Global Networks and Local Values A Comparative Look at Germany and the United States (2001) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Evolution of Global Networks
2 The Evolution of Global Networks
Pages 23-45
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From page 23... ...
The focus is not on specific values such as privacy, intellectual property rights, or free speech, some of which are analyzed in other chapters of this volume, but rather on two more general phenomena: how values and interests have shaped and become embedded in the specifications of technological systems, and how the technical features of such systems in turn affect the values of the communities that make use of them. The Internet emerged as a mega-network, so to speak, of technically and socially heterogeneous electronic communications networks.
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From page 24... ...
on the Internet are, in some sense, a reaction to the technical and, increasingly, economic ease with which the Internet's reach can be extended into many diverse cultural settings. The set of electronic communications systems that evolved into the Internet carried with it technological design features that were in some respects quite unlike those of the existing telecommunications networks: more content can be discovered and pulled in from more sources, and more can be sent, relatively easily and inexpensively.
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From page 25... ...
A second noteworthy dimension of the "value" conflicts that have emerged with the Internet's explosive growth stemmed from the formation, among some pioneer users of these internetworked facilities, of a new and distinctive cultural ethos of "cyberspace." This culture drew strength from the fusion of network engineers' and software programmers' enthusiasms for experimentation in this new technological domain, and it evinced an occasional anti-authoritarianism that took many facesfor example, frustration with the controlled telecommunications context in which the Internet technology arose, the extracurricular development of UNIX (a programming language fundamental to the early Internet) within AT&T, and the creativity of the "computer hacker" communities that only later became associated with destructive intent.
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From page 26... ...
Still, one should be cautious about attempting to "predict the unpredictable,"4 given the uncertainties that surround, and are in turn created by, the continuing rapid pace of advance in digital network technology. 2.2 EVOLUTION AND DESIGN OF GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS Globally pervasive telecommunications networks, even those in the prosaic form of the public telephone and telex, are a comparatively new phenomenon.
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From page 27... ...
The design of the telephone system and the prevailing business models, as well as cultural and economic factors, powerfully shape the way we use the telephone, which is nowhere more obvious than in comparing user behavior across nations. For example, flat-rate local charges for business and residential customers may encourage frequent and long telephone calls (though charges do not fully explain the extent to which, in Western societies, the teenage children of middle-class householders engage in interminable after-school telephone conversations)
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From page 28... ...
The major computer vendors developed software that supported interconnection of their machines, and consequently the early data communications networks were proprietary rather than public. Most of them were corporate networks linking different sites of a firm via leased telephone lines.
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From page 29... ...
reference model; X.25 was approved in 1984 by Me ~ternational Telecommunication Union (ITU, through what is known as the ITU-T, Me telecommunications standards-setting arm) .8 As noted above, most of the private corporate networks at this time relied on proprietary protocols, such as Me IBM Corporation's Systems Network Architecture (SNA)
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From page 30... ...
In particular, European computer vendors, European governments, and the Commission of the European Union saw the OSI program as an instrument of industrial policy to protect European manufacturers which already were major vendors of proprietary network solutions from the predominance of IBM and other U.S. firms.
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From page 31... ...
. In 1989, for example, the IETF Open PDN Routing Working Groups addressed internetworking involving X.25based PDNs using X.121 addressing, and the Network Working Group even proposed experimentation with OSI network layer protocols over the Internet and the creation of an experimental OSI Internet (RFC 1070~.
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1996. "Architectural Principles of the Internet," Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 1958.
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By the mid-199Os, the IETF was under strain, reflecting growth in the number of participants and a diversification of interests in developing and implementing the technology. New users, service providers, and network operators make it much more difficult to use the same informal consensus mechanism as before to coordinate further technical changes in the system.
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From page 34... ...
The fact that the Internet comprises thousands of technically distinct networks is a direct result of the design of the TCP/IP protocol suite, which allows Internet services to be run on top of networks based on other protocols, such as X.25, SNA, and Ethernet. The Internet's architecture and standards separate applications (from the Web to Internet telephony)
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From page 35... ...
The ease of user attachment to the Internet makes it comparatively easy now to set up links to a variety of sources of information and entertainment and to exchange information and communicate with other users all without being tied to a single service provider. Even the smallest enterprise thus has the potential to achieve a global market presence.
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From page 36... ...
They arise because standards affect the architecture of information. As Libicki notes, standards promote different patterns regarding who is connected to whom and what is expressed easily or not; social relations vary, depending on whether a communications protocol is topdown or bottom-up; and the choice of programming language affects the relationship of programmers to their managers.29 Like protocol standards, many nontechnical norms facilitate compatibility and interoperability among users.
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From page 37... ...
for the larger network of networks.32 A crucial early decision of NSF, after intense internal negotiations, was to base NSFNET on TCP/IP.33 Another important decision led NSF to foster development of regional networks, which aggregated traffic from and provided technical support to smaller networks such as campuses.34 These regional networks evolved in the second half of the 1980s, and many of them were cosponsored by business organizations that, within certain limits, were allowed to use the networks for commercial purposes. Thus, a new type of hybrid network appeared on the landscape of data networks, and with a very different set of users.
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From page 38... ...
These noncommercial networks grew up among user communities with similar interests initially, people who were active users of particular computer systems or software and who wanted to communicate with kindred spirits. Such systems could be called "cooperative networks," because users or user organizations were involved in setting up the network and coordinating its functions, even though a traditional network provider sometimes operated it.
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From page 39... ...
Supported with limited funds from the National Science Foundation, CSNET connected computer science departments that had no access to the ARPANET and therefore lacked sophisticated facilities to communicate, collaborate, and share ideas. Early on, computer scientists formed a kind of community, initially built around the time-shared computer and later around programming languages, operating systems, and computer networks.36 Their sense of being pioneers in a revolutionary change of information-processing shaped the spirit of collaboration, informality, and even social responsibility behind the values and rules that guided these researchers' use of networks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.37 However, by the late 1980s, the increase in NSF support for networking by other kinds of scientists led to concern among computer scientists that their own support could be eroded.
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.40 In contrast to the multifaceted growth of computer networks in the United States, progress was slower overseas. Although both the CSNET and BITNET networks, as well as the ARPANET,4~ had links to Europe, the long-lasting European aversion to TCP/IP appears to have been a crucial reason why research and education networks developed slowly there 39Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben.
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Technical standards played a significant role in this strategy. In a concerted action, most European governments had declared support for open, nonproprietary standards based on the OSI frame of reference.
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Today, Internet service providers, telephone companies, cable-television companies, wireless device and service companies, computer hardware and software vendors, media companies, and all kinds of firms engaged in e-commerce use the Internet as an infrastructure and a business channel. This has again changed the character of the Internet, but it has not done away with its fundamental characteristics: decentralization, user involvement, openness, and self-organization (by which is meant a network infrastructure designed to allow groups to organize themselves to use it)
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From page 43... ...
Among the likely consequences of these developments is reinforcement of the dual trend toward, on the one hand, adapting the Internet for more secure and private point-to-point communications, and, on the other, using it as a medium for mass broadcasting of video, music, and text. The alignment of business interests with the first of these would seem to favor technologies that weaken the abilities of government to monitor and control content in interactive communications, an area that sovereign states have traditionally been less disposed to regulate.46 Still, business organizations have long ago learned to accommodate themselves to the greater sensitivities of governments regarding unregulated broadcasts that might carry unwelcome news or disruptive messages.
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From page 44... ...
An indication of the potential for change, or at least a willingness to consider different approaches, is a 1998 ITU document that observes: "Competition in telecommunications is rapidly becoming a true market force whose evolution cannot be planned by policymakers, a force which increasingly is seen as best regulated on the basis of principles that are not specific to telecommunications but derived from a broader economic, social and cultural perspective."47 Some of the concerns posed by the Internet relate to its technologies for distributing information, which affect private parties with property interest in certain content as well as governments interested not only in protecting those private-property rights but also in meeting their own mission needs (which may be expressed in differing degrees of support for distribution of different kinds of content to different segments of the population)
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From page 45... ...
The analysis in this chapter suggests that the increasing dominance of a commercial culture on the Internet will be likely to produce a situation in which local jurisdictions will have considerable autonomy as well as greater technical capabilities to restrict local consumption of Internet content, at least as long as they do not use that power in blatant efforts to protect local commercial enterprises from the competition of politically powerful international media organizations. The implication is that the variations in local cultural norms are unlikely to be swept aside by the future spread and penetration of Internet-based services.
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