Computer Networks as the Embodiment of Social Networks

Abstract

The Internet, both as a technological system and a set of social phenomena, has global reach. Its development is comparatively recent but the Internet has already become established as an ordinary feature of the everyday activities of people around the world. However, the very familiarity of this information infrastructure tends to obscure important dynamics of the process by which the current state of affairs was reached. This paper is the result of the confluence of two research efforts into the nature of this process in the United States and Bulgaria that began independently. The commonalities and differences between the two cases seemed to present a very compelling case for a comparative case study approach. The United States case had shown that the practice of science and its institutions played a central role in creating today's global Internet. The world of scientific research, with its institutions, policies and disciplinary distinctions, shaped the network and the way in which it spread to other sectors of society creating the conditions for contemporary activity toward the construction of a national information infrastructure1. At the same time, from interviews with the pioneers of Internet in Bulgaria2 it was found that the Bulgarian scientific community played a key role in establishing the patterns of subsequent development of Internet in the country. In spite of the many obvious differences between the two countries, the two cases reveal a significant common dynamic in the implementation of infrastructural information networks. The first implementation of such a system is a congealed version of certain social networks that deliver the computer network as a by-product of other goals and priorities internal to their existence.