Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-230) and index.

Connectivity before and beyond the Net -- The network as a mode of being -- Exchange is the oxygen of capital -- Corruption, intrigue, and covert solidarity.

Connectivity before and beyond the net. Shuttle systems / Sadie Plant -- The encyclopaedia as labyrinth / Umberto Eco -- The man without qualities / Robert Musil -- Networked art / Craig Saper -- Simultaneity in simultaneity (1966) / Marta Minujín -- The medium is the massage / Marshall McLuhan -- Gego: Reticulárea / Lourdes Blanco -- Systems aesthetics / Jack Burnham -- Network: the art world described as a system / Lawrence Alloway -- Joseph Beuys: Honey pump / Caroline Tisdall -- Brief history and founding documents of ocean earth / Peter Fend -- The three ecologies / Félix Guattari -- Power of the earth / Vaclovas Mikailionis -- Learning from Mould / Pia Lindman -- FAX ONLY: send more information / Koncern° -- Network: a concept, not a thing out there / Bruno Latour.

The network as a mode of being. Is there love in the telematic embrace? / Roy Ascott -- What is an assemblage? / Jane Bennett -- Time machine / Ann Lislegaard -- HELLO: in conversation with Lars Bang Larsen / Aleksandra Mir -- Network dynamics / Tiziana Terranova -- Organized networks: transdisciplinarity and new institutional forms / Ned Rossiter -- There is drama in networks / Noortje Marres -- Orgnets in practice / Geert Lovink -- Digital debris: spam and scam / Hito Steyerl -- Kurator: a proposal for an experimental, permutational software application capable of curating exhibitions / Joasia Krysa -- Travel notes: living, working and travelling in a restless world / Okwui Enwezor -- Locating cities on global circuits / Saskia Sassen -- Geobodies: feminist activists crossing borders / Pamela Allara -- Tarek Atoui: Within / Yuko Hasegawa -- Sensing grounds: mangroves, unauthentic belonging, extra-territoriality / Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl.

Exchange is the oxygen of capital. The gift / Marcel Mauss -- Fish in water / Theodor W. Adorno -- The best way to do art / John Baldessari -- Comments on the society of the spectacle / Guy Debord -- Postscript on the societies of control / Gilles Deleuze -- The origins of the Nettime mailing list: in conversation with Pauline van Mourik Broekman / Pit Schultz -- The new spirit of capitalism / Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello -- Network production / Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri -- Protocol: how control exists after decentralization / Alexander Galloway -- Your art world, or The limits of connectivity / Lane Relyea -- Communication power / Manuel Castells -- Collective desire and the pathology of the individual / Jodi Dean -- Corruption, intrigue and covert solidarity. Odd, indexical ideas on the multi-breasted monstrosity / Lea Porsager -- Notes from underground / Barry Miles -- Inside the night / Stephen Willats -- Mark Lombardi: global networks / Robert Hobbs -- The temporary autonomous zone / Hakim Bey -- Utopia / Critical Art Ensemble -- Connected, or What it means to live in the network society / Steven Shaviro -- A grammar of the multitude / Paolo Virno -- Profile for MakeOutClub.com / Calvin Johnson -- Hyperstitional entities of oil / Reza Negarestani -- Promiscuity / Colectivo Situaciones -- Networks in reverse: from the interplanetary internet via the ARPANET to the last pre-internet moment / Suzanne Treister.

"Networks is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art. The dawn of the electronic media age in the 1960s initiated a cultural shift from the modernist grid's determination of projection and representation to the fluid structures and circuits of the network, presenting art with new challenges and possibilities. Artists have used the 'space of flows' as a basis for creating utopian scenarios, absurd yet functional propositions or holistic planetary visions. Others have explored the economies of reciprocity and the ethics of generosity, in works that address changed conditions of co-dependence and new sites of social negotiation. The 'infra-power' of the network has been a departure point for self-organized counter-culture and the creation of new types of agency. And a 'poetics of connectivity' runs through a diverse range of work that addresses the social and material complexity of networks via physical structures and ambient installation, the mapping of the internet, or the development of robots and software that take on the functions of artist or curator."--Publisher's description.