ABSTRACT
The Internet is usually seen as a system that enhances communications for non-governmental organizations. This chapter takes a different perspective: the desire for networking among NGOs enhanced global communications. The visionary leader ship exercised by a few NGOs and their appreciation of its technology as a potential resource for mobilization helped to create the Internet. First of all, the common assumption that the Internet was initiated to provide a communications system for the US military will be demolished. Then, the development of networks of large expensive computers for university staff and students will be outlined. A few commercial companies also began to create their own private networks. Against this background, a totally dif ferent network based on small home computers was established by human rights, peace, and environmental NGOs. By the end of the 1980s, the NGOs had a global network, with coverage including all developed countries and the majority of developing countries. In the 1990s, the university networks, the commercial networks, and the NGO networks were combined to give us the modern Internet. The theme of the chapter is that NGOs made two crucial innovations: they were the first to offer electronic communications to the general public and they were the first to promote connections between all the different emerging networks. Because it is central to the identity of many NGOs that they should promote communication networks and because it is crucial to their role as political actors that they should use cheap communications to mobilize support they were inspired to construct a global public system.
