Standard Research Grant: Representational Materialities of Internet Protocols

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will focus on representational materialities of the digital environment. It will study the material properties and consequences of the way that bits are arranged in wires, data structures are organized on disks, databases are arranged to support specific kinds of operations, and textual and graphical representations are designed for human visual and cognitive processing. This project will contribute to the developing field of software studies by studying our internet as a historically- and geographically-specific object. The project will broaden our understanding of the network beyond a designed object to an evolving object. Findings will speak to public concerns and policies over internet regulation and network neutrality. This research project will focus on digital infrastructures, the representational considerations in the design of Internet protocols, and the digital conventions that structure network operations. The approach will combine technoscientific materialities with insights from the emerging field of Software Studies to document the significance to digital users and policy-makers, as well as, the competing interests and requirements. The project will also include interviews with people who have played leading roles in the development of these systems. The project will contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration and engagement between technologists, social scientists, policymakers, and regulators by unpacking the ways in which protocols act as sites of power, influence, and control, and the political rationalities and relationalities that they embody, provides opportunities for reflection, intervention, reconfiguration, and accountability.