The Dawn of the Internet in Brazil

Internet development in Brazil was essentially as a sociotechnical construction, the result of a set of regulatory and governmental acts, academic initiatives, strategic investments of the government and its agents, market actions of telecommunication companies, and efforts of the third sector. This article begins with an historical account of computer networks, starting from their roots in the United States in the 1960s; examines the networking standards movements; and describes a variety of networking initiatives in Brazil, through the deployment of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990s. This text culminates in the institution of governance mechanisms for Internet operation in Brazil.