By the eighteenth century, personal networks bound together the widening British world. In The Opened Letter, Lindsay O Neill argues that the British became an early networking society, relying on letters to maintaining necessary social networks that British global expansion and mobility threatened to disconnect. By the eighteenth century, personal networks bound together the widening British world. In The Opened Letter, Lindsay O Neill argues that the British became an early networking society, relying on letters to maintaining necessary social networks that British global expansion and mobility threatened to disconnect.