The next inevitable stage in the development of human society is the age of network culture. Its theoretical foundation is provided by the work of László Ropolyi, historian of science and philosopher, particularly his analyses of network society and the postmodern condition of network existence. In his writings, he points out that humanity has arrived at a radical technological and cultural turning point, one that is fundamentally transforming institutional systems that have fallen into crisis.
We have already passed the critical technological threshold at which the total expansion of network culture — and with it, the replacement of the former hierarchical pyramid structure — could still have been prevented. Technological development has brought about a qualitatively new condition: it has liberated humanity’s previously hidden capacities for network-based collaboration, which, by realizing postmodern values, now follow the logic of networks. These bottom-up forms of cooperation are already far stronger and more viable than the desperate attempts of the fading pyramid structure to concentrate power.
The old structure tries in vain to preserve its concentrated power, because there is no point in picking a fight with the mathematics of nature. Network organization is an autonomous, organic process, and any form of social disruption currently being experienced is clearly the result of the belated rearguard struggle of an elite that profited from the previous structure of chaos.
By virtue of its transparent, decentralized structure, network culture and network society do not tolerate corruption — indeed, at the systemic level, they do not even make it possible — to the extent that corruption currently operates within the state structure, the economy, and the hierarchies connected to them. In order for us to fully enter this collaborative future, the complete replacement and accountability of the old elite are unavoidable. From this historic process of accountability, we will gain an enormous amount of information; at the same time, vast amounts of capital and energy will be released, which will serve to manage the social tensions arising from the transitional state.
To use a vivid analogy from the recent past: just as, during the Covid pandemic, power applied a global, planetary-scale lockdown to society, we must now use the strength of network society to apply a planetary-scale lockdown to the elite. A general global audit, a comprehensive social investigation, must be launched. As Ropolyi also suggests, the transformation of the human world and the universalization of the internet are irreversible; we have reached a stage in the development of network society from which there is no way back. This form of global self-cleansing activity must begin without delay, because the time has come. The year 2026 will be the year of this paradigm shift and of network-based self-purification.
To understand the true scale of this irreversible process, we must turn to historical analogies. László Ropolyi points out that what is unfolding today, in the age of network culture, is nothing less than the Reformation of knowledge — a transformation equal in radicalism and society-shaping power to the religious Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries. Back then, religious faith entered into deep crisis; today, it is modernity’s rational, institutionalized knowledge — and the worldview built upon it — that has fallen into profound crisis.
The scale of this transformation, and the untenability of the old systems, can be seen most clearly through the following concrete examples:
1. The Collapse of Knowledge Monopolies and Traditional Institutional Systems
In the former centralized pyramid structure, control over abstract knowledge and truth was exercised by a narrow institutional system: universities, academies, research institutions, publishing houses, and officially certified experts.
Network technology — the internet — is radically dismantling this intermediary layer. The human being of the new age, the “network citizen,” now enters into a direct and personal relationship with knowledge, bypassing the hierarchical authority of official experts.
Although the old elite still desperately tries, using the weapons of the “science wars,” to put the genie back in the bottle and defend the exclusivity of the scientific worldview, network-based collaboration is proving to be far more viable.
2. The Pluralization of Reality Interpretation and the Condition of “Post-Truth”
Another astonishing indicator of the scale of change is the mass destabilization of the modernist belief in “one single objective reality.”
In network society, knowledge and truth have become individualized and decentralized. As individuals are liberated from centralized interpretive constraints, they begin to orient themselves within self-constructed virtual and plural realities — within opinion bubbles.
Although this transitional period also brings with it the chaotic symptoms of fake news and post-truth, these are merely signs of the end of centrally dictated truths and the birth pains of a new, organic network mode of existence — what Ropolyi calls network existence.
3. The Radical Transformation of Human Personality and Action
The collapse of centralized systems also transforms the human personality itself.
The “modern individual” produced by the old structures resembled a mechanical body, a solid ball: closed, moving along a predictable trajectory, and striving at all costs for control and possession over its environment.
Network culture, however, gives rise to the postmodern “e-personality,” which, using Ropolyi’s analogy, is more like a balloon: capable of extremely rapid transformations, open in its boundaries, and shaped according to the dynamics of networks.
Instead of power and domination, autonomy and direct collaboration become the foundations of action.
These examples reveal with ruthless clarity that humanity has become the citizen of three worlds: the natural world, the social world, and now the network mode of existence built upon them.
This new form of networked self-organization is the projection of the mathematics of nature itself onto society.
The hegemony of those who maintain the previous system is untenable because centralized oppression cannot compete with the organic, infinite collaborative potential of networks.
Accountability and a global audit are merely the logical consequences of the fact that humanity has moved beyond the age of pyramids.
Summary: Researchers of the Network Paradigm and Related Thinkers
László Ropolyi’s insights are by no means isolated. The study of network society, the postmodern mode of existence, and the crisis of centralized institutions has, over recent decades, grown into an extensive interdisciplinary field of research.
The transcendence of earlier pyramid structures and the laws of network organization have been examined by numerous internationally recognized thinkers who, approaching the subject from different disciplines, arrived at remarkably similar conclusions.
Ropolyi’s own work on internet philosophy and the construction of “network existence” provides one of the important Hungarian theoretical foundations for this perspective. In his analysis, the internet is not merely a technical system, but also a communicational medium, a cultural environment, and a new form of human existence built upon natural and social reality.
1. Manuel Castells and Macrosociological Network Theory
The most influential sociologist of the global “network society” is Manuel Castells.
Like Ropolyi, Castells begins from a critique of modernization and from the transformative role of information technology. Through his concept of informationalism, he described the transformation of global structures and showed how traditional nation-state frameworks, the old institutions of democracy, and earlier corporate models are being reshaped — or thrown into crisis — by the expansion of networks.
Castells’ major work, The Rise of the Network Society, is widely regarded as one of the foundational texts of the information age. It highlights the economic and social dynamics of the information era and explains how network society has risen on a global scale.
Reference: Manuel Castells / Network Society
2. Albert-László Barabási and the “Natural Mathematics” of Networks
Nothing demonstrates more clearly the thesis that there is no point in picking a fight with network organization and the “mathematics of nature” than the work of Albert-László Barabási and his network research laboratory.
Barabási and his collaborators mathematically and scientifically demonstrated that highly diverse systems — biological cells, the World Wide Web, social cooperation, scientific collaboration, and other complex systems — are not random, but follow strict and universal organizing principles.
They identified the operation of scale-free networks and hubs, showing that the recognition of performance, individual success, and collective success are all deeply shaped by the internal dynamics of networks.
Barabási is especially known for his work on scale-free networks and the Barabási–Albert model, which explains how growth and preferential attachment can generate networks in which a few highly connected hubs play a decisive structural role.
Reference: Albert-László Barabási / Scale-Free Networks / Barabási–Albert Model
3. Bruno Latour and Actor-Network Theory
In the fields of philosophy and the sociology of science, Bruno Latour’s work is especially significant.
By helping to develop Actor-Network Theory — ANT — Latour radically rethought the nature of society. As Ropolyi also notes, Latour moved beyond the rigid dichotomies of modernity, such as the opposition between nature and society, or between the individual and hierarchical society.
According to this perspective, “society” is not simply a dominant structure standing above individuals. Rather, it is a dense and constantly shifting network of human and non-human actors, technological objects, institutions, practices, and meanings.
Latour and other constructivist sociologists of science also emphasized that knowledge and reality are not simply unquestionable entities dictated from above, but are constructed through complex social, technical, and institutional networks.
Reference: Bruno Latour / Actor-Network Theory
4. Barry Wellman and Networked Individualism
The human and psychological dimension of network culture — including the processes of individualization also discussed by Ropolyi — has been examined by researchers such as Barry Wellman.
Wellman developed the concept of networked individualism, which describes how the individual becomes increasingly liberated from closed, spatially fixed, and hierarchically limited traditional groups.
The modern network citizen no longer functions primarily as a member of a single closed community. Instead, the individual becomes the center — or node — of multiple personalized, dynamic, and overlapping networks.
This transformation definitively replaces old centralized expectations with flexible, individualized, network-based forms of connection, identity, and cooperation.
The term “networked individualism” is associated with Barry Wellman and was later developed further with Lee Rainie in Networked: The New Social Operating System.
Reference: Barry Wellman / Networked Individualism
5. Christian Fuchs and the Critical Theory of the Digital Age
Christian Fuchs examines the dialectical relationship between network transformation and capitalism.
His work focuses on contemporary critical theory, communication, society, digital capitalism, and the political economy of media. By analyzing the contradictions of the digital age, Fuchs investigates how technological development and new forms of communication create both new possibilities and new conflicts within existing social and economic systems.
From this perspective, digital networks are not automatically liberating. They are also sites of struggle, exploitation, surveillance, digital labor, and capitalist accumulation. Yet precisely because of these contradictions, they also reveal the possibility of moving beyond existing crisis-ridden social and economic structures.
Fuchs’ work is therefore an important critical counterpoint within the broader network paradigm: he shows that the network age must be understood not only technologically, but also politically, economically, and socially.
Reference: Christian Fuchs / Digital Capitalism / Critical Theory
Conclusion: The Irreversible Emergence of Network Existence
Taken together, these researchers — from sociology and network science to the philosophy of science and critical media theory — all help demonstrate that the network mode of existence, or network existence, is an irreversible global process.
Humanity has definitively moved beyond the age of closed modernist institutions and has entered an organic network reality that increasingly reflects the laws of nature itself.
The hegemony of those who maintain the previous system has become untenable because centralized oppression cannot compete with the organic and virtually infinite collaborative potential of networks.
Accountability and a global audit are therefore not arbitrary demands, but the logical consequences of the fact that humanity has moved beyond the age of pyramids.
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