This is a great article about why we think more about the story we tell of how the internet came to exist, beyond the usual government or big business narrative:

But there is another, more subtle reason to stress the peer-network version of the Internet’s origins. We have an endless supply of folklore about heroic entrepreneurs who changed the world with their vision and their force of will. But as a society we lack master narratives of creative collaboration.

When we talk about change being driven by mass collaboration, it’s often in the form of protest movements: civil rights or marriage equality. That’s a tradition worth celebrating, but it’s only part of the story. The Internet (and all the other achievements of peer networks) is not a story about changing people’s attitudes or widening the range of human tolerance. It’s a story, instead, about a different kind of organization, neither state nor market, that actually builds things, creating new tools that in turn enhance the way states and markets work.