The square and the tower

"Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because hierarchies create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks-leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati? The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age ... argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the personal computer in the role of the printing press."--Provided by publisher.