Hi Emma, You might be interested in this special issue of the Journal of Peer Production on "Alternative Internets": http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-9-alternative-internets/ (and various references therein) As noted by a reviewer, "The Internet is also decentralized." :-) (and the web also, but it is mostly our responsibility to promote distributed self-hosted applications despite their less attractive user interfaces and performance) And this is a nice book, under development, on the history of community (wireless) networks: http://www.thenextlayer.org/NetworkCommons Best, Panayotis Antoniadis http://nethood.org/panayotis/ On 02.11.2016 17:50, Emma Stamm wrote:
Hello all,
I'm a first-year PhD student in an interdisciplinary humanities/social sciences program. One of my research interests is the history of initiatives, ideas and theoretical rationale for decentralizing the Internet. To that end, I'm wondering if anybody could point me in the direction of readings that address this subject — scholarly articles and books are excellent, although more informal sources are welcome, as well.
I am specifically familiar with the possibility of using blockchain technology to decentralize/distribute the web, a very current idea. While this and other proposed "Web 3.0" developments are interesting to me, right now I am specifically focusing on historical predecessors that underscore the visionary potential (and possible pitfalls) of the notion of a decentralized/distributed web.
Thank you so much!
All the best,
Emma
*Emma Stamm, MS* *PhD student, ASPECT Virginia Tech* *www.realyou.me <http://www.realyou.me> | @turing_tests* _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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