The Politics of Networking a Nation
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Comparative network histories illustrate how politics shape the design of technological systems. This essay compares efforts to build national computer networks in the Soviet Union and Chile. It argues that networks in practice cannot be categorized neatly as distributed, centralized, or de-centralized, nor is there any correlation between freedom and distributed or de-centralized network architectures. The essay uses this observation to suggest that the distributed network configuration of today’s Internet does not automatically increment freedom of information or flatten the ways in which governments and enterprises exert their power and influence.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
All contents of this electronic edition are distributed under the Creative Commons license of "Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Internacional" (CC-BY-SA). Any total or partial reproduction of the material must mention its origin.
The rights of the published images belong to their authors, who grant to Diseña the license for its use. The management of the permits and the authorization of the publication of the images (or of any material) that contains copyright and its consequent rights of reproduction in this publication is the sole responsibility of the authors of the articles.