Not The Internet, but This Internet: How Othernets Illuminate Our Feudal Internet

Authors

  • Paul Dourish Department of Informatics University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3440, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/aahcc.v1i1.21200

Keywords:

Network protocols, network topology, naming routing, media infrastructures

Abstract

What is the Internet like, and how do we know? Less tendentiously, how can we make general statements about the Internet without reference to alternatives that help us to understand what the space of network design possibilities might be? This paper presents a series of cases of network alternatives which provide a vantage point from which to reflect upon the ways that the Internet does or does not uphold both its own design goals and our collective imaginings of what it does and how. The goal is to provide a framework for understanding how technologies embody promises, and how these both come to evolve. 

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Published

2015-10-05

How to Cite

Dourish, P. (2015). Not The Internet, but This Internet: How Othernets Illuminate Our Feudal Internet. Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing, 1(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.7146/aahcc.v1i1.21200

Issue

Section

Interpreting Infrastructure