Ten grids that changed the world: the emergence and evolution of
the most prominent visual structure in Western culture. Emblematic
of modernity, the grid is the underlying form of everything from
skyscrapers and office cubicles to paintings by Mondrian and a
piece of computer code. And yet, as Hannah Higgins makes clear in
this engaging and evocative book, the grid has a history that long
predates modernity; it is the most prominent visual structure in
Western culture. In The Grid Book, Higgins examines the history of
ten grids that changed the world: the brick, the tablet, the
gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, the ledger, the
screen, moveable type, the manufactured box, and the net. Charting
the evolution of each grid, from the Paleolithic brick of ancient
Mesopotamia through the virtual connections of the Internet,
Higgins demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it may bend,
crumble, or shatter, but its organizing principle never disappears.
The appearance of each grid was a watershed event. Brick, tablet,
and city gridiron made possible sturdy housing, the standardization
of language, and urban development. Maps, musical notation,
financial ledgers, and moveable type promoted the organization of
space, music, and time, international trade, and mass literacy. The
screen of perspective painting heralded the science of the modern
period, classical mechanics, and the screen arts, while the
standardization of space made possible by the manufactured box
suggested the purified box forms of industrial architecture and
visual art. The net, the most ancient grid, made its first
appearance in Stone Age Finland; today, the loose but clearly
articulated networks of the World Wide Web suggest that we are in
the middle of an emergent grid that is reshaping the world, as
grids do, in its image.
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