[NetBehaviour] a new network art for a new network politics

[Max Herman]

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Events may be getting out of control worldwide due to the war in Gaza.  Virtually all players in the military world are lined up on one side or the other and ready to jump in if certain conditions occur or are expected to occur.  This is like World War I where the elaborate chaos of alliances and secret agreements -- deep poverty and ancient regimes combined with bellicose rhetoric and very little actual problem solving -- allowed local events to trigger the largest possible scale of war.

Game theory, escalation, probability, and triggered response sequencing are all network phenomena.  Each agent, actor, player, or entity has a diverse array of thoughts, experiences, assumptions, fears, needs, wants, programming, and speculation regarding what to choose.  What they actually might choose is a probability cloud of greater or lesser scope depending on the complexity of their functions and connections.  It never starts from a blank slate but is always a mix of previous patterns, new information, and a synapse of temporary uncertainty that recombines the two in imperfectly predictable ways.  Random chance can play a major part as can pure imagination.

In this quantum network realm one's point of view matters greatly.  Not every person or group or everyone in a group has the same perspective, literally or figuratively, nor can they, but they all do have one.  Uncertainty reigns, which in early evolutionary time was a good thing because it allowed human imagination and chance to help us adapt by improvisation.  Over time, conformity in the service of mass planning increased in opposition to ad hoc small-group interactions, and homogeneity in turn provoked resistance from diversity or counter-homogeneity.

A simplistic network has the disadvantage of being extensive and complex but unstable.  It is at risk, like a spider web made of glass.

Today's network has many fragile, unstable, and dysfunctional aspects.  Extreme interpretations predominate in most quarters.  Algorithms choose for us a lot of what we think and see or are able to think and see.  People are ramped up, agitated, and burned out from a continuous cycle of euphoria, anger, frustration, and despair all designed to capture their attention and resources of every type.  This makes the network of military trigger-points particularly oversensitive, inaccurate, distorted, and volatile.

In this kind of setting (which has a macro and a micro level) miscalculation becomes a severe risk.  The system of perception and response sees what it wants to see and reacts by reflex.  World wars no one wants, that are best avoided and are indeed avoidable, occur to the misfortune of all for want of a nail.  A relatively local miscalculation triggers a one degree larger-scale mistake and after three or four iterations you can approach the verge of global conflict.  And as in the quantum realm, every actor must consider not only what to choose but what every other actor might be considering and might choose.  The exponential complexity of possible paths requires drastic simplification just to get a rational number and this can magnify miscalculation sometimes asymptotically or by virulence.

How to stop this?  Well, history does provide examples.  One was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 which can be easily studied online.  But what about the all-important personal level, the level of ordinary people in neighborhoods worldwide as individuals and spontaneous gatherings?  We are all quite immersed in narrowing, escalatory information these days.  How to allow imagination and calm to find the peaceful, reconciling option?  It's easy to pick one side in a conflict and say "they need to stop fighting" while continuing to fight all out one's self.  And game theory does specify that unilateral disarmament during conflict is a grave risk.  It's the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons, game theory 101.  Modernity is Machiavelli and Machiavelli escalates.

Some have tried to unify religion or government institutionally to reconcile diverse parties to peaceful cooperation, but often such consolidation fails or provokes equally strong pressures to divide.  The need when catastrophic miscalculation looms is for a new thread of unifying, de-escalating information which does not register as a mortal threat to existing nodes or grids but rather presents a manageable and worthwhile risk, that is, a viable opportunity.  It can sometimes be as little as a direct conversation across some given party line.

This is what Leonardo tries to accomplish with the Mona Lisa.  He understood Mediterranean geopolitics very well, the rise and fall of empires and of modernity itself, and almost relocated to Istanbul mid-career to build a giant bridge over the Bosphorus for Bayezid II (the Ottomans had most of the best science in medieval times, much better than Italy's).

Leonardo believed oil painting could deliver ideas and experiences better than verbal writing, if done well, because people of every language can appreciate a visual image.  And a visual image meets every point of view freshly at its very own place, time, and vantage, by way of the eyes, brain, body, and imagination which make up the quantum common to every experience and perspective (prospettiva, as in "corpo nato della prospettiva di Leonardo vinci, disceipolo della sperientia" i.e. experience).

The universal portrait was his peace offering to the world, an early network art designed for the quantum age during its time of greatest danger and most mortal peril.

Will we accept it?  All we may have to do is be willing to try.

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