MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

The Connectivity of Things

Network Cultures since 1832

Sebastian Giessmann

$100

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
MIT Press
08 November 2024
A media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English.

A media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English.

Nets hold, connect, and catch. They ensnare, bind, and entangle. Our social networks owe their name to a conceivably strange and ambivalent object. But how did the net get into the network? And how can it reasonably represent the connectedness of people, things, institutions, signs, infrastructures, and even nature? The Connectivity of Things by Sebastian Giessmann, the first media history that addresses the overwhelming diversity of networks, attempts to answer all these questions and more.

Reconstructing the decisive moments in which networking turned into a veritable cultural technique, Giessmann takes readers below the street to the Parisian sewers and to the Suez Canal, into the telephone exchanges of Northeast America, and on to the London Underground. His brilliant history explains why social networks were discovered late, how the rapid rise of mathematical network theory was able to take place, how improbable the invention of the internet was, and even what diagrams and conspiracy theories have to do with it all. A primer on networking as a cultural technique, this translated German classic explains everything one ever could wish to know about networks.
By:  
Imprint:   MIT Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   369g
ISBN:   9780262550741
ISBN 10:   0262550741
Pages:   432
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Contents 1   Getting Caught Up 2   Six Strata of Network History: Genealogy of a Cultural Technique 3   An Archive of Networking 4   Channels: Politics of Networking around 1850 5   Exchanges: Telephones and Voices around 1890 6   A Visual History of the Network Diagrams (I): From the Visual Models of the Natural Sciences to the Calculation of Social Networks 7   Transportation: Map, Network, and Synchronization around 1930 8   A Visual History of the Network Diagram (II): Network Projects and the Material Culture of Capitalism 9   Network Protocols: Architectures of Computers and Communication around 1970 10   A Visual History of the Network Diagram (III): Economic Entanglements and the Mediology of Conspiracty 11   The Connectivity of Things Acknowledgements Notes References Index

Sebastian Giessmann is Reader in Media Theory at the University of Siegen. He is Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project ""Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization"" with the collaborative research center Media of Cooperation.

Reviews for The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832

“A thoughtfully crafted history of past and possible future networks.” —Choice


See Also