"By 2007, we were finally living in a culture where people get what networks are and what technology can do to connect people"

Hughes points to 2007 as an inflection point, when network literacy shifted from a niche idea to mainstream common sense. The web had moved from static pages to participatory platforms; broadband was widespread; a generation of users had learned to post, tag, subscribe, and share. What changed was not only the tools but the culture: people began to intuit the logic of networks, how connections multiply value, how information flows through nodes and ties, and how collective presence can be organized at scale.

To “get what networks are” is to see relationships as infrastructure. Profiles, friend lists, and followers transformed social life into a visible graph, and everyday behavior adjusted accordingly. People learned that reaching one person could reach many, that small actions could cascade, and that belonging could be coordinated digitally. The early social web made the network tangible: status updates, photo streams, and news feeds compressed distances and time zones, turning acquaintanceship, community, and even identity into networked practices.

Understanding “what technology can do to connect people” meant recognizing that connection was no longer a byproduct of technology but its organizing principle. Communication moved from one-to-one and one-to-many to many-to-many; groups formed and dissolved with unprecedented ease; business, culture, and politics adopted network strategies. Crowdsourced knowledge became credible, peer production became normal, and reputation accrued through links, likes, and contributions. The launch of smartphones and real-time platforms consolidated an always-on social layer atop daily life.

There was exuberance in that moment, optimism about openness, access, and participation. The social costs that would later dominate headlines, privacy erosion, algorithmic amplification, surveillance, polarization, had not yet overshadowed the promise. Hughes’s observation marks the tipping point when people stopped needing persuasion about why networks mattered. They had felt the effects directly. From then on, the network was not a novelty but the default architecture of connection, shaping how individuals organize, how institutions engage, and how culture circulates.