Internet-human infrastructures: Lessons from Havana's StreetNet
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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.
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