Global technologies, glocal approach: a false paradox
| Autor | Valérie Schafer |
| Páginas | 286-305 |
Esboços, Florianópolis, v. 27, n. 45, p. 286-305, maio/ago. 2020.
ISSN 2175-7976 DOI https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e70598 287/345
ABSTRACT
This article seeks to identify the factors that have led researchers to root their historical approach in a
national or regional context, rather than a global one. This may seem paradoxical when the Internet is
thought to be global, and digital content and cultures at least partially cross-borders. These approaches
are determined by reactions to a history of the Internet that has been far too focused on the United States
from the outset, by a desire to consider this history in a given context, and by the historical sources.
However, the use of national and regional approaches does not preclude the stimulating comparative or
transnational perspectives that may renew this history in terms of infrastructure, missing narratives and
user participation, as well as technical and human networks. We even suggest that studying the history
of the places, people and communities that remain outside networks (whether by choice or by necessity)
could tell us a lot about the global and asymmetric reality of the Internet.
KEYWORDS
Internet. Web. History.
Esboços, Florianópolis, v. 27, n. 45, p. 286-305, maio/ago. 2020.
ISSN 2175-7976 DOI https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e70598 288/345
Valérie Schafer
T
when it began to emerge among the general public in the 1990s, after 20 years
of a more academic use. It nourished the global communication dreams of those
described as Netizens by Michael and Ronda Hauben (1992, p. 1):
Welcome to the 21st Century. You are a Netizen (a Net Citizen),
and you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global
connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider everyone
as your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you
are in contact with much of the world via the global computer
network. Virtually, you live next door to every other single Netizen
in the world. Geographical separation is replaced by existence in
the same virtual space.
Despite the disillusionment and anxiety expressed about State regulations (and,
particularly, those applied by the US government) that led to John Perry Barlow’s 1996
declaration in Davos about the independence of Cyberspace, the dream of universal
communication and global and distributed computer information networks remains
central to what Manuel Castells named in 1996 in his eponymous book The Network
Society. During the same period, politicians and the media, as well as the academic
community increasingly discussed the “Information Age”, albeit with some doubts
A number of issues indeed tempered this enthusiasm as the Internet developed:
1999, p. 77) and a network that was limited to use between academic peers and was,
thus, not concerned with commercial stakes (PALOQUE-BERGES; SCHAFER, 2019).
Only a small part of the population, therefore, became early adopters. The privatization
of the Internet, initiated in the mid-1990s (ABBATE, 2009), as well as the shift towards
the general public during this same decade, are indication of the expansion of a
power stakes that became inherent to Internet governance following the creation of
US-led ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for Internet
naming in 1998 were debated at length (MUELLER, 1999) during the 2003 and 2005
World Summit on the Internet Society.
The Internet had initially been designed for universal open use; yet, it was
overtaken by the growth of dominant digital companies such as Google, Amazon or
bubbles and fake news, as well as the development of Internet silos and a fragmentation
that is not only linguistic, but is also attributable to closed universes created by social
networks or applications.
A rapidly growing number of historical studies focus on the history of the
Internet, and more recently of the Web (as we will discuss later in this paper).1 Rather
than the analysis of a global phenomenon, this current literature shows a clear trend
towards national or local studies. How can we explain such an apparent paradox?
1
who are more focused on applications and content, and, therefore, in the Web.
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