We believe in the importance of empowering people to imagine the future of the internet as the future of networks–partly through educating about the wild range of networks that existed before the internet and partly through educating about how to build your own network (BYON!). Scroll down for “recipes” on how to build your own mesh network, how to do short range over-air-transmission, how to build your own mini FM transmitter, and more.
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May Book Club Post!
This month’s book is Lurking by Joanne McNeil. We invite you all to share your thoughts as you read along here or on Mastodon/Instagram/Bluesky!
We’ll be doing a live chat about the book at some point this month (Semester is over, we have a little more breathing room!) so keep an eye on socials for that announcement.
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table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook
At long last, I can share the final table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (forthcoming from Anthology Editions…sometime…soon!)–a coffee table book that is equal parts speculative, playful, and serious. In the introduction I write about the need for “other networks,” how taxonomies shape and determine knowledge, why I decided on this network taxonomy in particular, and how the future of the internet is the future of networks. But just in terms of how I’m defining “other networks”…
My initial goal was to compile an inventory of networks that preceded the internet, by which I meant any network that existed before the widespread adoption of TCP/IP. This would have been simple enough, if it weren’t for the fact that the adoption of TCP/IP took over a decade (or longer) to happen, and also for the fact that (as it turns out) one may run a network on TCP/IP but not necessarily connect that network to the internet. Moreover, it also turns out that nearly countless computer networks emerged throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—so many, in fact, that this book would need to expand to another two or three volumes in order to include them all. These networks also present intriguing complications when it comes to classification: according to the taxonomy used in this book, these networks would mostly be considered “hybrid,” in that they used (often undocumented, frequently proprietary) combinations of wireless and wired infrastructures, and they also often relied upon a wide range of protocols and/or software that this book’s structure, biased as it is toward material infrastructure, cannot quite account for. My imperfect solution, then, has been to include only one digital computer network (time-sharing networks) as a way to gesture to all the other “other networks” that remain to be documented and to try to account for many (not all and not even most) networks that did not use TCP/IP. For the sake of not allowing my definition of ‘network’ to remain tied only to computer networks, I have also defined a network simply as the connection between two or more nodes that facilitates human communication (thereby excluding networking technologies such as radar, that are mostly used for tracking).
Anyways, I hope this list intrigues!
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Chronological List of Networks
Chronological List of Network Experiments
Acknowledgements
Foreword
IntroductionWireless Networks:
Sound Networks
[1] Drums
[2] WhistlingAir Networks
[3] Fire or Smoke Signals
[4] Pneumatic Tubes
[5] SkywritingWater Networks
[6] Hydraulic SemaphoreOptical Networks
[7] Flag Signaling
[8] Optical Telegraph
[9] Infrared Communication
[10] Signal Lamp
[11] Heliograph
[12] Photophone
[13] Ultraviolet Communication
[14] Laser Communication
[15] Visible Light CommunicationRadio Networks
[16] Amateur Radio
[16.1] Radiotelegraphy
[16.2] Radioteletype
[16.3] Amateur Television
[16.4] Hellschreiber
[16.5] Earth-Moon-Earth Communication
[16.6] Amateur Radio Satellite
[16.7] Amateur Packet Radio
[17] Radio Broadcast
[18] Pirate Radio
[19] Radiofax
[20] Two-Way Radio
[21] Pager
[22] Meteor Burst Communication
[23] Slow Scan Television
[24] Project West Ford
[25] Pirate Television
[26] Packet Radio Network
[27] Microbroadcast
[28] Software Defined Radio
[29] Wi-Fi
[30] BluetoothMicrowave Networks
[31] Microwave Radio-Relay
[32] Communications SatelliteWired Networks:
Electrical Wire Networks
[33] Electrical telegraph
[33.1] Electrical Printing Telegraph
[33.2] Image Telegraph
[33.3] Fire Alarm Telegraph
[33.4] Pantelegraph
[33.5] Telephonic Telegraph
[34] Telephone
[35] Wired Radio
[36] Telautograph
[37] Telefacsimile
[38] Videophone
[39] TelexBarbed Wire Networks
[40] Barbed Wire Telegraph
[41] Fence PhonesHybrid Networks:
[42] Library
[43] Book
[44] Postal System
[44.1] Pigeon Post
[44.2] Projectile Post
[44.3] Balloon Mail
[44.4] Pony Express
[44.5] Airgraph and V-Mail
[44.6] Email Letter
[45] Sneakernet
[46] Radio Broadcast Network
[47] Broadcast Television
[48] Cable Television
[48.1] NABU
[49] Cellular Network
[50] Time-Sharing Network
[51] Teletext
[52] VideotexImaginary Networks:
[53] Necromancy
[54] Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass
[55] Telephonoscope
[56] Telepathy
[57] Ley Lines
[58] Mundaneum
[59] World Brain
[60] Memex
[61] Faster-Than-Light Communication Networks
[62] Project Xanadu
[63] Metaverse
[64] The Clacks
[65] Pandoran Neural Network
[66] Cosmic InternetAlphabetical Index
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“The Material Lives of Phantasmic Networks”
Lori Emerson will give a virtual talk on the “Imaginary Networks” section of her book Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook on Thursday May 2nd 6pm CET (or 10am MT/12pm ET). She will talk about the wild and wide range of phantasmic or imaginary networks that have been proposed since the late 19th century through the present moment (from the Pasilalinic-sympathetic compass to the telephonoscope, the Mundaneum, and the Cosmic Internet). She will discuss how these non-material entities have had a profound material influence on the conceptualization and development of actual networks over the last 150 years. More, these imaginary networks pave the way for alternative networks that are part-and-parcel of a collectively owned future no longer solely determined by ever-accelerating, global accumulation of capital. No registration needed – zoom link is here.
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April Book Club Post!
This month’s book club book is The Modem World by Kevin Driscoll, and we thought this time around we’d invite responses to both the book and to the following prompts:
- What were your early (possibly pre-internet) social media experiences like?
- How have those experiences framed your interaction with social media now?
- What do you wish had been carried over to the contemporary internet?
We welcome your responses and discussion here on the othernetworks.net or on Mastodon, Bluesky and Instagram!