726 research outputs found
The Political Nature of TCP/IP
Despite the importance of the Internet in the modern world, many users and even policy makers donât have a necessary historical or technical grasp of the technology behind it. In the spirit of addressing this issue, this thesis attempts to shed light on the historical, political, and technical context of TCP/IP. TCP/IP is the Internet Protocol Suite, a primary piece of Internet architecture with a well-documented history. After at technical overview, detailing the main function of TCP/IP, I examine aspects of the social and developmental record of this technology using STS theoretical approaches such as Hughesian systems theory, Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), and Langdon Winnerâs brand of technological determinism. Key points in TCP/IP evolution, when viewed from an STS perspective, illuminate the varied reasons behind decisions and development of the technology. For example, as detailed in this paper, both technical and political motivations were behind the architectural politics built into TCP/IP in the 1970s, and similar motivations spurred the rejection of OSI protocols by Internet developers two decades later. Armed with resultant contextual understanding of previous TCP/IP developments, a few possible directions (both political and technical) in contemporary and future Internet development are then explored, such as the slow migration to IPv6 and the meaning of network neutrality
Internet Governance: the State of Play
The Global Forum on Internet Governance held by the UNICT Task Force in New York on 25-26 March concluded that Internet governance issues were many and complex. The Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance will have to map out and navigate this complex terrain as it makes recommendations to the World Summit on an Information Society in 2005. To assist in this process, the Forum recommended, in the words of the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations at the closing session, that a matrix be developed "of all issues of Internet governance addressed by multilateral institutions, including gaps and concerns, to assist the Secretary-General in moving forward the agenda on these issues." This paper takes up the Deputy Secretary-General's challenge. It is an analysis of the state of play in Internet governance in different forums, with a view to showing: (1) what issues are being addressed (2) by whom, (3) what are the types of consideration that these issues receive and (4) what issues are not adequately addressed
Who Runs the Internet?
There is no single answer to the question of who runs the Internet. Is it the United States, often seen as the hegemon of the Internet, home to so many of the worldâs leading Internet enterprises? Is it China, which erects a âGreat Firewallâ to assert control over the portion of the Internet available in China? Is it the European Union, which extends its power globally through its data protection regime, designating countries as âadequateâ or (implicitly) âinadequateâ to receive its data? Is it ICANN, the California not-for-profit organization that controls how Internet addresses are allocated? Is it the World Wide Web Consortium, which develops standards for the webâs communicationâs protocols? Is it the United Nations, which periodically asserts pressure through organs like the International Telecommunications Union or through international meetings? Is it the World Trade Organization, which regulates the barriers that governments erect against international trade? Is it telecommunications providers such as AT&T and Comcast on whose wires and beams information flows? Is it Facebook, which recently connected a billion people in one day? Is it Google, where the world often begins its search for information?
In reality, all of the above, and many more, can claim a share of Internet governance. This chapter will set out an overview of how the Internet is currently governed, as well as some of the key controversies in both the procedure and substance of Internet governance
Internet... the final frontier: an ethnographic account: exploring the cultural space of the Net from the inside
The research project The Internet as a space for interaction, which completed its mission in Autumn 1998, studied the constitutive features of network culture and network organisation. Special emphasis was given to the dynamic interplay of technical and social conventions regarding both the Netâs organisation as well as its change. The ethnographic perspective chosen studied the Internet from the inside. Research concentrated upon three fields of study: the hegemonial operating technology of net nodes (UNIX) the networkâs basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication service (Usenet). The projectâs final report includes the results of the three branches explored. Drawing upon the development in the three fields it is shown that changes that come about on the Net are neither anarchic nor arbitrary. Instead, the decentrally organised Internet is based upon technically and organisationally distributed forms of coordination within which individual preferences collectively attain the power of developing into definitive standards. --
âINDUSTRIAL LEGISLATURESâ: CONSENSUS STANDARDIZATION IN THE SECOND AND THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS
Consensus standardization is a social process in which technical experts from
public, private, and non-profit sectors negotiate the direction and shape of technological
change. Scholars in a variety of disciplines have recognized the importance of consensus
standards as alternatives to standards that arise through market mechanisms or standards
mandated by regulators. Rather than treating the consensus method as some sort of
timeless organizational form or ever-present alternative to markets or laws, I argue that
consensus standardization is itself a product of history.
In the first two chapters, I explain the origins and growth of consensus standards
bodies between 1880 and 1930 as a reaction to and critique of the existing political
economy of engineering. By considering the standardization processâinstead of the
internal dynamics of a particular firm or technologyâas the primary category of analysis,
I am able to emphasize the cooperative relations that sustained the American style of
competitive managerial capitalism during the Second Industrial Revolution. In the
remaining four chapters, I examine the processes of network architecture and
standardization in the creation of four communications networks during the twentieth
century: AT&Tâs monopoly telephone network, the Internet, digital cellular telephone
networks, and the World Wide Web.
Each of these four networks embodied critiquesâalways implicit and frequently
explicitâof preceding and competing networks. These critiques, visible both in the
technological design of networks as well as in the institutional design of standard-setting
bodies, reflected the political convictions of successive generations of engineers and network architects. The networks described in this dissertation were thus turning points
in the century-long development of an organizational form. Seen as part of a common
history, they tell the story of how consensus-based institutions became the dominant
mode for setting standards in the Third Industrial Revolution, and created the
foundational standards of the information infrastructures upon which a newly globalized
economy and societyâthe Network Societyâcould grow
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