Rethinking legacies in internet history: Euronet, lost (inter)networks, EU politics

Abstract

Mainstream internet histories employ legacy perspectives to establish lineages of continuity that demonstrate how American pasts still operate in and affect our Internet present. This article rethinks legacies in internet history by positioning the notion of legacy systems as conceptual basis for a genealogical and non-teleological framing of internet history aimed to investigate lost network events as legacies of European pasts that persist and continue to affect our networked present. To demonstrate its historiographical value, I use the history of Euronet as a case in point, using a variety of primary and secondary sources, to argue that the legacy system of European cooperation and politics on which Euronet was imagined and built, persists within internet history through a variety of “successes” and “failures,” of which Euronet is only one.