Networking

Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century

Laura Otis

266 pages, parution le 05/03/2002

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Résumé

An interdisciplinary study that traces contemporary notions of "the web" to their origins long before the Internet came into being.

This compelling new interdisciplinary study investigates the scientific and cultural roots of contemporary conceptions of the network, including computer information systems, the human nervous system, and communications technology. Laura Otis, neuroscientist, literary scholar, and recent recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, demonstrates that the image of the network is centuries old; it is by no means a modern notion. Placing current comparisons of nerve and computer networks in perspective, Otis explores early analogies linking nerves and telegraphs and demonstrates the influence that nineteenth-century neurobiologists, engineers, and fiction writers influenced each other's ideas about communication.

The interdisciplinary sweep of this book is impressive. Otis focuses simultaneously on literary works by such authors as George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Henry James, and Mark Twain and on the scientific and technological achievements of such pioneers as Luigi Galvani, Hermann von Helmholtz, Charles Babbage, Samuel Morse, and Werner von Siemens.

This unique juxtaposition of physiology, engineering, and literature reveals the common thoughts shared by writers in widely diverse fields and suggests that our current comparisons of nerve and computer networks may not only enhance but shape our understanding of both neurobiology and technology.

Highly accessible and jargon-free, Networking will appeal to general readers as well as to scholars in the fields of interdisciplinary studies, nineteenth-century literature, and the history of science and technology.

Contents

Introduction 1
Ch. 1 The Language of the Nerves 11
Ch. 2 The Metaphoric Web 49
Ch. 3 The Webs of Middlemarch 81
Ch. 4 The Language of the Wires 120
Ch. 5 Two Telegraphers Unhappy with Their Nerves 147
Ch. 6 A Web without Wires 180
Conclusion: Wired Thoughts 220
Notes 227
Bibliography 249
Index 261

Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	The University of Michigan Press
Auteur(s)	Laura Otis
Parution	05/03/2002
Nb. de pages	266
Format	16 x 23,5
Couverture	Relié
Poids	615g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780472112135
ISBN13	978-0-472-11213-5