L'evoluzione dell'infosfera come emergenza di un terzo connettoma

Information flows and communicative interactions on social media, the Web and the expanding Internet of things are changing the possibilities, the actual methods and models of interaction between human beings, objects and life environments. As a result, an unprecedented landscape of structural and functional connections emerge that can be described, at least in part, in terms of connectivity graphs. In borrowing the term «connectome» from the neurosciences, the author suggests that the network-like structure emerging from the combination of the Internet of things and the human usage of social media can be regarded as a third degree connectome (connettoma-3), that is to say as a dynamic and evolutionary system that modifies the organization of the activities in the human nervous system (connettoma-1) and in the social networks defined as connectomes of connectomes (connettoma-2). To regard the infosphere as an expanding third degree connectome means to ask questions about the material structures and the dynamics of the connections to be mapped, in order to study how shared sensemaking and behaviours change or become established. From such a perspective, it is possible to resume, update and reformulate both the actor-network theory, which claims that social actors emerge in the large network of attachments to which they belong, and the question of the alternative between being free from bonds (impossible) and well-attached.