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“The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832”
Sebastian Gießmann (University of Siegen)
Translated by Steven Lindberg
Die Verbundenheit der Dinge was first published by Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin in 2014 (2nd ed. 2016). Sebastian Gießmann was awarded the renowned translation prize for humanities and social science scholars by Geisteswissenschaften International in 2020. The result of Sebastian Gießmann’s completely revised translation has now been published by MIT Press under the title The Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures since 1832.
A media history of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a German classic translated for the first time into English.
Nets 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? The Connectivity of Things by Sebastian Giessmann, the first media history that addresses the overwhelming diversity of networks, attempts to answer all these questions and more.
Reconstructing 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.
Praise
“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.”
JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita, MIT Sloan School of Management
“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!”
Benjamin Peters, Hazel Rogers Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Tulsa; coeditor of Your Computer is on Fire; author of How Not to Network a Nation
“The Connectivity of Things is 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.”
Nicole Starosielski, Professor, University of California, Berkeley; author of The Undersea Network and Media Hot and Cold
Sebastian Giessmann is Senior Lecturer at the Department for Media Studies at the University of Siegen. He is Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project“ „A01 – Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 –“Media of Cooperation”.
MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. MIT Press books and journals are known for their intellectual daring, scholarly standards, interdisciplinary focus, and distinctive design.
mit:forschen! GEMEINSAM WISSEN SCHAFFEN: Der Forschungspreis geht an das Forscherteam A05 des SFB 1187: Medien der Kooperation.
Tanja Aal und Dennis Kirschsieper (beide Universität Siegen)
Der Beitrag „CareConnection – A Digital Caring Community Platform to Overcome Barriers of Asking for, Accepting and Giving Help” der Sozio-Informatiker/innen gewinnt stellvertretend für das Autor*innen-Team der Publikation den zweiten Platz des ‘Wissen-der-Vielen – Forschungspreis für Citizen Science 2024.
Über Preis und Beitrag
Die Citizen-Science-Plattform „mit:forschen! Gemeinsam Wissen schaffen“ dient der Präsentation deutschlandweiter Forschungsprojekte, die mittels partizipativer Ansätze Bürger*innen einbeziehen. Persönliche Erfahrungen und individuelles Wissen der Gemeindemitglieder werden in Entwicklungsprozesse integriert und erfahrbar gemacht. Hierdurch wird der Diskurs über individuelle Lebenswelten in verschiedensten thematischen Kontexten, Herausforderungen und gemeinsam erarbeitete Lösungsszenarien angeregt und Vernetzung zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft gefördert.
Der 2. Platz des hieran angebundenen ‘Wissen-der-Vielen – Forschungspreis für Citizen Science 2024 ging an das Forschungsteam des Teilprojektes A05 „Kooperative Herstellung von Nutzerautonomie im Kontext der alternden Gesellschaft“ des Sonderforschungsbereichs 1187: Medien der Kooperation der Universität Siegen. Die Preisverleihung fand am 09. Oktober in Hamburg statt. Wissenschaft im Dialog und das Museum für Naturkunde Berlin würdigten die Preisträger mit einem Preisgeld von 10.000 Euro.
Mit ihrer Publikation ‚CareConnection – A Digital Caring Community Platform to Overcome Barriers of Asking for, Accepting and Giving Help’ beschreiben die Forscher*innen Tanja Aal und Dennis Kirschsieper die Forschung und Entwicklung einer Online-Plattform, die den Aufbau einer lokalen (Online-)Sorgegemeinschaft unterstützt.
Jury-Statement: “Auf einer allgemeineren Ebene wird durch die Forschungsarbeit sehr deutlich belegt, dass Citizen Science einen wichtigen Beitrag zur menschenzentrierten Technikentwicklung leisten kann.“
Die „CareConnection”-Plattform wurde mit einem Community-Design-Ansatz und nach Prinzipien der partizipativen Forschung (Reallabor, partizipative Aktionsforschung) entwickelt. Im Zentrum stand dabei, psychologische und soziale Barrieren des ‚um Hilfe bitten, Hilfe akzeptieren sowie Hilfe geben‘ zu identifizieren und zu überwinden. Die Publikation entstand zusammen mit weiteren Co-Autor*innen, bestehend aus Bürgerforscher*innen und Studierenden, unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller (Lehrstuhl Wirtschaftsinformatik, insb. IT für die alternde Gesellschaft) im Kontext des von ihr geleiteten Forschungsprojekt am Sonderforschungsbereich. Veröffentlicht wurde die Publikation im Tagungsband von Mensch und Computer 2023.
Empirische Basis der Entwicklung dieser Plattform und medialen Infrastruktur ist eine qualitative Interviewstudie, die in Kooperation mit der Fachhochschule Bern sowie in co-kreativer Zusammenarbeit mit älteren Menschen einer lokalen Gemeinde im ländlichen Bereich nahe Zürich durchgeführt wurde. Die Ergebnisse flossen in einen ersten Design-Prototyp einer Community-Plattform ein, die das Suchen und Anbieten von Hilfe barrierearm ermöglichen soll.
Die Plattformentwicklung wurde inzwischen auf den deutschen Kontext übertragen und befindet sich in der dritten Entwicklungsstufe des iterativen Bürger-zentrierten Design-Prozesses. Weitere 8 Interviews und 6 Design-Workshops wurden gemeinsam mit Studierenden und Bürger*innen geführt und befinden sich nunmehr in der finalen Evaluation.
Ziel des dreijährigen Projekts war ‚Hilfe benötigen‘ zu entstigmatisieren. Es sollte sich gemeinsam, ganz nebenbei, und in einem geschützten, digitalen Raum begegnet werden, um Hilfe vertrauensvoll erfahren und selbst schenken zu können. Das Projekt fördert eine sozio-technische Gemeinschaft, in der die Autonomie und Selbstbestimmtheit verschiedenster Nutzergruppen und das individuelle Gesundheitsmanagement langfristig zu stärken.
Über die Forscher/innen
Die Wiederkehr des Konnektionismus
von Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen)
Wie die Mediengeschichte Künstlicher Intelligenz geschrieben werden kann.
→ Artikel erschienen in der FAZ am 02.10.2024
Über den Forscher
Sebastian Gießmann ist Akademischer Oberrat am Medienwissenschaftlichen Seminar der Universität Siegen und leitet das Teilprojekt A01: Geschichte digital-vernetzter Medien zwischen Spezialisierung und Universalisierung am Sonderforschungsbereich 1187 Medien der Kooperation.
Digital mit allen Sinnen – Ein Recht auf digitale Teilhabe für Kinder
Anlässlich des Weltkindertags betont das Projektteam von B05 “(Frühe) Kindheit und Smartphone. Familiäre Interaktionsordnung, Lernprozesse und Kooperation”:
Wahrnehmung ist nicht passiv! Vielmehr ist sie aktives Tun. Deshalb sprechen wir von Sinnespraktiken, wenn wir beispielsweise von Hören, Sehen, Berühren, Riechen, oder der Wahrnehmung des eigenen Körpers im Raum sprechen. Im Zeitalter der Smartphones verkümmern die Sinne, so eine weit verbreitete Annahme. Aber ist das wirklich so, oder verändern sich die Sinnespraktiken lediglich? Um dies herauszufinden haben wir mit einer Gruppe von 9 Kindern im KiTa- und Grundschulalter einen Workshop durchgeführt, in dem die Kinder eine Sinnesreise über den Campus in Form einer digitalen Schnitzeljagd gestaltet haben. Unsere Beobachtungen zeigen: egal ob analog oder digital, Kinder erforschen ihre Umgebung mit allen Sinnen, auf das wie kommt es an!
Ein Klick, große Folgen: Wer entscheidet, was ein Like bedeutet?
Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen) und Johannes Paßmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) heute Abend zu Gast in der DLF-Sendung “Systemfragen”
Der Beitrag fragt nach den Folgen von Likes auf Social Media.
Zur Folge
Zurücktreten wegen eines Likes auf Social Media: Diese Diskussion wurde etwa im Fall der Präsidentin der TU Berlin, Geraldine Rauch, geführt. Aber meint ein Daumen nach oben immer Zustimmung? Und wer entscheidet, was ein Like oder Emoji bedeutet?
Zu den Forschenden
“How Fact-Checkers are Becoming Machine Learners: A Case of Meta’s Third Party Programme”
Yarden Skop (University of Siegen) and Anna Schjøtt Hansen (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
The paper of our CRC 1187 member Yarden Skop is honored as best student paper at the 2024 conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. The article will be published in the proceedings of the conference and will be available online on October 30th, 2024.
Hoa Mai Trần was invited as an expert on the topic of digital media in early education to a radio interview with WDR 5. The radio report “Digital media in nurseries: yes or no?” (author Corina Wegler) is about the municipal family centre ‘Krümelkiste’ in Arnsberg-Hüsten in North Rhine-Westphalia, which specialises in the use of digital media. The article highlights opportunities and limitations for early digital education and points to the current relevance of dealing with the realities of children and families in an increasingly digitalised world.
Hoa Mai Trần is a researcher in the CRC project (B05) “(Early) Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” and researches children’s digital gaming practices.
The radio feature is available until 28 May 2025 in the WDR Mediathek. It is only available in German.
Carolin Gerlitz is a full member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz
At its last meeting, the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz elected media science Professor Carolin Gerlitz from the University of Siegen as a full member.
Carolin Gerlitz holds the chair of „Digital Media and Methods“ the University of Siegen and is also the spokesperson for our Collaborative Research Center 1187 “Media of Cooperation”. She is principal investigator of the project A03 – Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces. Gerlitz is co-founder of the “Center for Digital Methodologies in Media, Language and Research” and a long-standing member of the Digital Methods Initiative and the Public Data Labs.
Gerlitz studied social and science communication in Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts) and gender, media and culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she completed her Doctorate in Sociology. She then worked in London and Amsterdam before taking up a professorship at the University of Siegen in 2016. Gerlitz focuses on digital media technologies and methods as well as software and platform studies.
About the Academy of Sciences and Literature
The Academy of Sciences and Literature is a trans-regional association of personalities from the fields of science, literature and music. It serves to cultivate the sciences, literature and music and in this way contributes to the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage. The academy is a place of dialog that focuses on interdisciplinary exchange. The Academy in Mainz currently supervises 37 research projects from all disciplines with a focus on long-term basic research.
The members of the Academy are divided into three classes (Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class, Literature and Music Class, Humanities and Social Sciences Class). Carolin Gerlitz is a member of the humanities and social sciences class.
In the article “The first app: a brief history of the credit card” on ZEVEDI eFin & Demokratie blog, Dr. Sebastian Gießmann traces the development of the credit card as a central medium of consumer society. Starting from its beginnings in the early 20th century as a charge plate, which was particularly widespread in the USA, the transformation of the credit card into a global payment method is described, which embodies both socio-economic prestige and technological innovation.
Sebastian Gießmann shows the developments in media technology and society that have made the credit card an indispensable part of modern capitalism and how the physical credit card has been continuously adapted to the requirements of an increasingly digitalized world – despite and also because of the rapid development of mobile payment services and app-based financial technologies.
➞ Full Article (only available in German)
„Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr“
Tobias Röhl
Campus, 2022
Tobias Röhl was honored for his habilitation thesis written at the CRC ( project A04) “Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr” (Campus, 2022) with the Research Prize Ethnography of the Section Sociology of Knowledge of the GSA (German Sociological Association). The award ceremony took place on June 21, 2024 at the 9th Fieldwork Days at TU Dortmund University. The awarded work examines complex disruption management in public transport and explores the question of how accountability is mediated in situations of disruption and is distributed between different actors – from drivers to the administration. Röhl shows that accountability in the event of disruptions cannot be reduced to individuals, but rather arises from the interaction of different actors and technical infrastructures. This “distributed accountability” is the result of a dynamic process in which roles and responsibilities are fluid and constantly renegotiated. The innovative organizational ethnographic study provides valuable insights into the interplay of technology and organization and provides starting points for a well-founded critique of public transport.
Disruptions to public transport are stressful. But where do you complain when the train breaks down? To the staff on site or directly to the company? An ethnographic look at the disruption management of public transport companies shows: Neither strategy is helpful on its own. Drawing on research on accountability and technical infrastructures, the organizational ethnographic study traces how questions of responsibility are technically mediated and shifted back and forth between different actors. This “distributed accountability” cannot be localized in single individuals, but can be found in the interplay of different actors, in the processes and practices of disruption management.
A detailed review of Tobias Röhl’s habilitation thesis „Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr“ by Hendrik Vollmer was published in 2024 in Soziologische Revue 47 (3): 377-380.
➞ See the review (German only)
About the research prize
In 2024, the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association awarded the fifth “Ethnography Research Prize” for innovative and outstanding work in the field of ethnographic social research. The prize was endowed with 1,500 euros and awarded during the “Fieldwork Days”, which are usually held every two years. The 9th Fieldwork Days took place for the first time at TU Dortmund University in June 2024.
The “Research Prize Ethnography” is awarded to scientific publications (monographs or essays in German or English) that have been published in the three calendar years preceding the award ceremony. The prizewinner is selected by a jury consisting of five members of the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association.
➞More about the research prize (German only)
From 2016 to 2020, Tobias Röhl was a researcher in the project A04 – Normal Interruptions of Service. Structure and Change of Public Infrastructures“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 „Media of Cooperation“. Since 2021 he is Professor of Digital Learning and Teaching at the Zurich University of Teacher Education and focuses on the digital transformation of school education. After studying sociology, media studies and linguistics at the University of Konstanz and Trinity College Dublin, he completed his doctorate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Mainz in 2012 with a thesis on the significance of media and artifacts in the classroom. His habilitation (venia legendi: sociology), accepted at the University of Siegen in 2021, deals with the dynamics of attributability in public transport disruption management. Röhl is currently researching the digital transformation of school education with a particular focus on pedagogical professionalism in the context of artificial intelligence.
The German Sociological Association (GSA) is a non-profit organization whose main objectives are to discuss sociological problems, to promote scientific communication among its members and to contribute to the dissemination and deepening of sociological knowledge. The GSA participates in the clarification of technical and academic issues in sociology and maintains relations with sociology abroad. The GSA is the association of academically qualified sociologists in Germany. It currently has around 3,500 members. Around four-fifths of all sociologists in Germany with a doctorate belong to it. Membership of the association is open to all persons who have proven themselves academically through their studies, research, teaching or publications in the field of sociology.
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