network

The English word network appears by the 16th century as a compound of net (knotted mesh) and work (the labor or product of labor). A network was literally work made into a net — a fabric of interwoven threads, the result of weaving, knitting, or knotting. Drainage networks, road networks — these were spatial systems that resembled the mesh structure of woven cloth. The visual metaphor was strong: threads crossing at nodes.

In the 19th century, network extended to describe infrastructural systems: the railway network (1839), the telegraph network (1850s), the telephone network (1880s). Each new communication or transportation technology was understood as a network — a mesh of connections between nodes. The word proved robust because the underlying mathematics was the same: graph theory, developed by Euler in 1736, described networks whether they were textile, railway, or telegraph.

Broadcasting adopted network in the 1920s: NBC and CBS were 'radio networks' — interconnected stations broadcasting the same content. Television networks followed. The word evolved to mean not just the physical connections but the organizational entity that used them. A network was also a social structure: 'networking' as relationship-building entered business vocabulary in the 1970s.

ARPANET — the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network — was built in 1969 by the US Defense Department to allow researchers to share computing resources and survive nuclear attack. Its architecture was deliberately decentralized, with data routing around damaged nodes. This network became the internet. The internet is technically 'inter-network' — networks of networks. The textile metaphor became the infrastructure of civilization.