[Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life

[Frank Thomas]

David and all other folks,

I think we glue to closely to the facts if we conceive Internet 
development in the short development steps you propose. We should look 
at other communication systems, how they emerged (or better said: were 
develeped) and then draw conclusions. Also, the way you propose to 
conceive the Internet is a rationalisation of what happened seen from 
today. But this excludes the social generation, the corporate and 
individual struggles, strategies, coalitions etc. that shaped today's 
outcome. So,  a look into neighbouring disciplines with a more long-term 
view would be a help. Look how Large technical systems developed, for 
instance.

Look into Hughes, Networks of power. A large technical systems, Hughes 
writes, shows several development phases: invention, development, 
innovation, transfer (into new countries), growth. Hughes' seminal book 
gives you an idea of the development phases of electric power network in 
Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. from the beginning into the 1930s. 
There are other studies about the telegraph, the telephone, the 
railroads, gas networks, videotext, etc. The theory was conceived with 
industrial society as a background but has been transferred to more 
recent technologies, such as videotext or the telephone.


I guess there were more attemps to create different kinds of Internets, 
with different actor sets and strategies behind than just three: the 
scientific, the non-commercial and the commercial stage.

I would say, there are different kinds of actor sets, with their 
respective objectives and associated strategies who continously struggle 
and usually only get partial victories. They struggle about power, about 
prestige, about wealth through invention, regulation, system 
development, business models, etc. As a result, like in real life, the 
Internet version the winner does not take all, but supplements in one, 
replaces competitors completely in other parts of the Internet.

So, there still is a scientists' Internet, with altruism, exchange etc. 
as a basic principle. It became less important in numbers and in 
influence but still exists. And there is a social network continously 
growing strong, unimpeded I guess from the Internet bust but fuelled by 
the growing number of private users, of civil society actors, 
associations etc. And there is the commercial Internet which got a 
severe blow - but not the others. And there is a what we call in Europe 
public Internet, e-government or e-administration. Which is the result 
of public action and, even in the US, integrates several of the most 
visited sites. And you might add several forms of large-scale intranets: 
the military Internet, and public security Internets, banking and other 
corporate Internets.

Thus, to understand the history of the Internet, I propose to study at 
least 5 development paths and write their development history: the 
scientific, the social/associative, the commercial, the 
public/administrative, the military and other large intranets.

David, is this an answer ?

Frank
 

david silver wrote:

>Hi Folks,
>
>i just returned after giving a class lecture which featured an abbreviated
>history of the internet and found barry's post quite interesting.  besides
>information about his and caroline haythornthwaite's book, he included the
>following excerpt from the introduction:
>
>***
>
>Excerpts from the Editors' Introduction,
>Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite:
>
>_The Internet in Everyday Life_ is about the second age of the Internet as
>it descends from the firmament and becomes embedded in everyday life. The
>first age of the Internet was a bright light shining above everyday
>concerns. In the euphoria, many analysts lost their perspective. The rapid
>contraction of the dot.com economy has brought down to earth the
>once-euphoric belief in the infinite possibility of Internet life.
>
>***
>
>i'm curious about this notion of two stages of the internet.  if i'm
>reading the paragraph correctly, the authors suggest the net has had two
>stages: before and after the dot.com crash.  i'm interested in hearing
>what others think about this concept of a two-staged internet history.
>
>in my own lecture this morning, i tracked a number of stages, all of which
>contain, i believe, significant differences between them.  for example
>(and this is the abridged version):
>
>1960s/early 1970s - ARPANET
>
>1975 - a more social internet with lists like SF-Lovers
>
>1979 - a more public internet (here i'm defining the internet more
>expansively) with the introduction of usenet groups
>
>late 1980s/early 1990s - mass influx of users via prodigy/compuserve/aol
>
>1991 - a more distributive (and later graphical) turn with berners-lee's
>world wide web, followed by mosaic (1993), and netscape (1994)
>
>1995 - netscape goes public, wall street goes crazy, dot.com daze begins
>
>etc etc etc.
>
>(like all historical stages, these are complex and reflect an interesting
>intersection among social and cultural contexts, technological
>developments, economic conditions, etc.)
>
>thoughts?
>
>david silver
>http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver/
>
>
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>

-- 
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Frank Thomas
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