Book contents
- Technology and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Technology and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Timeline
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Chapter 8 Prostheses
- Chapter 9 Clocks
- Chapter 10 Compasses
- Chapter 11 Telescopes
- Chapter 12 Steam Engines
- Chapter 13 Wires
- Chapter 14 Cameras
- Chapter 15 Phonographs
- Chapter 16 Waves and Rays
- Chapter 17 The Bomb
- Chapter 18 Networks
- Part III Applications
- Index
Chapter 18 - Networks
from Part II - Developments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2023
- Technology and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Technology and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Timeline
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Part II Developments
- Chapter 8 Prostheses
- Chapter 9 Clocks
- Chapter 10 Compasses
- Chapter 11 Telescopes
- Chapter 12 Steam Engines
- Chapter 13 Wires
- Chapter 14 Cameras
- Chapter 15 Phonographs
- Chapter 16 Waves and Rays
- Chapter 17 The Bomb
- Chapter 18 Networks
- Part III Applications
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on images and appropriations of computer networks in contemporary literature. Continuing the narrative of earlier chapters on compasses, steam engines, wires, and waves, this chapter explores the manner in which writers used images of networked machines to reimagine community, individuality, and the body. Ciccoricco reads fiction by William Gibson and Porpentine Charity Heartscape as serving to train its readers in the ambivalent business of navigating their own networked realities. “Just as metaphor itself relies on distance between source and target,” Ciccoricco argues, “figurations of networks are vital to the project of maintaining a critical distance from the social and political networks that we propagate and that in turn interpenetrate our experience.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Technology and Literature , pp. 344 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023