Alexandria Digital Research Library

The Network Addressed : Digital Identity and Internet Infrastructure

Author:
Malcic, Steven
Degree Grantor:
University of California, Santa Barbara. Film and Media Studies
Degree Supervisor:
Jennifer Holt
Place of Publication:
[Santa Barbara, Calif.]
Publisher:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Creation Date:
2015
Issued Date:
2015
Topics:
Information technology, Communication, and Film studies
Keywords:
Media Studies
Internet Studies
Digital Identity
Digital Culture
Internet History
Media Theory
Genres:
Online resources and Dissertations, Academic
Dissertation:
Ph.D.--University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015
Description:

The Network Addressed tells the story of how the constituent logic of the internet became one of addressing. As early internet designers came to rely on the mathematical logic of identity as a design priority in constructing ARPANET and the internet, a problem emerged in deciding how to make these mathematically esoteric network entities legible to the general public. In what they perceived to be a pragmatic decision, designers labeled numbers according to the categories of the Domain Name System (DNS), as DNS categories were already part of the greater social and cultural infrastructure. This logic of addressing provided the foundation for our current system of global internet governance, embodied by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the Internet Protocol address pool and the DNS according to a manufactured scarcity. Furthermore, this logic of addressing underlies the potential agency of digital "whistleblowers" and "leakers", as they model problems of subjectivity related to how early internet designers reified an ontology of numbers and names as they built the network of networks. The Network Addressed examines how this historically contingent logic of addressing clarifies global events that are shaping digital identity, which itself modulates the ontological contours of the internet as we know it.

Physical Description:
1 online resource (238 pages)
Format:
Text
Collection(s):
UCSB electronic theses and dissertations
ARK:
ark:/48907/f3t43r8f
ISBN:
9781339218144
Catalog System Number:
990045865770203776
Rights:
Inc.icon only.dark In Copyright
Copyright Holder:
Steven Malčić
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