Wolfgang Schivelbusch, as we read his piece earlier in this semester, discussed that railway system started to redefine the definition of space; distances become shorter each day since we can travel faster. Then we analyze a distorted map of Europe published by OMA. The map presents a very clear illustration of the influences of railway network on the space existed on the ground for dozens of centuries with no major changes. Today’s network of data is, in some extent comparable to what Schivelbusch tried to argue. Flows of information that connect nodes in fractions of a second, redefined the definition of accessibility in our time. In Vernelis and Friedberg’s text we can see lots of influences of network connectivity on the space we live in. The way telephones change the urban behaviour of managers or GPS maps affect our understanding of spaces and paths. Moreover a non-real space is created via networks whose influences are even more intense on our lives; The simultaneously doubling of space argued by McLuhan. I tried to imagine the new distorted map of the world like one illustrated by OMA and after few seconds I found out that it cannot be a map any more. Imagine a point of very small (means fast) connections when the length of the paths approaches zero. Even if some familiar real spaces were recognizable visually in OMA’s work, in this new distorted map you can not even recognize the Sahara desert or south pole since they are affected by the forces catching nodes all in one point that can be McLuhan’s famous “global village” .

I can hardly imagine all these intense and fast changes without considering the psychological effects hidden behind them. Despite presence of a person in two spaces simultaneously, which is very conceptual, there are more parameters to change our feeling about space and connectivity. The fact that is very clear for us now is that we can be alone and free only by our choice. The other point is the changes on Augé’s non-spaces which is believed to be an “artifact of the past” and its influences on urban planing may be huge. Just imagine that we want to consider highways as places.

Mark Wigley’s piece which is a very interesting story of modern architecture and primitive steps of network notion , was itself a network of many of theoreticians and ideas we read this semester like, Fuler, McLuhan, Giedion and even Licklider. One of the most interesting points to me was the effort of modern architecture to “widening the brief of architecture” argued by Pask. We can see many thoughtful people of their age working on designing systems instead of buildings. Networks are in some extent a system that we can discuss through notions of cybernetics. They were realizing the capacities of Networks not only as nodes connected by cars and people via paths but also as paths of messages carrying information between people.