is understood as a common ground without boundaries or no-entry, that is, as the most interactive and democratic communication medium that has ever existed(Garry, 1995). Indeed, one could understand the cybercity as the expression of the power of the rights industry to mould the net in its own image. But, we also feel that these virtual communities and extended families need to be questioned mainly because of the implications of this principles of trust for the management and organization of Highly Differentiated Societies. To develop this critique implies to look at the problem of the production of information. Briefly stated this critique may be as follows:

The production of Information.
Pragmatic Virtual Organizations

If, as Charles Handy argues, the meaning of a virtual organization is its purpose (Handy, 1994; 1995), then, INQUIRY in the organization whose raw material is information and intelligence, cannot be defined only as a matter of finding out the nature of something which lies outside the web of beliefs and desires of the virtual community. Instead, one should as in Rorty (1979), reduce this desire for objectivity in inquiry to a search for solidarity.
Winograd (1986) following Dewey, Wittgenstein and Heidegger would also argue, that in such a community, words take their meanings from other words, rather than by virtue of their representative character and transparency to the real. In such communities then, the only usable notion of objectivity is agreement rather than mirroring (Rorty, op.cit). The virtual community then reduces objectivity to solidarity. Which is to say that For Handy as well as forfor Rorty (But, see also Mitchells Cybercities and electronic agoras), the outside of belief or description (the referent), is always already inside, insofar as meaning, isnt filtered through what we believe, but is rather constituted by what we believe.

The problem with this position is that it derives the objects determinacy and structure from that of the subject. Discussing the work of Sellars and Davidson, Rorty writes:What shows us that life isnt just a dream, that our beliefs are in touch with reality, is the causal, non-intentional, nonrepresentational links between us and the rest of the universe(Rorty, 1991).
This then means that lots of objects that Rortys pragmatist doesnt control, are continually causing her to have new and surprising beliefs (Rorty, op.cit).
In contrast to Knapp, Michaels, and Fish (1985) who hold that once you have a belief, you will inhabit it without reservation, with no distance, Rorty provides a soft account of belief, one in which beliefs are always held with reservations, because they are held in a world in which things are constantly changing our beliefs about them and impelling us to revise those beliefs (James, 1978).

Information implies inquiry and inquiry requires obervation and perception. Thus for any given code (or belief), the only source of new information is the as yet uncoded, the random and unpatterned, the noise of the outside. Handys principles of trust capture this quite well, when he argues that, a necessary condition of constancy is an ability to change: if one set of people cannot be exchanged for another set when circunstances alter, then the first set must adapt or die. The constant groups must always be flexible enough to change when times demand it. They must also keep themselves abreast of change, forever exploring new options and new technologies. They must create a real learning culture (Handy, 1995. See also Winograd, op.cit).Unger would add to this, that the mixture of competition and cooperation helps create an environment favourable to the acceleration of learning: one in which the contrast between conception and execution weakens (Unger, op.cit. See also Lash and Urry, op.cit).
You may then believe whatever you like, but that belief itself will have consequences because it is subject to pressure from the outside. Thus, if trust is tough(Handy, 1995), it maybe because our beliefs arent always in touch with reality.
This may then imply that virtual organizations have to be commited not only to a goal (Handys shared commitment), but to contingency, that is, to the imperative to reflect on belief. The virtual organization has little choice but to employ our ability to recontextualize and learn.
The virtual organization will then have to to take off from Darwin rather than from Descartes, from beliefs as adaptations to the environment rather than as quasi-pictures. The virtual organization will have to think of linguistic behavior as tool-using, it would have to think of language as a way of grabbing hold of causal forces and making them do what we want, altering ourselves and our environment to suit our aspirations (Winograd; 1986; Rorty, 1991).
Thus in the manner of pragmatism, Handys virtual organization may switch attention from the demands of the object, to the demands of the purpose which a particular inquiry is supposed to serve.

Yet, at precisely this point, the implicit pluralist imperative of Handys commitment to contingency begins to break down, or more specifically, begins to be recontained within the horizon of the beliefs and values we already have, that is, within the horizon of a generic we (a community, a family, a village, etc) (On this, see Handys principles of bonding, touch and leadership, 1995).

Now the problems with this communitarian comfort of a single we is that it homogenizes (social)space, assuming that there arent cleavages capable of generating conflicting solidarities and opposing wes(Fraser, 1989). Handys language of community submerge with its homogenizing connotations, the uneveness in the social and economic sphere.

It follows from this assumed absence of antagonisms that decision making and politics is a matter of everyone pulling together to solve a common set of problems. Thus (social)engineering and disconnected tinkerings with a succession of allegedly discrete problems can replace transformations of the basic institutional structure.

To Handys credit, he tries in his section on Societys Dilemma (1995), to confront the problems raised by the communitarian comfort of a single we (Or, the subject of his section on The Organizations Dilemma, op.cit). Handy here seems to invoke the need for virtual organizations to be more than a box of contracts and embrace the concept of an extended family.
But, what may become clear when one reads again the principles of trust as well as The Age of Paradox, is that such an expansion can take place only AFTER the democratic ethnos and community has been purified of the sort of dissent it may need to encourage:

Trust is tough: When trust proves to be misplaced then those people have to go.. therefore, for the sake of the whole, the individual must leave (Handy, 1995; p.46)

Our cities will not change fast enough. We must create our own virtual villages and cities, communities that one can describe but that dont necessarily belong to any place, (Handy, 1994, p.268)

The community where we live is a network of families. Everybody knows everybody, and knows what everybody is up to. Outsiders are welcomed but will never be insiders(Handy, 1994, p.140).

Thus rather than enlisting those with very basic, fundamental disagreements into the conversation of the community, Handy in a manner similar to Rorty (1994), declares them out of the loop; he excludes those with whom substantive differences might be discussed.
In the end, Handys commitment to contingency (e.g., trust demands learning) and the pluralism it implies, is recontained by the notion of community and extended family.

In conclusion:

Handy moves to the front and center the revisable, self-critical and reflexive nature of all beliefs and descriptions, only to recontain that commitment to contingency within the idea of community and familiy, an idea which declares out of the picture from the outset those social others whose very otherness or difference may lead to a critical assessment of ones own belief. Hence, Handys view doesnt give us a way to think the productive and ne-cessary relationship between antagonistic beliefs in the socio-economicsphere.

Thinking The Pragmatics of Contingency through spatial images of knowing

Handy, Rorty and Winograd begin from the Wittgensteinian position that an observing system or beliefs can see only what it can see. It cannot see what it cannot. But Rorty, Winograd and Handy derive from this formulation the irrelevance of other observing systems or beliefs; they derive from this formulation the exclusion of other observing systems from the conversation of social reproduction.
Yet all observations (e.g., an operation that uses distinctions in order to designate something; the act of distinguishing for the creation of information; or the capacity to handle distinctions and process information) seem to be constructed atop a constitutive paradox or tautology which those very same observations cannot acknowledge and at the same time engage in self-reproduction (or what Handy calls, survival).
The elementary constitutive act of observation-e.g., drawing a distinction, to distinguish figure from ground, x from not X-, is always either paradoxical or tautological. But this paradox seems both, necessary and unavoidable. All systems and beliefs are constituted by a necessary blind spot which only other observing systems can see and disclose, and the process of social reproduction depends upon the undoing, distribution, and circulation of these constitutive paradoxes and tautologies (which would otherwise block self-reproduction) by a plurality of observing systems. (Luhmann, 1989; Zizek, 1990).

The View From Nowhere:

There is not in this formulation above, then, any possibility for a transcendental subject-observer. That is, for the position of an observer who is supposed to replicate Gods eye view as opposed to that which expresses theperspectives of particular persons or groups. An observer that doesnt possesan specific location; or the ideal of the transcendent observer, its Godseye view and his aerial view fron nowhere (Betancourth, 1993; 1995)
Instead, in this formulation above, all observations are produced by a contingent observer who could always, in theory, describe things otherwise. Hence, all observations and all systems described by them contain an irreducible element of complexity. Contingency, that is, the ability to alter perspectives, act as a reservoir of complexity within all simplicity.

This, briefly and schematically stated maybe then the main point that seems to be missing from at least, Handys account of the principles of trust, ex-tended families, and communities, as well as from Mitchells account of electronic environments, agoras and virtual communties; Ungers vanguardist systems of co-operative competition and Lash and Urrys, information-rich production systems

The View From Somewhere:

Handy, Rorty and Winograd (op.cit) tend to some final resting place, prescriptively in the form of consensus (Handys community and Family; Winograd following Habermas proyect of a universal pragmatics), as the legitimate basis for social order, and methodologically in the form of a normative underlying simple structure which is said to dictate the proper shape of surface complexity (e.g., Handys principles of trust, Habermass ideal speech act, Rortys ethnos, and Winograds action workflow loop). Theirs is then a view from somewhere (See Betancourth, op.cit). Yet even if these view from some-where entails a critique of the aerial view from nowhere, this view from somewhere, is also a stopping point, that is, it tends to some final resting place. In so doing, they then miss the point of contingency above.
Contingency may then mean both, to give up the view from nowhere, as well as to suspend the view from somewhere. This then implies that the paradoxical and tautological nature of all observations, constitute a real, pragmatic problem for all social self-descriptions. What is a possible solution to these obstacles or blockages?

Undoing Paradoxes by distributing them in a space of endlessly shifting, seemingly inexhaustible vantage points: a network of listeners and observers.

If it is so that the processes of undoing paradox require that a systemÕs constitutive paradox remain invisible to it, then, the only way that this fact can be known as such is by the observation of another observing system. Thus, the practical undoing of paradox requires not, the consensusseeking irrelevance of other observing systems and their exclusion from the conversation of social reproduction (as in Handy, Winograd, Mitchell, Rorty and Habermas above), but what it requires is precisely the necessity of the social as such (Luhmann, Zisek, op.cit).
Perception and cognition of reality are made possible by the deployment of a paradoxical distinction to which the observation utilizing that distinction must remain blind if it is to perceive and know at all. It is then the observation of observation (listening) that enable us to view the blind spot of the observation of others not merely as a distortion of a pregiven reality but rather as the unavoidable partial and paradoxical precondition of knowing as such. Such an emphasis on the contingency and paradoxicality of observation means that one needs to derive from that contingency the necessity of the observation of others:it is only in the mutual observation by different observers that a critical view of any observed system can be formulated. In this way, the problem of paradox can be distributed among a plurality of interlinked observers who are of necessity joined to the world and to each other by their constitutive but different blind spots. This necessary, reciprocal, and yet asymmetrical relations between self and other, observer and observed, are relations which can no longer be characterized in terms of an identity principle (be it of community, family, virtual village or what have you) which would reduce the full complexity and contingency of the observers position in the social space (As in the case of the space of the view from somewhere above).

Such a plurality of interlinked observers runs contrary to the project based on the ideal of communication without constraint: For Handy, Winograd, Mitchell, Rorty and Habermas, complexity and contingency seem to contain the threat of relativism and thus the proliferation of different systems of knowledge and value must be grounded in some sort of underlying simplicity. This simplicity is to be found in the presupposition of an ideal speech act, of an undistorted communication through which the claims of different systems of value can be adjudicated in a process of rational dialogue that arrives at common norms and values (Winograds Coordinator, Mitchell Cybercities and Handy, Virtual organizations as community and extended virtual family).

Yet, the distribution of the problem of paradoxicality and the circulation of latent possibilities can take place only if we dont opt for the strategy of the hoped for reduction of complexity via social consensus, the identity principle, and the ideal of undistorted communication (as in Ungers associational life and in Lash and Urrys productive systems and informational structures). And indeed, if all observation is made possible by a paradoxical distinction to which it must remain blind, a consensual integration such as that implicit in Handys principles of trust, and in Mitchells electronic agoras, cities of bits, cybercities, communities and virtual families, can only result in the paradoxes becoming invisible to all and remaining that way for an indefinite future (Luhmann, 1989; Betancourth, 1994a).
Handy, Winograd, Rorty Habermas and Mitchell strategies of recontainment of contingency via community and family, cybercommunities, cyberfamilies and electronic agoras (the ethnos) are proyects that may result in the blockage of communication and the rendering invisible rather than the unfolding, distribution and undoing of paradox.

If observation is constituted by a blind-spot, what maybe needed then, is not the exclusion of other oberving systems but a plurality of inter-linked observing systems, exposing the blind-spots of each others positions. This concept of a plurality of interlinked observers (or the dream of everywhere), tries to keep open the possibility of observations operation being carried out by very different systems (On The internet as an illustration of this, see Betancourth, 1994, 1995). This is the necessity of society as such, of the fact that the social is always virtual, partial, and perspectival, mutually constituted by observers who can and must expose the aporias of each others poisitions (On Aporias, see Derrida, 1993).
This in turn may have the practical benefit of enabling a better functional performance of highly differentiated societies and their component systems. .

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[1]NOTES 1. Let us open a parenthesis here and notice the following:
Digitalization not only makes it harder to control distribution. It also implies the collapse of the idea of the being-only-once as the idea of the original or the authentic; or the presumed uniqueness of production, the being-only-once of the exemplar and the value of authenticity. Thus,the possibility of say, an electronically reproduced photograph implies that there is not a plate, a physical negative, but only electronic impulses. There isnt longer a being-only-once. This possibility turns the mediation that was present in the photograph from a condition of self-similarity to self-sameness. In digitized re production it is impossible to discern the difference between between the first instance-the original and the second-the reproduction. But the role of the author also become blurred. And since a digitized photograph can be can be manipulated without anyone being able to detect that the photograph has been altered, one maynot be able to trust such a photograph for documentary evidence. The digitized photograph bears no trace of its process and thus it is not longer possible to tell if there was any authorial mediation. Digitization then implies that it is possible to challange the notion of original, the author as well as the idea of the presence of an object with regards to works of photography and to works of other mediated discourses on tape or on film .In copyright the idea is copied onto a material substrate-like a software disc or a compact disc or a video cassette (Lash and Urry, op.cit, p.136). And even this material substratum doesn't need to restrain these goods. And in fact, whether these soft' commodities are books, images, music of software, digitization also implies that these soft goods can be Ôdematerilize'. Which is to say, that a virtual space (eg, cyberspace) could be made in which these soft goods maybe replicated and move around at little or not cost (in fact this is what is at stake when one downloads computer software from the internet). There is then no need to bring the product to the market (or the locational movement regarded by Marx as the transformation of the product into a commodity (Marx, 1973), since in such a way, cyberspace becomes a perfect market place. Thus, those commodities which are not marketed primarily on their merits as objects maybe launched in cyberspace with no material basis. Due to time and space limitations we are not going to deal here with the possible effects of these dematerializations on these soft data commodities (eg, since there wouldn't be an strict separation and distinction between the piece of plastic, paper and metal which serve as vehicles for games, music or images, and their contents, such objects couldn't be collected. Commodities and things will then become more separated, as will the separation between value and the material purchased (what would be the price of a CD when its material vehicle disappears?). This may in turn produce a more obvious separation between use-value and exchange value, something which maybe apparent in the attitudes to the pricing and illicit copying of software (On a related topic, but a different approach and conclusion, see Lash and Urry discussion of use and exchange value, op.cit p14 ). Instead, let us briefly notice the following: First; the above challanges to the idea of an original, of author, presence and matter are not simple to pose to material objects such as architecture. Thus, if one is to pose these challanges to architecture, one would have first to propose something that can overcome this dominance of materiality in archi- tecture. Thus, the resistence of architecture to these challanges means that architecture can con- tribute to the preservation of meaning in the generation of knowledge, in a situation in which, what Lash and Urry call, the increasingly rapid circulation of subjects and objects, of multiple space odysseys, empty them of meaning and significance (chpts 1 and 2, op.cit). Second; Lash and Urry dont seem to take into consideration these important challanges. In fact, in their account of the culture industries, ïsuccessful production of intellectual property place the emphasis no longer on the object produced but on the artist (p136), that is, on the author. Thus what a record company is selling is not the record but the artist as a brand. What adds the greatest amount of value to the product is then intellectual property, that is, not only the authors semiotic skills and abilities (as in the software industry), but also her image (as in the culture industries. Emphasis added, chb). The record company then buys the intellectual property, packages the artist and then sells the artist as a brand. This then means that the culture industry plays a role similar to that of the advertising firm. It then follows from here that what all the culture industries produce becomes, not like commodities but advertisements (p138, op.cit). Thus in the manner of advertisement firms, cultural industries sell brands through the transfer of value through images. Thus the culture industries are not just like the advertising firms but like producer and business services (p 138, op.cti. Emphasis added, chb). It then follows from here that the production of images is then fundamental not only to the culture industries but also to advertising firms as well as to producer and business services (in fact the tittle of the next section is Advertising: new paradigm for the culture industries). And since producer services are fundamental to contemporary accumulation then it follows from here that the production of images is fundamental to the process of contemporary accumulation. Yet, in spite of this, at no point in their book there is an interest for an study on the different forms of media as well as on the different mediations through which an idea or visual representation becomes a material force. Neither is there a preocupation with the implications of digitization and on-line services on the selling of brand and images (On this see The Economist, op.cit). In fact, not only the pieces of plastic, paper and metal which serve as vehicles for games, music or images, are fundamental for the transfer of value through image. Covers and style also aids the aura and affective charge by way of association that accompanies these material vehicles of soft commodities. Yet, digitization and cyberspace may imply that these soft commodities can be launched in virtual space without this material substratum restraining them. That is, without the image or the brand, restraining them. Yet, the selling of images becomes for Lash and Urry the paradigm for the culture industries. (See Betancourth, 1996).

Carlos H. Betancourth
NYC
14 June 1996

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