Just a couple quick comments.
First, Max's notion of networkism may or may not be similar to the notion of "complexism" which I introduced as one of the writers in the collection "The Art of Artificial Evolution".
click here for book at Amazon.com click here for free download of draft chapterIt's difficult to tell because, so far as I know, the Max's ideas are contained in a novel of some length, and require some time and effort to extract. Not that that is a bad thing in and of itself, but I wish there was something more like an essay presentation like my chapter above. (Not in terms of quality or ideas, just in terms of efficiency of communication).
So while the ideas seem vaguely related I can't really go beyond that in any detailed way. I suspect there are, in fact, some very significant differences beyond form.
For example, the tone of this discussion would lead me to believe Max's ideas are situated in a fairly politicized context. If so, and again I can't be sure, I think that is a mistake. One of the problems the contemporary postmodern/poststructural/deconstructive humanities culture is burdened with is an overarching tendency towards political reductionism. (This is well covered by Steven Hicks in
Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault" In my view what is likely to replace the dominant postmodern/poststructural/deconstructive school is a world-view anchored in projecting notions from complexity science into the problem space of the arts and humanities. Notions such as distribution, emergence, co-evolution, feedback, chaos, as well as uncertainty and incompleteness, may have political implications at the periphery, but are fundamentally orthogonal to any particular politics.
So from where I sit drawing complexity related ideas into a primarily politically driven discussion is a mistake. It plays into the same kind of political reductionism that postmodern/poststructural/deconstructive humanities culture does, and having made that wrong turn is sure to be off the path to the next paradigm.