Center For Internet And Society

Get ready for one of my common (but not yet patented - too abstract?) barrages of new shows over the next few days. That's what weekends are for - catching up on Hearsay Culture postings! So,to quote XTC - appropriately in this insane election cycle and as one bulwark against the ignorance enveloping our political process - let's begin! I'm pleased to post the first of the Spring 2016 shows, Show #252 from April 22, with Prof. Ben Peters of the University of Tulsa, author of How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. Ben has written a fascinating, exquisitely written and thoroughly researched and contextualized history of the repeated failures over 30+ years to create a Soviet Internet. Not merely a history, Ben's analysis and writing shines when he places the ebbs and tides of its development in the broader socio-political environment in which a few brave pioneers were operating. That the Soviet Internet never developed reveals far more about the nature of a closed but competit