{"product_id":"the-connectivity-of-things-isbn-9780262550741","title":"The Connectivity of Things","description":"\u003cb\u003eA media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNets 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? \u003ci\u003eThe Connectivity of Things\u003c\/i\u003e by Sebastian Giessmann, the first media history that addresses the overwhelming diversity of networks, attempts to answer all these questions and more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReconstructing 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.Contents\u003cbr\u003e1   Getting Caught Up\u003cbr\u003e2   Six Strata of Network History: Genealogy of a Cultural Technique\u003cbr\u003e3   An Archive of Networking\u003cbr\u003e4   Channels: Politics of Networking around 1850\u003cbr\u003e5   Exchanges: Telephones and Voices around 1890\u003cbr\u003e6   A Visual History of the Network Diagrams (I): From the Visual Models of the Natural Sciences to the Calculation of Social Networks\u003cbr\u003e7   Transportation: Map, Network, and Synchronization around 1930\u003cbr\u003e8   A Visual History of the Network Diagram (II): Network Projects and the Material Culture of Capitalism\u003cbr\u003e9   Network Protocols: Architectures of Computers and Communication around 1970\u003cbr\u003e10   A Visual History of the Network Diagram (III): Economic Entanglements and the Mediology of Conspiracy\u003cbr\u003e11   The Connectivity of Things\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eReferences\u003cbr\u003eIndex“A thoughtfully crafted history of past and possible future networks.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Choice\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“The Connectivity of Things\u003c\/i\u003e is valuable not just as a genealogy of networking practices but also as a theoretical demonstration: What happens when we stop viewing networks as interconnected bunches of roads or wires and instead focus on the practices of interconnection that transform those roads and wires into coherent systems?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003cb\u003eInformation \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“From fishing nets to the London Tube map, telephones to network protocols, this fascinating book mines diverse historical episodes to highlight the changing materiality, culture, and practices of networks.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita, MIT Sloan School of Management\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Behold the much-anticipated history and theory of networks. Giessmann has penned a deeply philosophical and beautifully written media history of how the modern world became so intricately, and perilously, webbed. A triumph!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Benjamin Peters, Hazel Rogers Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Tulsa; coeditor of \u003ci\u003eYour Computer is on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e; author of \u003ci\u003eHow Not to Network a Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Connectivity of Things \u003c\/i\u003eis as expansive and capacious as a network, drawing together technologies and social forms, spatiality and temporality, language and images—an essential text for network historians.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Nicole Starosielski, Professor, University of California, Berkeley; author of \u003ci\u003eThe Undersea Network \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMedia Hot and Cold\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eSebastian 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.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302494261477,"sku":"NP9780262550741","price":90.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262550741.jpg?v=1767738821","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-connectivity-of-things-isbn-9780262550741","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}