How Do You Define the Internet?

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The internet is fundamentally a language that enables computer networks of different kinds to interconnect and to form a network of networks. Originally, when it was first invented in the mid 19 seventies, it was a single proto call. Protocol is simply a set of rules for how different computers,. in this case, different computer networks, should communicate. So there was a military pretext to this. And specifically, we want to be able to stitch different networks together into a network of Networks so that a sole der deployed in a theater of war could access a main frame running a program somewhere back in the united states.

Paris Marx is joined by Ben Tarnoff to discuss why the problems with the modern internet, including its excessive concentration in the hands of a few companies and the way its dominant firms shape our interactions to generate profit, find their root in the decision to privatize the network. To fix them, that needs to be changed.

Ben Tarnoff is the author of Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future and the co-founder of Logic Magazine. Follow Ben on Twitter at @bentarnoff.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

An excerpt of Ben’s book was published in the New York Times.
Victor Pickard wrote about the history of public media in Democracy Without Journalism.
Newt Gingrich and George Gilder, once featured by Wired for their visions for the internet, have now become big crypto fans.
The United States has terrible broadband access.
Major tech companies are buying up undersea internet cables.
Tarleton Gillespie wrote about the politics of platforms and what the term suggests.
Jathan Sadowski compares platforms to shopping malls.
Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about the predatory inclusion of the internet.
Community internet has shown success in the United States, while provincial public telcos have a history of positive outcomes in Canada.