Global technologies, glocal approach: a false paradox

Abstract

This article seeks to identify the factors that have led researchers to root their historical approach in a national or regional context, rather than a global one. This may seem paradoxical when the Internet is thought to be global, and digital content and cultures at least partially cross-borders. These approaches are determined by reactions to a history of the Internet that has been far too focused on the United States from the outset, by a desire to consider this history in a given context, and by the historical sources. However, the use of national and regional approaches does not preclude the stimulating comparative or transnational perspectives that may renew this history in terms of infrastructure, missing narratives and user participation, as well as technical and human networks. We even suggest that studying the history of the places, people and communities that remain outside networks (whether by choice or by necessity) could tell us a lot about the global and asymmetric reality of the Internet.