The Internet has become a crucial factor of contemporary history. By studying its development from local beginnings in the 1960s to the global reach of the World Wide Web in the 1990s we can observe how it has connected local history with global history. From a distance the success story of the Internet looks like a straightforward development, but a closer look reveals a patchwork of hundreds of stories and developments. Thousands of engineers and scientists created bits and pieces of the Net over the years without a masterplan. This course will use the approaches of social history, history of science and technology as well as global history to get a grip on the momentous development of the Internet.
Social history is necessary to personalize the development of the Internet.
The history of technology and science is necessary to illuminate the innovative work of the netbuilders, and global history is necessary to put the Internet in an appropriate historical context. The biographical approach of social history, however, will be our leading approach. We will work towards a cumulative biography of the inventors of the Internet. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community. 1993. The Origins of the Internet.