Rethinking legacies in internet history: Euronet, lost (inter)networks, EU politics

Kerssens, Niels

doi:10.1080/24701475.2019.1701919

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…However, some attempts to create a European system for data sharing were made in the 1970s and 1980s. See for instance the history of Euronet as sketched by Kerssens (2019). Another forgotten history that would need indepth research is the case of ' Alexandria' , Robert Cailliau's attempt to create an European version of the Web at CERN.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Bory

2020

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Biography of the Web as a Myth-Building Narrative 2.2 Questioning the Myth of the Web: Media Imaginaries and Web History 2.2.1 Hypertext: The Forgotten Hero Ted Nelson 2.2.2 Retracing Old Media in the World Wide Web 2.2.3 The Web and the Network 2.3 Rethinking Web History 3. Lost Networks: The Socrate and Iperbole Projects in Italy 3.1 The Web Was Not Alone 3.2 The Italian Networking Landscape in the 1990s 3.3 Rise and Fall of Socrate 3.3.1 The Uncertain Reasons for the Failure viii Contents 3.4 The Other Network: The Internet in Italy 3.4.1 Iperbole: The Pioneering Italian Civic Network Project 3.5 Conflicting Imaginaries: Socrate vs. Iperbole 3.6 The Ruins of Socrate 3.7 Legacy Systems 4. Challenging the Network Ideologies 4.1 Imaginary Networks 4.2 The Transitory Propriety of Network Imaginaries 4.3 The Power of Limits 4.4 Beyond Networks References List of Acronyms Index Preface xiii Internet. The 1990s was the decade when, to quote Umberto Eco, this integrated vision of the network emerged, while more recently a turn towards the apocalyptic vision occurred with key authors such as Morozov, Lyon, Zuboff, Fuchs and others. But, in the contemporary 'network imaginaries' , the two visions still co-exist. The one studied in this book is already in place and has limited the possibilities to imagine other forms of network. This is a relevant aspect, underlined by Paolo Bory in the final pages: the power of limits. Consequently, this book is also an inquiry in the limits of imagining the Internet and the technologies we live by in general. Internet imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths (all terms used and explained by Paolo in his book) take time to be built, spread, accepted, and maybe then killed by society. They all have effects in the long term, they need long periods to be metabolized, and their effects are persistent even if often unnoticed. This book uses history, one of the few disciplines able to grasp longterm changes and continuities, in order to understand crucial issues in the relationships between contemporary societies and the Internet. It is an attempt to retrace how the digital culture today is based on forgotten ideas, to revitalize the powerful and persistent narratives behind failed projects, and to understand how the Internet was built with a mix of mythologies, human needs and limits. Every technology of communication is a by-product of the society that created it. And in every society, imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths play a crucial role in establishing a taken-for-granted and yet powerful system of looking at the world. This book ultimately aims to study the habitus where the Internet was created and, in the end, to better understand the ways in which contemporary societies decide to imagine, show, and limit themselves.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%