The transformation in meaning of „net“ and „web“ as terms referring to a ­meshwork which can be made of various materials into a metaphor for an electronic communications system succinctly sums up one of the most ­revolutionary innovation processes in cultural history, comparable to inventions such as the wheel and steam engine or the harnessing of electricity. When rails began to spread out over the land and nations during the development of railway systems, a „net“ or „network“ began to assume technical connotations. Cities and regions became linked by „knotted“ roads of iron connected to one another. People‘s dreams of a network which would enable them to move faster and largely „freely“ (free of obstacles) became reality. In his poem written on the occasion of the opening of the first German railroad line between Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835, Jakob Schnerr wrote, „Use rails, my friends, to weave without trembling / a web from pole to pole.“ Over the course of the scientific, technical, and industrial developments since the end of the 18th century, parallel to the rapid increase in the advances of civilization, „net“ and „web“ and their inherent qualities (one can use them to catch, hold, carry, even play) became heuristic terms in many sectors which could „discover“ opportunities, especially of a communicative and integrative nature: the network of roads, the telegraph network, the telephone network, the network of water and sewer lines, the network of knowledge – all took their place alongside the railroad network.  „Network of knowledge“ describes a holistic system of thought complete in ­itself, much as the ideas advanced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in his ­„Phenomenology of Mind“ and worked out empirically-inductively by ­Alexander von Humboldt („Cosmos“). The participation of every single human being in ­collective knowledge became a democratic goal. According to Hans Mohr, bio­logist and Board member of the Academy for the Assessment of the Consequences of Technology, three forms of knowledge define the „body of knowledge“ of ­modern man:

• Cognitive-theoretical knowledge, which seeks to answer the questions as to how the world functions and how it has come to be the way it is, and as to the essential nature of man and where he has come from;