2020/04/25 by Abigail Z. Jacobs, Jacobs, Abigail Z., Michaelanne Dye +1
Computer Science · #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #ICT in Developing Communities #Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #cs.CY #cs.SI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2004.12207
5 pages, 1 figure. WebConf Workshop on Innovative Ideas in Data Science (April 2020)
arxiv created 2020/04/25 · openalex publication_date 2020/04/25 · arxiv updated 2020/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We propose a mixed-methods approach to understanding the human infrastructure underlying StreetNet (SNET), a distributed, community-run intranet that serves as the primary 'Internet' in Havana, Cuba. We bridge ethnographic studies and the study of social networks and organizations to understand the way that power is embedded in the structure of Havana's SNET. By quantitatively and qualitatively unpacking the human infrastructure of SNET, this work reveals how distributed infrastructure necessarily embeds the structural aspects of inequality distributed within that infrastructure. While traditional technical measurements of networks reflect the social, organizational, spatial, and technical constraints that shape the resulting network, ethnographies can help uncover the texture and role of these hidden supporting relationships. By merging these perspectives, this work contributes to our understanding of network roles in growing and maintaining distributed infrastructures, revealing new approaches to understanding larger, more complex Internet-human infrastructures---including the Internet and the WWW.