In principio era il mercato, poi venne la rete. Disintermediazione, spontaneità, legittimità

In the Beginning Was the Market, and Then Came the Net. Disintermediation, Spontaneity, Legitimacy The word «disintermediation» is part of common language since the emergence of online e-commerce marketplace, that radically changed entire commercial sectors, such as tourism or cultural industry. The notion of disintermediation became the meeting point between metaphors of the Market – as a place of horizontal exchanges – and metaphors of the Net – as the place to find free information and spontaneous aggregation. This paper analyses these metaphors in order to assess their influence on contemporary political theories of governance – as an ideal of horizontal disintermediation, inspired to negotiation models – and of governability – as an ideal of vertical disintermediation, very close to political decisionism.