Notes towards a Political History of the Internet 1950–1983

Abstract

Starling from the premise that communication regulation can be made up of informal shared systems of human belief, action and habit, this paper explores the informal political belief systems that helped regulate the Internet during its gestation, before 1984. The article focuses on the odd fact that a decentralised communication system with a strikingly libertarian ethos was created within a military-oriented research and development enterprise famous for its hierarchical, authoritarian culture and organisation. Broadly, my argument is that the larger framework of Internet development was ‘corporate liberal’ — that is, based on the theory that non-profit structures are necessary for advanced forms of experimental technological innovation, but that practical implementation is then best left to the private sector. Within that larger framework, however, a shift in the cultural habits and values within the community of computer scientists between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, partly under the influence of the Viernam War-era counterculture, allowed a distinctive vision of computer communication to take hold: computer communication as a horizontal form of collaboration. This cultural shift then helps explain how a technological system born in the heart of the military–industrial complex came to embody distinctly non-military values.