The Spread of TCP/IP: How the Internet Became the Internet

Abstract

This study describes the spread of TCP/IP and therefore the diffusion of the Internet, beginning in the 1960s until the early 1990s. Understanding how TCP/IP emerged and spread provides insight into the changes and challenges brought by the Internet into world politics. Against arguments that the Internet reflects primarily economic or military concerns, I argue that notions of academic freedom are embedded in the fundamental technology of the Internet, TCP/IP, and that this embedded norm is essential to the Internet’s consequences for modern political life.