THE IMMANENT INTERNET

Barry Wellman and Bernie Hogan

NetLab, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
March 4, 2004

Forthcoming in Netting Citizens, edited by Johnston McKay.
St. Andrews, Scotland: University of St. Andrews Press, 2004.

ABSTRACT

The Internet has descended from an awesome part of the ethereal firmament to become immanent in everyday life. As it descended, the Internet developed, mutated, and proliferated, providing a multitude of computer-mediated options for people to communicate. The stand-alone capital-I “Internet” became the more widespread and complex small-i “internet”.

Although the technological nature of the immanent internet does not determine social behavior, it provides both opportunities and constraints for social relationships. The internet has become intertwined with a larger paradigm shift in how people are connected: from relatively homogenous, broadly-embracing, densely-knit, and tightly-bounded groups to more heterogeneous, specialized, sparsely-knit, and loosely-bounded social networks. Although the transformation began in the pre-internet 1960s, the proliferation of the internet both reflects and further facilitates this shift in social organization to networked individualism.