Old DOI 10.1109/MAHC.2015.49- EH - Correct DOI is 10.1109/MAHC.2015.16 - EH Production and Interpretation of ARPANET Maps

Abstract

Correct DOI is 10.1109/MAHC.2015.16 - EH - This paper explores a twenty-year series of ARPANET maps produced by the firm Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). These BBN maps signify the earliest efforts to represent an early and central piece of the modern Internet, and they wind up as illustrations in contemporary discussions of ARPANET history and the early Internet. Once a functional tool for engineers, they now serve as an aesthetic backdrop used without explicit recognition of their intended purpose. We propose an excavation of their production, design conventions, and symbolic functions. We find that the maps represent a very specific technological focus - the subnet - that worked well with the maps' network graph form and also aligned with the map creators' purposes during the network's early years.