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 Net’s 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 network’s basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication service (Usenet). The project’s 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. --

Beyond NETmundial: The Roadmap for Institutional Improvements to the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem

Beyond NETmundial: The Roadmap for Institutional Improvements to the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem explores options for the implementation of a key section of the “NETmundial Multistakeholder Statement” that was adopted at the Global Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial) held on April 23rd and 24th 2014 in São Paulo, Brazil. The Roadmap section of the statement concisely sets out a series of proposed enhancements to existing mechanisms for global internet governance, as well as suggestions of possible new initiatives that the global community may wish to consider. The sixteen chapters by leading practitioners and scholars are grouped into six sections: The NETmundial Meeting; Strengthening the Internet Governance Forum; Filling the Gaps; Improving ICANN; Broader Analytical Perspectives; and Moving Forward

Managing the boundary of an 'open' project

In the past ten years, the boundaries between public and open science and commercial research efforts have become more porous. Scholars have thus more critically examined ways in which these two institutional regimes intersect. Large open source software projects have also attracted commercial collaborators and now struggle to develop code in an open public environment that still protects their communal boundaries. This research applies a dynamic social network approach to understand how one community-managed software project, Debian, developed a membership process. We examine the project's face-to-face social network over a five-year period (1997-2001) to see how changes in the social structure affected the evolution of membership mechanisms and the determination of gatekeepers. While the amount and importance of a contributor's work increased the probability that a contributor would become a gatekeeper, those more central in the social network were more likely to become gatekeepers and influence the membership process. A greater understanding of the mechanisms open projects use to manage their boundaries has critical implications for research and knowledge-producing communities operating in pluralistic, open and distributed environments.open source software; social networks; organizational design; institutional design;

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 net's 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 network’s basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication service (Usenet). The project's 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." (author's abstract)"Das im Herbst 1998 abgeschlossene Forschungsprojekt 'Interaktionsraum Internet' hat sich mit den konstitutiven Merkmalen der Netzkultur und Netzwerkorganisation beschäftigt. Im Vordergrund des Interesses stand das dynamische Zusammenspiel technischer und gesellschaftlicher Konventionen in der Organisation wie auch im Wandel des Netzes. Die ethnographisch angeleitete Binnenperspektive auf das Internet konzentrierte sich auf drei ausgewählte Bereiche, um Prozesse der Institutionenbildung und die Formen ihrer Transformation zu studieren: die hegemoniale Betriebstechnik der Netzknoten (UNIX), die grundlegende Übertragungstechnik im Netz (das Internet Protokoll IP) und einen populären Kommunikationsdienst (Usenet). Der Schlußbericht des Projekts enthält die Ergebnisse der drei Untersuchungsstränge. Gezeigt wird anhand der Entwicklung in den drei Feldern, daß sich der Wandel des Netzes weder beliebig noch anarchisch vollzieht. Das dezentral organisierte Internet beruht vielmehr auf technisch wie organisatorisch verteilten Formen der Koordination, in denen individuelle Handlungspräferenzen kollektiv definitionsmächtig werden." (Autorenreferat

China & technical global internet governance: from norm-taker to norm-maker?

 This dissertation examines Chinese engagement with core norms structuring technical global internet governance. It finds that China has been a norm-taker globally, but more of a norm-maker both regionally and domestically. Beijing seeks to restrict US government and non-state actor authority, but cannot due to limited support and power constraints

Gendered coloniality and the politics of internet access

This thesis re-theorises the under-researched concept of internet access from a decolonial feminist perspective, contributing to emergent decolonising debates in the field. Scholarship on internet access has bifurcated towards ‘digital divide’ and ‘digital inequalities’ approaches on the one hand, and internet governance and policy approaches on the other, limiting view of multi-scalar arrangements. This research considers how varied modes of access facilitate and limit decolonising politics with relation to the historically-constituted, geopolitical and sociotechnical construction of the internet. The multi-sited, multi-scalar, decolonial feminist methodology has involved five years of participant observation at internet governance consultations, Mozilla Festival, RightsCon and the global Internet Governance Forum, taking place both in-person and online. Additionally, I have followed and interviewed youth activists located across the African continent and feminist activists located across South Asia, as they have circulated between these sites and their communities of work. I argue that relations of gendered coloniality, shaped by co-constitutive processes of gendered/racialised oppression, structure expansionist moves to generate a particular internet universality. Research findings show these workings are obscured from view often by seemingly virtuous claims that, at face-value, look to be in opposition the entrenched disparities that the colonial matrix of power maintains. Gendered coloniality denigrates Majority World knowledges, ways of being and socialities. In the governance of the internet these relations project Western societies as kinetic, innovative and future-oriented, whilst Majority World societies are fixed into the eternal past. In the face of these moves to power activist collaborators who contribute to the research engage in multi-scalar negotiations for access for themselves and their communities. In their organising these activists value lived experience at the borders and multi-scalar tactics, whilst embodying decolonial habitus and cultivating solidarities. The work finds that ‘access’ is in an inherently limited concept, functioning to foreclose options outside of a market-based, US-shaped and Global North-led internet universality. However, the access agenda is used by activists to articulate and share differentiated notions of interconnectivity which are expansive and optimistic in their ambitions towards social justice; these visions are the basis for what I term ‘internet pluriversality’

Negotiating Internet Governance

What is at stake for how the Internet continues to evolve is the preservation of its integrity as a single network. In practice, its governance is neither centralised nor unitary; it is piecemeal and fragmented, with authoritative decision-making coming from different sources simultaneously: governments, businesses, international organisations, technical and academic experts, and civil society. Historically, the conditions for their interaction were rarely defined beyond basic technical coordination, due at first to the academic freedom granted to the researchers developing the network and, later on, to the sheer impossibility of controlling mushrooming Internet initiatives. Today, the search for global norms and rules for the Internet continues, be it for cybersecurity or artificial intelligence, amid processes fostering the supremacy of national approaches or the vitality of a pluralist environment with various stakeholders represented. This book provides an incisive analysis of the emergence and evolution of global Internet governance, unpacking the complexity of more than 300 governance arrangements, influential debates and political negotiations over four decades. Highly accessible, this book breaks new ground through a wide empirical exploration and a new conceptual approach to governance enactment in global issue domains. A tripartite framework is employed for revealing power dynamics, relying on: a) an extensive database of mechanisms of governance for the Internet at the global and regional level; b) an in-depth analysis of the evolution of actors and priorities over time; and c) a key set of dominant practices observed in the Internet governance communities. It explains continuity and change in Internet-related negotiations, opening up new directions for thinking and acting in this field