The Internet Myth: From The Internet Imaginary To Network Ideologies

Description

The Internet Myth retraces and challenges the myth laying at the foundations of the network ideologies – the idea that networks, by themselves, are the main agents of social, economic, political and cultural change. By comparing and integrating different sources related to network histories, this book emphasizes how a dominant narrative has extensively contributed to the construction of the Internet myth while other visions of the networked society have been erased from the collective imaginary. The book decodes, analyzes and challenges the foundations of the network ideologies looking at how networks have been imagined, designed and promoted during the crucial phase of the 1990s. Three case studies are scrutinized so as to reveal the complexity of network imaginaries in this decade: the birth of the Web and the mythopoesis of its inventor; and the histories of two Italian networking projects, the infrastructural plan Socrate and the civic network Iperbole, the first to give free Internet access to citizens. The Internet Myth thereby provides a compelling and hidden sociohistorical narrative in order to challenge one of the most powerful myths of our time. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 CDSMS Series......Page 3 Title......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1.1 The Dominant Narrative of Internet History......Page 22 1.1.1 The Narratives of the Internet’s Origins......Page 25 1.1.2 The World Wide Web and the Transition of the 1990s......Page 30 1.2 Alter-Net Histories......Page 36 1.3 Looking for Network Imaginaries......Page 38 1.4 The Ideal-Typical Network Models......Page 40 1.5 The Material Dimensions of Networks......Page 43 1.6 The Rise of Network Ideologies......Page 45 2.1 The Birth of the Web: A Hero’s Story......Page 54 2.1.1 The Web’s Journey......Page 57 2.1.2 The Biography of the Web as a Myth-Building Narrative......Page 65 2.2 Questioning the Myth of the Web: Media Imaginaries and Web History......Page 67 2.2.1 Hypertext: The Forgotten Hero Ted Nelson......Page 69 2.2.2 Retracing Old Media in the World Wide Web......Page 71 2.2.3 The Web and the Network......Page 75 2.3 Rethinking Web History......Page 78 3.1 The Web Was Not Alone......Page 84 3.2 The Italian Networking Landscape in the 1990s......Page 86 3.3 Rise and Fall of Socrate......Page 90 3.3.1 The Uncertain Reasons for the Failure......Page 96 3.4 The Other network: The Internet in Italy......Page 100 3.4.1 Iperbole: The Pioneering Italian Civic Network Project......Page 102 3.5 Conflicting Imaginaries: Socrate vs. Iperbole......Page 107 3.6 The Ruins of Socrate......Page 112 3.7 Legacy Systems......Page 118 4.1 Imaginary networks......Page 132 4.2 The Transitory Propriety of Network Imaginaries......Page 133 4.3 The power of limits......Page 139 4.4 Beyond networks......Page 140 References......Page 144 List of Acronyms......Page 160 Index......Page 162