ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the technical history of the internet. The history of the Western internet is a chronicle of contradiction. In its predominantly pre-market phase, the internet was powerfully influenced by the values of academic science, American counterculture and European public service. The internet began as a small, publicly owned computer network established in 1969 in the United States. The internet's pioneer users developed a distinctive argot, introducing acronyms like MOO and MUD. A key moment of transition was when CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, adopted internet protocol (IP) for its internal network of computers in 1985, and opened its first external IP connections in 1989. If the military scientific complex shaped the early internet, its subsequent development was strongly influenced in the 1980s by the American counterculture. This counterculture had different strands, although these were often intertwined. Commercialisation of the internet also gave rise to the development of a new regime of commercial surveillance from the 1990s onwards.
