Inventing the Social Network

What did people do before they networked?

(source)

Maybe they pulled strings, used connections, kept good company, took advantage of protectzia, or deployed guanxi. “Networking,” as in “making use of a network of people,” did not even appear in English until the late 1970s. “Network” itself usually meant a television broadcasting system such as NBC; the notion of a social network was essentially unknown. Today, most Americans understand a social network as a set of Internet contacts—and perhaps more subtly, per the movie of that name, as a comment on Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who may not have gotten so far without his connections.

The concept of a social network emerged from sociologists’ and anthropologists’ efforts in the 1960s and early 1970s….. See the rest of this post at the Boston Review here…..