Links in our past

![Figure][1] Steven Cassedy's Connected covers an age of profound technological change when “social” prefixed every buzzword on the lips of journalists and scholars and old institutions struggled against highly networked organizations. Neither a hagiography of early 21st-century startup culture nor a manifesto for 21st-century science, the book offers a wide-ranging review of converging technological, cultural, and even theological developments in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Lest we put too much stock in bromides about the recent flatness of the world, this history contextualizes the developments that created a vastly more interconnected social world more than a century ago. ![Figure][1] PHOTO: UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD/CORBIS Cassedy argues that 19th-century Americans increasingly lived within interconnected networks that offered both promise and constraint. These not only included transportation and telecommunication systems that we recognize today as complex sociotechnical assemblies; Cassedy also identifies more subtle changes that embedded individuals within networks of interacting biological elements, complex technical standards, and sweeping new social ideas. He holds that the conveniences of modernity have cost us a loss of individual autonomy as we have become embedded in ever more pervasive networks. Although the book offers an anthology of rich and diverse case studies, few social scientists will be surprised by Cassedy's conclusion that social structures such as networks simultaneously enable and constrain individual agency. The first of the book's sections, “Body and Mind,” considers how scientific and medical advancements led to a popular reimagination of the self as networks of interconnected cells, the mind became a network of both physical neurons and psychological desires, and the public health movement made one responsible for the health of others. Cassedy then discusses the “new physical world” composed of individuals networked through standardized time, houses networked through municipal infrastructures, and consumers networked through globalized supply chains. The final section, “The Secular, Ecumenical Collective,” covers individuals networked by their genes to new transnational racial concepts, by their religion to care for collective justice rather than individual salvation, and by the state through new regulations and national identities. Throughout, Cassedy narrates each episode using books, lectures, and newspapers of the era while sprinkling in literary Easter eggs and surprising historical coincidences. These texts reflect the popular consensus among scholars, journalists, and activists of the time, who viewed their social world as increasingly resembling a network, organism, or other evocative analogy of interconnected complex systems migrating out from contemporaries' scientific discoveries and technological advancements. Although the concept of networks should be foundational to the book's argument, there is little for network scientists to digest here. Cassedy offers perfunctory definitions in the preface and alludes to terms such as nodes, links, and hubs throughout, but his concept of networks implies a ubiquitous and homogeneous connectivity rather than the complex structures observed in social networks. There are no references to social network theories, nor does the book provide historical network data or integrate biological relationships, technical infrastructures, and group associations into something more than a paradox of autonomy. Somewhat ironically, the book never connects to social network theory's pedigrees from turn-of-the century sociology, psychology, and graph theory ([ 1 ][2]). And the author's account would have been strengthened had he tapped the rich scholarship on the networked nature of contemporary life [e.g., ([ 2 ][3])] and historical studies that illuminate the emergence and influence of what we now term social networks in political alliances and trade [e.g., ([ 3 ][4], [ 4 ][5])]. Despite its faults, Connected shines in the chapter “The Network of Spatialized Time.” Whereas textbooks teach that standardized time arose from the need for railroads to coordinate schedules, Cassedy identifies additional factors such as political demands for reform in response to railroads' horrific safety records, technological changes that allowed mass-produced mobile timepieces, and the needs for coordinating social and economic life: “The pocket watch links you through your jeweler, through the synchronized clocks in your place of business, through the clock above the Broadway entrance to Macy's…, to the Naval Observatory in Washington. … [Time] spoke through the millions of [watches], linking the individual owners of these devices with one another.” This remarkable accomplishment serves as an important benchmark against which we should evaluate the effectiveness of contemporary mobile devices at providing affordable, widely available, and accurate products for coordinating our social lives. While Cassedy's book unfortunately does not connect to social network concepts or contemporary networked aspirations and anxieties, it may prove a useful source of succinct social histories about our highly networked ancestors. 1. [↵][6] 1. L. C. Freeman , The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science (Empirical, Vancouver, 2004). 2. [↵][7] 1. L. Raine, 2. B. Wellman , Networked: The New Social Operating System (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012). 3. [↵][8] 1. J. F. Padgett, 2. C. K. Ansell , Am. J. Sociol. 98, 1259 (1993). [OpenUrl][9][CrossRef][10][Web of Science][11] 4. [↵][12] 1. C. Wetherell , Int. Rev. Soc. Hist. 43 (suppl. S6), 125 (1998). 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