other networks

April 28, 2024

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!

*

Chronological List of Networks
Chronological List of Network Experiments
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction

Wireless Networks:
Sound Networks
[1] Drums
[2] Whistling

Air Networks
[3] Fire or Smoke Signals
[4] Pneumatic Tubes
[5] Skywriting

Water Networks
[6] Hydraulic Semaphore

Optical 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 Communication

Radio 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] Bluetooth

Microwave Networks
[31] Microwave Radio-Relay
[32] Communications Satellite

Wired 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] Telex

Barbed Wire Networks
[40] Barbed Wire Telegraph
[41] Fence Phones

Hybrid 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] Videotex

Imaginary 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 Internet

Alphabetical Index

articles & books
April 28, 2024

“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.

events
April 5, 2024

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!
book club
March 1, 2024

March Book Club Post!

This month’s book is Claire L. Evans’ Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Feel free to read along as much as you’re able and share your thoughts in the comments here, or in response to the posts we’ll be making on our various social media accounts using the hashtag #MALbookclub.

About Broad Band:

If you loved Hidden Figures or The Rise of the Rocket Girls, you’ll love Claire Evans’ breakthrough book on the women who brought you the internet–written out of history, until now. “This is a radically important, timely work,” says Miranda July, filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man. The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers–but from Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program in the Victorian Age, to the cyberpunk Web designers of the 1990s, female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation. In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don’t even realize, but they have always been part of the story. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. This inspiring call to action shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore. Welcome to the Broad Band. You’re next.

book club

bookclub, broad band, history, internet

table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook

“The Material Lives of Phantasmic Networks”

April Book Club Post!

March Book Club Post!

About Broad Band: