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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] The internet that is not one</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>This is old stuff, but it graphically demonstrates how there are numerous internets and, if you dig around, the historical precedents to its current structures. In its earliest guises the internet consisted of primarily three parts – military, academic and corporate. A small public internet began to emerge in the early 1980’s. Reagan (ironically) passed the law that opened the doors for public access, demilitarising tracts of network infrastructure and protocols. It was the advent of http (c. 1990) that made the net friendly enough that it could become a mass medium. I haven’t read a complete sociological analysis of this history yet.<BR>
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<a href="http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/atlas.html">http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/atlas.html</a><BR>
<BR>
Regards<BR>
<BR>
Simon<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Simon Biggs<BR>
Research Professor<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">edinburgh college of art<BR>
</FONT>s.biggs@<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">eca</FONT>.ac.uk<BR>
www.<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">eca</FONT>.ac.uk<BR>
www.<FONT COLOR="#FD7600">eca</FONT>.ac.uk/circle/<BR>
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simon@littlepig.org.uk<BR>
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<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><B>From: </B>Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au><BR>
<B>Date: </B>Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:18:43 +0100<BR>
<B>To: </B>"Dean, Jodi" <JDEAN@hws.edu>, "idc@mailman.thing.net" <idc@mailman.thing.net><BR>
<B>Conversation: </B>[iDC] The internet that is not one<BR>
<B>Subject: </B>Re: [iDC] The internet that is not one<BR>
<BR>
Funnily enough I was scribbling note son this on a train ride yesterday<BR>
while reading Vattimo on nihilism and emancipation, and reflecting on a<BR>
not-so-good conference presentation I'd just done. Vattimo says something<BR>
like "we have to have a social constru8ctivist concept of history: that we<BR>
build our own historical provenance of the situation where we are in order<BR>
to make a (non-metaphysical) ethical act". After Latour etc, the "we" is not<BR>
wholly human and after everyone else, not wholly individual. Agency is in<BR>
networks. So the question is whether there can exist networks<BR>
(political-technical-physical) which have sufficient autonomy from The<BR>
Network to have ethical agency and/or the capacity for action. Apocalyptic<BR>
scenario: TCP/IP and the protocological constrains all possible action.<BR>
Glass hlf full scenario: bounded and often ephemeral networks maintain<BR>
sufficient autonomy for sufficient time to act politically and/or ethically.<BR>
The second is only thinkable if there is not a single internet but a<BR>
multiple (network of networks) where the networks, despite integration,<BR>
retain their autonomy to some extent. Bad news: many of these incompletely<BR>
integrated networks are banks, military, corporate, subscriber-only etc.<BR>
Good news: iDC and similar flourishing 'minor' articulations evidence the<BR>
capacity of incompletely integrated networks to produce discourse of<BR>
potential <BR>
<BR>
BBS and others don;t necessarily run on TCP/IP; different use of layers in<BR>
the suite also disctinguishes different zones/activities insode TCP/IP<BR>
internet. These quite apart from areas marked off by language or by<BR>
expertise<BR>
<BR>
Good question!<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
On 11/07/09 5:57 PM, "Dean, Jodi" <JDEAN@hws.edu> wrote:<BR>
<BR>
> <BR>
> A question for the list (this is a real question that comes out of<BR>
> conversations I've had in the last few months):<BR>
> <BR>
> Is there one internet?<BR>
> <BR>
> Is the internet singular, a unity?<BR>
> <BR>
> Are there multiple internets?<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> thanks,<BR>
> Jodi<BR>
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