The Networks of Ascent: How Connectivity Forged the Modern World

Key Insights

The evolution of global power has been fundamentally shaped by the development and control of networks—be they roads, maritime routes, telegraph lines, or digital infrastructures.
Each major leap in connectivity—from Roman roads to the internet—has redefined the spatial and temporal dimensions of human interaction, enabling unprecedented integration while also introducing new vulnerabilities.
The dual nature of networks is evident: they can both unify and fragment societies, centralize authority while empowering individuals, and create efficiencies while amplifying systemic risks.
Understanding the historical context of these networks provides critical insights into contemporary challenges, such as digital sovereignty, platform power, and the resilience of global supply chains.

References

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A composite image showing glowing ancient road and modern internet cable networks superimposed.

The Networks of Ascent - Part 1: The First Highways: Rivers, Roads, and the Anatomy of an Empire

Series: The Networks of Ascent: How Connectivity Forged the Modern World Series HomeThe Networks of Ascent - Part 1: The First Highways: Rivers, Roads, and the Anatomy of an EmpireThe Networks of Ascent - Part 2: The Maritime Matrix: How Oceanic Routes Rewired Global PowerThe Networks of Ascent - Part 3: The Telegraphic Web: The First Instantaneous Network and Its DiscontentsThe Networks of Ascent - Part 4: The Digital Crucible: Will Our Networks Forge Integration or Fragmentation? In 19 BCE, the Roman Curator Viarum, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, completed a task of breathtaking audacity. He produced a master map of the known world, not defined by political borders or topographic features, but by a single, unifying system: the roads. The Tabula Peutingeriana, a later medieval copy of such a map, shows a sprawling, schematic network connecting Britain to India. Distances are measured not in miles but in travel time—a day’s journey for a legion on the march. This was not a cartographic exercise; it was the operating system of an empire. Rome did not merely build roads within its territory; it built a territory that was its roads. The empire existed as a continuous, manageable space only because a soldier, a tax collector, or an edict could move predictably from its heart to its farthest frontier. ...

The Networks of Ascent - Part 2: The Maritime Matrix: How Oceanic Routes Rewired Global Power

Series: The Networks of Ascent: How Connectivity Forged the Modern World Series HomeThe Networks of Ascent - Part 1: The First Highways: Rivers, Roads, and the Anatomy of an EmpireThe Networks of Ascent - Part 2: The Maritime Matrix: How Oceanic Routes Rewired Global PowerThe Networks of Ascent - Part 3: The Telegraphic Web: The First Instantaneous Network and Its DiscontentsThe Networks of Ascent - Part 4: The Digital Crucible: Will Our Networks Forge Integration or Fragmentation? On February 22, 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal issued a secret set of instructions to a nobleman, Vasco da Gama. The mission was not to discover new land, but to solve a specific network problem: establish a direct, maritime connection to the spice markets of India, bypassing the Venetian and Mamluk-controlled overland routes. When da Gama’s fleet rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the Indian Ocean, they did more than open a new trade route. They executed a hostile takeover of a global network. For millennia, the Afro-Eurasian world-system had been a patchwork of linked regional circuits—the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean dhow trade, the Mediterranean galley routes. The Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and English, aimed to sew these circuits into a single, ocean-spanning web controlled from European coastal nodes like Lisbon, Amsterdam, and London. ...

The Networks of Ascent - Part 3: The Telegraphic Web: The First Instantaneous Network and Its Discontents

Series: The Networks of Ascent: How Connectivity Forged the Modern World Series HomeThe Networks of Ascent - Part 1: The First Highways: Rivers, Roads, and the Anatomy of an EmpireThe Networks of Ascent - Part 2: The Maritime Matrix: How Oceanic Routes Rewired Global PowerThe Networks of Ascent - Part 3: The Telegraphic Web: The First Instantaneous Network and Its DiscontentsThe Networks of Ascent - Part 4: The Digital Crucible: Will Our Networks Forge Integration or Fragmentation? On May 24, 1844, in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court, Samuel F. B. Morse tapped out a message on a strange new device: “What hath God wrought?” The query, received instantly in Baltimore, was prophetic. The electromagnetic telegraph did not merely speed up communication; it annihilated time as a barrier to information. For the entirety of human history, the speed of a message had been tethered to the speed of a horse, a ship, or a train. The telegraph severed this tether. By the 1870s, a web of copper wires and submarine cables connected London to Calcutta, New York to San Francisco. This created, for the first time, a near-instantaneous global information network, giving rise to phenomena like the transatlantic news report and the globally synchronized financial market. ...

The Networks of Ascent - Part 4: The Digital Crucible: Will Our Networks Forge Integration or Fragmentation?

Series: The Networks of Ascent: How Connectivity Forged the Modern World Series HomeThe Networks of Ascent - Part 1: The First Highways: Rivers, Roads, and the Anatomy of an EmpireThe Networks of Ascent - Part 2: The Maritime Matrix: How Oceanic Routes Rewired Global PowerThe Networks of Ascent - Part 3: The Telegraphic Web: The First Instantaneous Network and Its DiscontentsThe Networks of Ascent - Part 4: The Digital Crucible: Will Our Networks Forge Integration or Fragmentation? On January 3, 2009, an anonymous entity using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, the “Genesis Block.” Embedded within its code was a headline from that day’s The Times: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This was not a random datum but a philosophical manifesto. It declared the creation of a new kind of network—a decentralized, trustless, cryptographic ledger—explicitly designed as a response to the failures of the centralized financial networks that had just triggered the 2008 global crisis. Bitcoin proposed a radical alternative: a system where value could be transferred globally without the need for the traditional intermediaries (banks, states) that had controlled such networks for centuries. ...

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