By Niels Brügger

Let us assume that the internet is here to stay. And that it becomes still more pivotal to have solid scholarly knowledge about the development of the internet of the past with a view to understanding the internet of the present and of the future; on the one hand, past events constitute important preconditions for todays internet, and, on the other, the mechanisms behind the developments in the past may prove very helpful for understanding what is about to happen with the internet today.

Based on this rationale the new scholarly journal Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society (Taylor&Francis/Routledge) has just been founded.

For more than four decades the internet has continued to grow and spread to an extent where today it is an indispensable element in the communicative infrastructure of many countries. Although the history of the internet has not been very predominant within the academic literature an increased number of books and journal articles within the last decade attest to the fact that internet historiography is an emerging field of study within internet studies, as well as within studies of culture, media, communication, and technology.

However, in the main the historical studies of the internet have been published in journals related to a variety of disciplines, and these journals do only rarely publish articles with a clear historical focus. Therefore, the editors of Internet Histories found that there was a need for a journal where the history of the internet and digital cultures is the main focus, a journal where historical studies are presented, and theoretical and methodological issues are debated with a view to constituting the history of the internet as a field of study in its own right.

Internet Histories embraces empirical as well as theoretical and methodological studies within the field of the history of the internet broadly conceived — from early computer networks, Usenet and Bulletin Board Systems, to everyday Internet with the web through the emergence of new forms of internet with mobile phones and tablet computers, social media, and the internet of things. The journal will also provide the premier outlet for cutting-edge research in the closely related area of histories of digital cultures.

The title of the journal, Internet Histories, suggests there is not one single and fixed Internet history going straight from Arpanet to the Internet as we know it today, from United States to a world-wide network. Rather, there are multiple local, regional and national paths and a variety of ways that the internet has been imagined, designed, used, shaped, and regulated around the world. Internet Histories aims to publish a range of scholarship that examines the global and internetworked nature of the digital world as well as situated histories that account for diverse local contexts.

Managing Editor
Niels Brügger, Aarhus University, Denmark

Editors
Megan Ankerson, University of Michigan, USA
Gerard Goggin, University of Sydney, Australia
Valérie Schafer, National Center for Scientific Research, France

Reviews Editor
Ian Milligan, University of Waterloo, Canada

Editorial Assistant
Asger Harlung, Aarhus University, Denmark

More information about the journal can be found at the journal website: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rint20