{"product_id":"world-projects-1","title":"World Projects","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMarkus Krajewski is emerging as a leading scholar in the field of media archaeology, which seeks to trace cultural history through the media networks that enable and structure it. In \u003cem\u003eWorld Projects\u003c\/em\u003e he opens a new portal into the history of globalization by examining several large-scale projects that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, shared a grand yet unachievable goal: bringing order to the world. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing from a broad array of archival materials, Krajewski reveals how expanding commercial relations, growing international scientific agreements, and an imperial monopolization of the political realm spawned ambitious global projects. \u003cem\u003eWorld Projects \u003c\/em\u003econtends that the late nineteenth-century networks of cables, routes, and shipping lines—of junctions, crossovers, and transfers—merged into a “multimedia system” that was a prerequisite for conceiving a world project. As examples, he presents the work of three big-thinking “plansmiths,” each of whose work mediates between two discursive fields: the chemist and natural philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald, who spent years promoting a “world auxiliary language” and a world currency; the self-taught “engineer” and self-anointed authority on science and technology Franz Maria Feldhaus, who labored to produce an all-encompassing “world history of technology”; and Walther Rathenau, who put economics to the service of politics and quickly transformed the German economy. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith a keen eye for the outlandish as well as the outsized, Krajewski shows how media, technological structures, and naked human ambition paved the way for global-scale ventures that together created the first “world wide web.”\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Markus Krajewski","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53615106261372,"sku":"9780816683512","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780816683512_8e4a9f84-1ff7-4dab-937e-e7ee16f0d7ac.jpg?v=1726475017","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/world-projects-1","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}