This week we’ll introduce ourselves and survey our plans for the semester — including potential field trips to The Point CDC, the COSMOS network data center in Harlem, and a NYC Mesh installation. We’ll also consider: what is a network? What do we gain (or lose) by defining the term liberally? How do networks shape our culture, and vice versa?
Things we’ll discuss today (you needn’t read these; we’re simply providing them for reference):
- Infrastructural networks: railways, highways, canals, pipelines
- Network topology: lines, nodes, links
- Geodetic control networks
- “Natural” networks: spiders, trees, fungus
- Communication networks: telephone systems, telegraph, cable TV
- Network ontology: Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
- Pneumatic networks: Shannon Mattern, “Puffs of Air” in John Knechtel, ed., AIR: Alphabet City 15 (MIT Press, 2010).
- Artillery networks: Heinrich von Kleist’s proposal for a Bombenpost
- Frequency-hopping networks (GPS, WiFi, etc.): Hedy Lamarr
- Whisper networks: Jia Tolentino, “The Whisper Network After Harvey Weinstein and ‘Shitty Media Men,’” New Yorker (October 1, 2017).
- Movement networks: Allied Media Projects