User:Roelroscama/thesis

Hello World

Compilation of thoughts from first year

Started with questions regarding perceived contradictions within world wide web rhetoric. The internet is perceived as having certain promises, features it is lauded for, at the same time it shows us different realities. Especially the concept of a 'world wide web' versus the fact that most of the traffic and services are american. There is indeed the promise to connect to the world, and surf around it while in practice most things (now) happen on US clouds.

How can we have such positive liberatory notions about a technology that is essentially borne from US militaristic interests? Possible answer is to be found in the counter culture and the 'californian ideology' that emerged from it, as a dominant model of framing computer networks in a solely 'liberatory' and emancipatory way. This way of thinking eventually got embedded into the dominant rhetoric surrounding the internet.

Having read The Victorian Internet, on electromagnetic telegraphy, it's inception, spread, use and the surrounding rhetorics that suggests telegraphy as an analogue to the internet. It becomes very tempting to read the beginning of the not in the typical story of 70's darpa etc., the whole rhetoric of the internet as the unique invention from 70's california. But rather as the latest iteration of an ongoing process that started in 1850s colonial europe. In this sense the internet is just telegraphy with higher bandwidth.

In this regard the visual resemblance between maps of submarine fibre-optic cables and submarine telegraphy cables is not only striking but perhaps also revealing. The routes seem to be almost the same, with a heavy focus on hubs in western countries with some of the strongest links between european countries and their former colonies.

Structure draft

Intro:

This essay is going to be an alternative history of the internet. It is a story that doesn't start with American military think tanks of the Cold War, or the dreams and aspiration of Californian hippies. Instead, this story starts roughly one hundred years prior, in colonial europe.

By examining the history of telecommunications infrastructure, from telegraphy to internet, I will argue that, through incremental upgrade, the same set of interests have permeated and the same power structures have been maintained and reinforced.

intro

alternative history of the internet necessary to better understand the power structures of today, the privileges more enjoyed by some than others, and development of its shape across space and time

From telegraph, to telephone to teletype

chapt telegraph

telegraph kicked off information age and informational governmentality. arguing that the initial infrastructure was laid out according to the interests of business and colonial empire with effects that last till today. although telegraphy developed differently across the world (at the time europe and us) I will focus on the atlantic, since it covers both the biggest players for the timespan of this essay. gb and us. telegraphy developed differently in both countries but these where two roads to the same destination, massive monopolies for decades.

us had laissez-faire economy which lead to telegraphy being mainly developed by business, w/o a any government intervention. linking traders in cities, leading to the emergence of national centers of trade, financialization of the economy. development follows railroads and goes hand in hand with the colonization of the west. after 25 years there is a total and convincing monopoly by the western union company which is maintained until development of telephony. the WU monopoly introduces the concept of 'natural monopolies' in united states

gb development of telegraph domestically follows development of railways. government subsidizes companies to link the empire for reasons of administration, routes are laid out as to avoid foreign dependance. gb nationalizes domestic telegraph, but foreign telegraphs are a monopolized company to keep appearances and landing rights.

developments in pursuit of higher bandwidth telegraphy eventually led to the invention of telephony which developed more or less independently. however with the availability of long-distance calling the telephone company started to replace and eventually subsumed the telegraphy company.

chapt telephony

where is radio??

us monopoly from start, BELL eats WU consolidation of telecommunications monopoly, and the formation of at&t.

gb nationalized telephony into typically european PTT model

telephone companies eat telegraphy companies. become part of military industrial complex during cold war. bell labs etc.

chapt teletype

Telephony -> Computing IBM , teletypes, telexes

data lines investment in fibre optics.

Literature overview so far

Blum, A. (2013). Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet Paperback. Ecco.

Galloway, A. R. (2006). Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization. The MIT Press.

Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House.

Malecki, E. J. (2002). The Economic Geography of the Internet’s Infrastructure. Clark University.

Morozov, E. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. PublicAffairs.

Barbrook, R. & Cameron, A. (101AD). The Californian Ideology.

Standage, T. (2007). The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers. Bloomsbury USA.

Turner, F. (2006). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press.

Wallsten, S. (2005). Returning to Victorian Competition, Ownership, and Regulation: An Empirical Study of European Telecommunications at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press.