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"The history and pre-history of the Internet's creation and evolution will occupy the attention of serious scholars and historians for many years in the future. I hope you'll find this work as interesting and useful as I have".
Vinton Cerf - Winter 2002

"This project is the culmination and consolidation of Dr. Andreu Veà's Doctoral Thesis: History, Society, Technology and Network Development"

WHAT IS?

WiWiW stands for: Who is Who in the Internet World. Its main goal is to leave a digital-recorded register of the ideas which lead the main internet pioneers to made the Net as we know it today. Rejecting other than primary-sourced histories from the founders, and deployers.

This idea started as a hobby during the field work of Dr. Andreu Veà's doctoral thesis. After more than ten years of interviewing Internet Pioneers, impelled by Dr Vint Cerf's interest on the project he quit his job when he was invited by Stanford University (California, USA) where he is an Internet Research Scholar since early 2003. The WiWiW Project is privately funded and backed up by a continuously growing research group from several places (Palo Alto, Barcelona, Madrid, San Francisco, Washington, Oakland, Valencia, Vienna etc.).

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

The Project seeks to highlight those (sometimes) unknown people who devoted (at least 10 years) to the Internet. Creators, inventors, protocol implementers and also all those who silently brought the internet to their own countries. WiWiW's research is by now focused on:

  • UNITED STATES and SPAIN So far there are 140 interviews done. And over 750 people (600+ institutions) have been reached worldwide for prospective interviews.

  • IBEROAMERICA. At this time, WiWiW has contacted more than 400 Official Information Society organizations in 22 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, República Dominicana, Uruguay and Venezuela).

  • OECD. Right now the WiWiW team is working to find the 3 to 5 Internet pioneers in each of the OECD's countries.


THE RESULTS

It's a unique collection of interconnected easy-to-read multimedia documents. Produced as executive summaries of the personal conducted interviews (one to three hours each), which collect digital voice, basic bibliography and pictures, from the pioneers.

The Pioneers Gallery (always in progress) contains some of the interviewed people that leads to build the first worldwide "networkers" social-network map and their relationship.