A special issue of the journal Histoire et informatique / Geschichte und Informatik has just been published.
Before the rise of the Web and our contemporary digital cultures, computer networks had already been imagined, tested, and used worldwide. This special issue retraces some of the technological, cultural and social paths that shaped the development of networks in six different areas of the world. All papers result from the two-day conference held at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano on December 2017.
The volume is available for download in open access on the publisher's website.
Table of content:
Paolo Bory, Gianluigi Negro, Gabriele Balbi: Introduction - The Tributaries and Distributaries of Computer Network Histories
Kevin Driscoll: Thou Shalt Love Thy BBS. Distributed Experimentation in Community Moderation
Félix Tréguer, Dominique Trudel: From Internet Access Provision to Digital Rights Activism. The History of the French Data Network
Sophie Toupin: Revolutionary Communication and the South African National Liberation Movement
Christian Henrich-Franke: Computer Networks on Copper Cables. From ‘Promises to the Public’ to ‘Profits for Providers’
Marcelo Savio Carvalho, Henrique Luiz Cukierman: The Dawn of the Internet in Brazil
Benedetta Campanile: Robert Fano, an Italian Computer Scientist from Project Mac to the Internet
Yong Hu, Benjamin Peters: A Conversation on Network Histories
Paulo Bory, Gianluigi Negro, Gabriele Balbi (Eds.): Computer Network Histories. Hidden Streams from the Internet Past, Geschichte und Informatik – Histoire et Informatique (21), Zürich 2019.
