The Spine of Society and the Beginning of the Grid, 1878

JF Ptak Science Books

I’m interested to know what anyone might know about the use of metaphors relating large-scale societal techno advances and biological functions?  I have no doubt that they go back to modern-ancient times (say to William Gilbert (1544-1603)  and his vis electrica)—but I’m stopped today by seeing this paper by J. Norman Lockyer called “Social Electrical Nerves” (in two issues of  Nature for 14 and 28 February 1878).  In this paper the great astronomer looks at elements of the “grid” as it was and seeing how the new networks of police and fire communications via telegraph  interacts with the existing electrical systems.  It seems to me an early use of  nervous system/electrical grid, in spite of the fact the first “electrical highways” (as Lockyer puts it 120 years before our own “information superhighway”) appeared in England 32 years earlier though apparently without these biological metaphors. 

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The work pictured above is the electrically-draped world of the future, at least according to the vision of the wonderful Albert Robida, who was actually at work on these visions just at the time of the publication of the Lockyear paper . (Robida produced at least a trio of interesting and lovely and occasionally prescient works:  Le Vingtième Siècle (1883);  La Guerre au vingtième siècle (1887); and Le Vingtième siècle-- La vie électrique (1890)).   Many of Robida’s visions of electrical connectivity seem to me to move beyond the nervous system metaphor and become a kind of societal “skin”—which is not terribly far from the truth, especially when looking at images of congested metropolitan centers ca. 1910, when utility poles fairly well sagged under 20 (!) horizontal crossbars carrying a dozen lines apiece.   At the very least, you knew that something or other was happening (fast forward to the massive ductworks of Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil.) 

And now that the wireless age is starting to get ridges in its fingernails (the “wireless” age being at least 115 years old, beautifully borne by Heinrich Hertz and Marconi), are our bio-electrical  metaphors giving way?

Comments

[Rob MacDougall]

Hi John:

I don't know if you're still looking for info on electrical/biological nervous system metaphors, but if you are, one source I can recommend is Laura Otis' book Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (2001). It's about metaphors people have used to describe nerves and the nervous system - primarily the electrical/telegraph metaphor of the 19th century, but also hydraulic metaphors in the 17th and 18th and cybernetic/web metaphors in the 20th. If you don't have it in a library near you, I can even send you a few pages of notes on it.

Long time no comment, I know, but I'm still lurking and reading regularly.

All the best,
Rob

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks for that, Rob! Never heard of it before and it looks as though I can get it online for cheap--20 bucks or thereabouts. I like the idea of drawing all of that different stuff (lit neuro mechanics phys) together, but never really know what to make of how people see that those guys influenced one another back-and-forth. Like Henderson's book on the fourth dimension in art and science, though I think she comes to the conclusion that there wasn't much going from art-to-sci. I'm very curious to look at all of the references in this book. Thanks!