from the introduction:

It might, at first, seem arbitrary to relate the ends of networks to the so-called ‘end/s of the world’. The ‘ends’ of a network are its nodes: the points connected through, and bounded by its lines, forming topologies that usually have the potential to be expanded by the addition of more ends, or nodes, to the system. Originating in graph theory, networks are often
understood as the ‘abstract formulation’ of elements that can have social, informational, technological, or biological manifestations. References to ‘the end of the world’ might be metaphorical or literal, depending on era, culture, and/or context. As Gabrys explains, worlds – plural – have always been ending, due to settler colonialism, environmental racism, and ecological exhaustion. Nowadays, as Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro write, the expression ‘world endings’ is mostly used as ‘the default script’ of the climate crisis in order to discuss its ‘(anthropic) causes and (catastrophic) consequences’; it implies forms of elimination, power, and dis/possession. Within this context, as one may understand from Gabrys’s work, the role of networks is crucial, and that is because it is the networked, sensing infrastructures that provide environmental data regarding the possible ends of living worlds. However, networks, at their conceptual inception, were not necessarily meant to be associated with endings...