Global History of the Internet

Catalog description

The internet is a network of networks. It exists in the form of data centers, internet exchange points, routers, fiber optic and copper cables, electromagnetic frequencies, cell towers and more. The internet is an infrastructure layered on top of the infrastructure of older networks. We will study the interlinking histories of the various technologies that made these networks possible such as the railroad, postal networks, telegraph, telephone, radio, computing, trade routes, and imperial circuits. Building a network of networks was closely linked to constructing national and corporate identities. We will consider the history of the internet within the historical dynamics of the Global Cold War, decolonization, and the Non-Aligned Movement. This history has many actors including governments, corporations, engineers and researchers, workers, social movements, everyday users, etc. We will study the cultural, technical, political, economic, business, and social dynamics in the 20th century that created the conditions for the internet as we know it today. We will follow the 20th century history of the development of the internet into the present and ask questions such as: how did we end up in a world with internet connected devices everywhere? Who continues to be excluded? Who owns, governs, and profits off our networks of data circulation? We will read the writings of James Boggs, Rosa Luxemburg, Manu Karuka, and Marisa Elena Duarte among others who offer us tools to think critically about digital technologies in the present and over the past century.