The characteristic feature of network organizations is that there is widely dispersed source material. The Enlightenment can be understood as a network phenomenon through the networks of correspondence and publication. Mapping the intellectual revolution of the 18th century can be done by graphing or mapping the communication of ideas among the great intellectuals. Writing the history of networks requires a different technique.
Niall Ferguson is the preeminent historian of the ideas that define our time. He has challenged how we think about money, power, civilisation and empires. Now he wants to reimagine history itself. Networks, he explains, are the key to history. The greatest innovators have been ‘superhubs’ of connections. The most powerful states, empires and companies have been those with the most densely networked structures. And the most transformative ideas – from the printing presses that launched the Reformation to the Freemasonry that inspired the American Revolution – have gone viral precisely because of the networks within which they spread. Our host for this conversation is historian, author and broadcaster, Rana Mitter. The audio of this live Intelligence Squared event was recorded in London in 2017.
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