From Early Trade and Communication Networks to the Internet, the Internet of Things and the Global Intelligent Machine (GIM)

Abstract

The present paper offers a sketch of the history of networks from the Stone Age until the present. I argue that man is a creator of networks, a homo reti-culorum. Over the course of time more and more networks were created and they have become increasingly technologized. It seems inevitable that they will all be incorporated in the successor of the Internet of Things, the Global Intelligent Machine (GIM).