TY - JOUR
T1 - The Internet of Futures Past
T2 - Values Trajectories of Networking Protocol Projects
AU - Paris, Britt
N1 - Funding Information:
This work draws from material compiled for the author’s doctoral dissertation, “Time Constructs: The Origins of a Future Internet.” The author would like to thank her dissertation committee: Leah Lievrouw, Geoffrey Bowker, Jonathan Furner, and Christopher Kelty, as well as mentors Safiya Noble and Sareeta Amrute. Their ideas, feedback, and guidance have shaped and improved this work immensely as did the helpful anonymous reviewer feedback. The author would also like to thank all of the respondents involved with NDN, XIA, and MF who were so generous with their time and thoughts. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - The Internet was conceptualized as a technology that would be capable of bringing about a better future, but recent literature in science and technology studies and adjacent fields provides numerous examples of how this pervasive sociotechnical system has been shaped and used to dystopic ends. This article examines different future imaginaries present in Future Internet Architecture (FIA) projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2006 to 2016, whose goal was to incorporate social values while building new protocols to replace Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol to transfer and route information across the ever-expanding Internet. I examine the findings from two of the NSF’s FIA projects—Mobility First (MF) and eXpressive Internet Architecture—to understand the projects’ trajectories and values directives through their funding cycle and their projections into the future. I discuss how project documentation and participant articulations fall into the following three distinct themes about past experience and speculation: understanding the public, negotiating resources, and carrying project values into the future. I conclude that if the future Internet is to promote positive sociotechnical relationships, its architects must recognize that complex social and political decisions pervade each step of technical work and do more to honor this fact.
AB - The Internet was conceptualized as a technology that would be capable of bringing about a better future, but recent literature in science and technology studies and adjacent fields provides numerous examples of how this pervasive sociotechnical system has been shaped and used to dystopic ends. This article examines different future imaginaries present in Future Internet Architecture (FIA) projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2006 to 2016, whose goal was to incorporate social values while building new protocols to replace Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol to transfer and route information across the ever-expanding Internet. I examine the findings from two of the NSF’s FIA projects—Mobility First (MF) and eXpressive Internet Architecture—to understand the projects’ trajectories and values directives through their funding cycle and their projections into the future. I discuss how project documentation and participant articulations fall into the following three distinct themes about past experience and speculation: understanding the public, negotiating resources, and carrying project values into the future. I conclude that if the future Internet is to promote positive sociotechnical relationships, its architects must recognize that complex social and political decisions pervade each step of technical work and do more to honor this fact.
KW - Future Internet Architectures
KW - Values in Design
KW - critical informatics
KW - future imaginaries
KW - networking protocols
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U2 - 10.1177/0162243920974083
DO - 10.1177/0162243920974083
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096579781
VL - 46
SP - 1021
EP - 1047
JO - Science Technology and Human Values
JF - Science Technology and Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 5
ER -