It is important to infer what Kelly is suggesting, especially as it pertains to the status of nodes vis-à-vis a technological network, or that of individuals vis-à-vis markets and society. If consciousness (as well as smartness and rationality) is the result of the cooperation of dumb neurons (as well as dumb chips, nodes, or individuals), the corollary is that reflexivity (i.e., the ability to evaluate rationality, or the ability to apply rationality to asses rationality [see Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994]) resides not in any single node but only in the network. None of these small nodes can comprehend the complexity of the network’s rationality. Kelly sums up this lesson by maintaining that “no one is as smart as everyone” (Kelly 1998, 13); he therefore redefines smartness as an inherently network quality. This simple technological premise regarding the inability of any one node to comprehend the complexity of the web would, as we will shortly see, prove to be consequential when explaining actors in markets and the futile attempt of any agency to comprehend markets, let alone control them.
A N<sub>E</sub>W KIND OF ORD<sub>E</sub>R
How does network rationality come about? According to Kelly, as long as disparate units are interconnected by technologically enabled networks, rationality and order will emerge spontaneously. After citing evidence for the emergence of spontaneous intelligence and rationality in networks from a variety of case studies in technology and nature Kelly draws two general rules—rules, we should be reminded by the title of his article and book—for the new economy: “Dumb parts, properly connected into a swarm, yield smart results” (Kelly 1998, 13); and “The surest way to smartness is through massive dumbness” (14). Put together, these rules suggest that the network is the best mechanism to produce rationality. Moreover, it suggests that superior rationality can solely be the product of networks. Intelligence and rationality are achieved not by improving on the performance of individual nodes but by connecting them to each other. Sophistication and progress is created by very limited, shortsighted, and unreflexive agents. This network vision of rationality heralds, according to Kelly, the death of an alternative—and once hegemonic— vision of rationality encapsulated in the notion of artificial intelligence: a centralized, self-sufficient, and omniscient supercomputer (14). Rationality, in conclusion, involves two elements: dumb nodes and the mechanism that connects them and self-regulates their action. The Internet and other network technology serve not simply as the quintessential metaphor for this new rationality but indeed as the material basis for its execution.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age