Università Roma Tre

Internet history as a cultural artifact
Internet history is one of the most studied issues of the history of technology.
The course's aim is to analyze the history from the perspective of its social and cultural meaning.
Communication technologies are not only tools for communication, but mainly devices which modify the relationships of the people who use them.
The cultural artifact character of the network and of its services, has not yet been deepened in the literature on the subject.
In this course we will look at the history of the network from the perspective of the transformation power it developed in the rearrangement of the communication system between human beings, at least in the richest part of the world in which access to the network is guaranteed from socio-political conditions.
The course will touch both the history of the technology development via a genealogic method and the consequences of this development is provoking or could provoke in terms of opportunities and risks.
The communicative empowerment, in fact, offers new freedoms and open spaces but at the same time can cause the agency of new control powers and new dependencies from the devices.
Only the increase of information and media literacy could defend us from risks and push us toward the exploitation of the access opportunities.

Detti T., Lauricella G. Le origini di Internet, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2013.
Castellucci P. Dall'ipertesto al Web, storia culturale di Internet, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2009
Rheingold H. Net Smart. How to Thrive Online, Mit Press Cambridge (Mass.) 2012.