Sebastian Giessmann’s The Connectivity of Things is a foundational media history that traces the material and conceptual evolution of networks across time, technologies, and infrastructures. Now available in English for the first time, this German classic offers a richly textured exploration of how the idea of the “net” came to structure our understanding of social, technological, and institutional connectedness. Giessmann doesn’t simply chart the rise of networks as a metaphor—he reconstructs the cultural techniques and infrastructural shifts that made modern networking possible. From Parisian sewer systems and the Suez Canal to American telephone exchanges and the London Underground, the book maps a fascinating genealogy of the network as a binding and often ambivalent force. Along the way, Giessmann interrogates the belated emergence of social networks, the improbable rise of mathematical network theory, and the uncanny proximity between network diagrams and conspiracy thinking. The Connectivity of Things is both erudite and expansive—a sweeping account of how our networked world was imagined, built, and entangled long before the internet made it seem inevitable.
Chapter 1: Getting Caught Up by Nazua Idris
Chapter 2: Six Strata of Network History: Genealogy of a Cultural Technique by Catherine Evans
Chapter 3: An Archive of Networking by Nazua Idris
Chapter 4: Channels: The Politics of Networking Around 1850 by Leila Markosian
Chapter 5: Telephones, Exchanges, and Voices Around 1890 by Karisa Bridgelal