This is more a placeholder, with a promise to return, than anything else.

Thomas asks, "What would come to constitute the logic of composing in network culture is we push against the metaphors of connection to, first, metaphors of environment, place, surroundings, and second, metaphors of meshing, osmosis, blending?"

To which, "For a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear below, I offer the metaphor of 'ambience' to aid us in thinking through the full implications of a network logic that would be incarnational" (903).

There's also a suggestive line at the bottom of 904: "If the network metaphor captures the logic of the hardware of emerging network culture, ambience captures the 'software' logics of being and doing that arise from the network."

I should note that part of the cohort that is activated for me with the term 'collection' is necessarily Heidegger's notion of gathering, and so I want to return to this essay when I've got that work a little closer to the surface.

I should also note that it may turn out that this article is more notable for the fact that it presents an outside to what I'm interested in doing. We'll see.