ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates how nonhuman and human infrastructural assemblages, and the brokers that operate as assemblers within them, give rise to localised Internets. With an ethnographic emphasis on the digital transformations of Solomon Islands, we examine agentive brokerage practices surrounding digital multimedia files, downloaded off the global Internet and circulated offline as gifts via MicroSDs. We show how digital brokers use their comparatively unique manoeuvrability within digital infrastructural assemblages. They extend the Internet to offline rural environments, while following and strengthening local systems of moral economic social reproduction. Recognising the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman actors, these brokers are also dependent on the broader infrastructural assemblages in which they operate, especially the cables and waves that initially allow digital bits to travel to Solomon Islands. Localised Internets such as Solomon Islands are, thus, continuously in flux, being perpetually reassembled by the agentive practices of their constituent parts.

摘要

本文展示了非人类和人类基础设施组合，以及在其中作为组装者运作的经纪人如何产生本地化互联网。以所罗门群岛的数字化转型为重点，我们研究了围绕数字多媒体文件的代理经纪行为，这些文件从全球互联网下载，并通过 MicroSD 作为礼物离线传播。我们展示了数字经纪人如何在数字基础设施组合中使用其相对独特的可操作性。他们将互联网扩展到离线农村环境，同时遵循和加强当地的道德经济社会再生产系统。认识到人类和非人类行为者的相互联系，这些经纪人还依赖于他们经营的更广泛的基础设施组合，尤其是最初允许数字比特传播到所罗门群岛的电缆和波浪。因此，诸如所罗门群岛之类的本地化互联网不断变化，不断被其组成部分的代理实践重新组装。