I really liked the approach Frank Thomas suggested. I think Janet Abbate's "Inventing the Internet" provides an Internet history written along the lines of Hughes' work. I have drawn from it and other sources for my lectures. You can find my (rough) summarization of the developments, using an ANT model, at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~bakardji/Internet/ANT.html . Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. Maria Faculty of Communication and Culture University of Calgary

Message: 5 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 10:17:19 +0100 From: Frank Thomas <frank.thomasftr@free.fr> Organization: FTR To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org

David and all other folks,

I think we glue to closely to the facts if we conceive Internet=20 development in the short development steps you propose. We should look=20 at other communication systems, how they emerged (or better said: were=20 develeped) and then draw conclusions. Also, the way you propose to=20 conceive the Internet is a rationalisation of what happened seen from=20 today. But this excludes the social generation, the corporate and=20 individual struggles, strategies, coalitions etc. that shaped today's=20 outcome. So, a look into neighbouring disciplines with a more long-term =

view would be a help. Look how Large technical systems developed, for=20 instance.

Look into Hughes, Networks of power. A large technical systems, Hughes=20 writes, shows several development phases: invention, development,=20 innovation, transfer (into new countries), growth. Hughes' seminal book=20 gives you an idea of the development phases of electric power network in =

Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. from the beginning into the 1930s.=20 There are other studies about the telegraph, the telephone, the=20 railroads, gas networks, videotext, etc. The theory was conceived with=20 industrial society as a background but has been transferred to more=20 recent technologies, such as videotext or the telephone.

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