?:abstract
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"The research project 'The Internet as a space for interaction', which completed its mission
in Autumn 1998, studied the constitutive features of network culture and network
organisation. Special emphasis was given to the dynamic interplay of technical and social
conventions regarding both the net's organisation as well as its change. The ethnographic
perspective chosen studied the Internet from the inside. Research concentrated upon three
fields of study: the hegemonial operating technology of net nodes (UNIX) the network’s
basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication
service (Usenet). The project's final report includes the results of the three branches explored. Drawing upon the development in the three fields it is shown that changes that come about on the Net are neither anarchic nor arbitrary. Instead, the decentrally organised Internet is based upon
technically and organisationally distributed forms of coordination within which individual
preferences collectively attain the power of developing into definitive standards." (author's abstract)
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