Abstract
Before the emergence of bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), early network designers learned how to govern the in their work building the Domain Name System (DNS). Using original archival research, this article follows conversations among network designers in their daily struggle to keep the Advanced Research Project Agency Network (ARPANET) and early in working order. Drawing from social constructivism and path dependence theory, this history helps to conceive internet governance beyond its institutional focus, considering how the work of ordering the necessarily exceeds the parameters of authorities.
Highlights
Like so many engineers building the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler struggled each day to get the network into some working order
Dobusch and Schüßler write, "we argue that the mechanisms of positive feedback or self-reinforcement can be specified as a necessary condition for path dependence" (p. 618)
After the installation of the Domain Name System (DNS), Feinler continued as head of the Network Information Center (NIC) until 1989, the NIC transformed into InterNIC in 1993, and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) assumed all responsibilities of InterNIC with its foundation in 1998
Summary
Like so many engineers building the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler struggled each day to get the network into some working order. Following an "identity crisis" that emerged during the shift from ARPANET protocol to the internet’s TCP/IP suite, designers needed to construct a standardised addressing schema They did not solve the problem of future users by calling for the outright establishment of governmental institutions. During the end of 1973 into early 1974, as the NIC secured centralised authority of the official host name list, a new project rumored to be underway stirred anxieties across the network Up to this point, the work of ordering numerical addresses with site names functioned relative to ARPANET alone. The work of ordering numerical addresses with site names functioned relative to ARPANET alone Realising this might have been short-sighted, one concerned designer wrote, "There has been no general discussion of multi-network addressing— there is apparently an unpublicized Internetworking Protocol experiment in progress—and some other convention may be more desirable" (L.P. Deutsch, Host Names On-Line, Request for Comments 606, 1973). The social construction of the DNS shows how the initial phase of path dependence is never open, and often restricted by a self-conscious goal to make a technology adoptable, when others had not yet been able to adopt it
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