The Amateur
Computerist
Fall/Winter 1994 The Netizens and the Internet Volume 6 No. 2-3
“For the society the impact will be good or bad depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a
privilege or a right?” J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor
Table of Contents
What is a Netizen?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1
Licklider’s Vision and the Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 6
Net Cultural Assumptions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13
Etiquette and the Internet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 20
Ethics and the Internet.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 24
The Internet Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 26
The Internet: Maintaining Diversity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 30
Do You Want to Lose Your Voice?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 38
The Net: A Scientific Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 40
Book Proposal.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 43
Netizens: The Impact of the Net. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 46
Rights of Netizens.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 74
What is a Netizen?
In conducting research online to determine people’s uses for the
global computer communications network (i.e., the Net
1
) I became
aware that there was a new social institution developing and I grew
excited at the prospects of this new social institution. In response to the
excitement I discovered from those who wrote me (and which I also
experienced), I felt that the people I was writing about were citizens of
the Net. Sometimes people on the Net would call users of the Net, a
net.citizen (read net citizen). This idea I transformed into Net Citizen,
Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/
Page 1
which in shortened form is Netizen.
Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize the Net from their home,
workplace, school, library, or other locations. These people are among
those who populate the Net and make it a human resource. These
Netizens participate to help make the Net both an intellectual and a
social resource.
The Netizens’ community highlights the importance of using the
current state (circa 1994) of the Internet/NSFnet /Usenet/etc. as a model
for the upcoming NII.
2
In order to do this, it is necessary to be aware of
the history of the Net. Various texts for this exist: The Netizens and the
Wonderful World of the Net – An Anthology (i.e. the netbook) contains
the historical perspective and social context needed to understand the
advance represented by the global telecommunications network. The
netbook is for those who want to contribute to the care and nurture of the
Net.
3
The NSFnet Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) has been a valuable
regulation which helped to define the NSFnet (the backbone of the U.S.
portion of the global Internet) as a resource based on sharing via an edu-
cational orientation. This orientation exists on the Net rather than the
more tradition commercial profit-oriented model. This regulation has
helped the Net to grow.
More information about Netizens is “The Net and the Netizens: The
Impact the Net has on People’s Lives” which appears in this issue. The
paper is also available elsewhere online in several forms.
4
[Editor’s Note: In September 1993, the U.S. government set up an
advisory committee under the U.S. Department of Commerce to advise
it on the future of the U.S. segment of the Internet. This work was done
under what was called the NII (the National Information Infrastructure).
As part of classwork in a college course several students were asked to
propose the policy concerning the NII that would represent the interests
of different strata of U.S. society. What follows is one student’s proposal
for principles representing the Netizens’ interests for the future devel-
opment of the Net. For the class the following areas of concern were
listed, and the interests of various strata (such as the business com-
munity, the education community, and so on were described). The areas
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to be discussed were privacy, equity, intellectual property, implemen-
tation strategy, vision, and additional thoughts.]
A Netizen Position on Privacy
The Net is a tool to help people communicate openly. As such,
concerns about privacy and security should be secondary to keeping the
principle of openness active and feasible. So the Clipper Chip should be
opposed, but emphasis should be given to the governmental protection
of freedom of speech and equal opportunity to connect to open areas,
and toward the guidance of Net citizens to contribute to the whole. In
opposition to the Clipper Chip, the government should be told what it
should be doing rather than what it shouldn’t be doing.
A Netizen Position on Equity/Access
Access should be made available in public locations; libraries,
community centers, schools, etc. Local phone numbers should be
available for home users to connect to the network using modems.
A Netizen Position on Intellectual Property
Netizens should be encouraged to submit creative works and ideas
into the public domain, rather than attempt to gain profit from these
ideas. Protection should be enforced so that others don’t make a profit
off of these ideas. As a whole, ideas are most often built upon ideas of
others. As such, it is hard to properly credit the origin of works or ideas
to a single individual. The culture of sharing best promotes the free
creation and building of ideas upon other ideas. The new capability to
cooperate and contribute made possible by the Net should be fully
realized.
A Netizen Position on Functionality and Standard
Operating Ability
Equal ability to access is more important than high bandwidth for high
intensity applications (such as graphics). It is much more important to
connect the people of the world via text (and ftp/http for limited
graphics, etc.) than to have a few connected with high graphics content.
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Standards should be set so almost any personal computer type can
connect in for basic text exchange.
A Netizen Position on Implementation Strategy
Global community networks should be installed or extended and
operated as a public service to community members. They could be
operated by local government, or a collaboration between local govern-
ment, public universities and other public entities. The federal govern-
ment should continue to fund the interconnecting lines. People should
be able to log into a terminal from a public library or community center
or be able to call a local phone number from their home to connect to the
community network. The community networks should enable people to
use global network resources such as Usenet News, e-mail, telnet, ftp,
www, gopher.
Another possible model is to make network access points from
which to connect to the world, and community use form around them.
5
A Netizen Vision
Global Community Networks would allow citizens of a community
to connect to the Global Computer Communications Network. This
enables community members to communicate with others in their com-
munity and with the world. In addition, community networks often
facilitate communications and distribution of information between
citizens about their local and national governments. In democratic
countries, this might facilitate a greater role for citizens in the gover-
nmental process. Global community network access should be only
available for those who are acting as representatives of themselves and
their ideas toward a cooperative goal such as education or research that
will serve the whole network. Those in the private sector who are only
interested in advancing their own profit should have to gain access to the
Network via other avenues. The public sector should not be asked to
subsidize the private sector’s profit making purposes.
The concept of global community networking will enable people
around the world to connect to the Net, and in the process connect to
other Netizens from around the world. This in turn would help further
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the growth of the Net by connecting a diversity of people who have
various opinions, specialities and interests. This worldwide connection
of people and other information resources of different sorts will help the
world move forward in solving different societal problems.
The Vision Behind the Concept of Global
Community Networking
A Net which will grow to encompass all possible resources in order
to facilitate the free flow of information sharing.
Notes:
1. The Net equals Internet/Usenet/Bitnet/Fidonet/etc.
2. The NII is the U.S. government’s proposal for a National Information Infrastructure.
3. The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net – An Anthology is available on the
Net and is abbreviated as the netbook.
4.The Netizens material is available at the following sites:
gopher://gopher.cic.net/1/e-serials/archive/alphabetic/a/amateur-computerist/netbook
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/misc/acn/netbook/ch.7_Netizen
Other helpful texts include The Origins of RFCs by Stephen D. Crocker in RFC
1000: gopher://ds2.internic.net/00/rfc/rfc1000.txt The Usenet History Archives is
accessible via anonymous ftp at weber.ucsd.edu in the directory /pub/usenet.hist
Netnews newsgroups of interest:
alt.amateur-comp – Discussion of amateur and grass roots use of computers and
computer networking for those who want to see such access spread.
alt.culture.internet – The culture of the Internet
alt.culture.usenet – The Usenet community
alt.current-events.net-abuse – Discussion of what constitutes “net abuse”
alt.folklore.computers – Stories and anecdotes about computers, historical discussion
etc.
alt.internet.media-coverage – Discussion of media coverage of the Internet
alt.uu.future — Teaching and learning in the Usenet University
comp.infosystems.interpedia — The Internet Encyclopedia
comp.society – The impact of technology on society (moderated)
comp.society.cu-digest – The Computer Underground Digest (moderated)
comp.society.development – Computer technology in developing countries
comp.society.folklore – Computer folklore & culture past and present (moderated)
Page 5
comp.society.futures – Events in technology affecting future computing
comp.society.privacy – Effects of technology on privacy (moderated)
news.admin.policy – Policy issues of Usenet
news.future – The future technology of network news systems
news.misc – Discussion of Usenet itself
5. The National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) has a good introduction to this
idea.
The Vision of Interactive Computing
and the Future
by Michael Hauben
What is the reality behind all the talk about the Information
Superhighway? This is a very important question which the Clinton and
Gore Administration seem to be ignoring. However understanding the
history of the current Nets is a crucial step toward building the network
of the future. It is my goal in this article to uncover the vision behind the
Internet, Usenet and other associated physical and logical networks.
While the Nets are basically young – ARPAnet started in 1969 –
their 25+ year growth has been substantial. The ARPAnet was the
experimental network connecting the mainframe computers of uni-
versities and other contractors funded and encouraged by the Advanced
Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).
The ARPAnet started out as a test bed for computer networking, com-
munication protocols, and computer and data resource sharing. How-
ever, what it developed into was something of a completely surprising
nature. The widest use of the ARPAnet was for human-human commu-
nication using electronic mail (e-mail) and discussion lists. (Popular
lists were the wine-tasters and sci-fi lovers lists.) The human communi-
cations aspect of the ARPAnet continues to be today’s most popular
usage of the ‘Net’ by a vast variety of people through e-mail, Usenet
News discussion groups, mailing lists, internet relay chat (irc), and so
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on. However, the ARPAnet was the product of previous research itself.
Before the 1960s, computers operated in batch mode. This meant
that a user had to provide a program on punch cards to the local
computer center. Often a programmer had to wait over a day in order to
see the results from his or her input. In addition if there were any
mistakes in the creation of the punched cards, the stack or individual
card had to be punched again and resubmitted, which would take another
day. This does not account for bugs in the code, which someone only
finds out after attempting to compile the code. This was a very ineffi-
cient way of utilizing the power of the computer from the viewpoint of
a human, in addition to discouraging those unfamiliar with computers.
This led to people thinking of ways to alter the interface between people
and computers. The idea of time-sharing developed among some in the
computer research communities. Time-sharing amounts to people
utilizing the computer (then the mainframe) simultaneously. Time-shar-
ing operated by giving the impression that the user is the only one on the
computer. This is executed by having the computer divvy out slices of
CPU time to all the users in a sequential manner.
Research in time-sharing was being done around the country at
different research centers in early 1960s. Some examples were CTSS
(Computer Time-sharing System) at MIT, DTSS (Dartmouth Time-
sharing System) at Dartmouth, a system at BBN, and so on. J. C. R.
Licklider, the founding director of ARPA’s Information Processing
Techniques Office (IPTO), thought of time-sharing as interactive
computing. Interactive computing meant the user had a way to commu-
nicate and respond to the computer’s responses in a way that batch pro-
cessing did not allow.
Both Robert Taylor and Larry Roberts, future successors of
Licklider as director of IPTO, pinpoint Licklider as the originator of the
vision which set ARPA’s priorities and goals and basically drove ARPA
to help develop the concept and practice of networking computers.
In an Interview conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI),
Roberts said: “what I concluded was that we had to do something about
communications, and that really, the idea of the galactic network that
Lick talked about, probably more than anybody, was something that we
had to start seriously thinking about. So in a way networking grew out
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of Lick’s talking about that, although Lick himself could not make
anything happen because it was too early when he talked about it. But
he did convince me it was important.” (Charles Babbage Institute, Oral
Interview with Lawrence Roberts, p. 29)
Taylor also pointed out the importance of Licklider’s vision to
future network development in a CBI conducted interview: “I don’t
think…anyone who’s been in that DARPA position since [Licklider] has
had the vision that Licklider had. His being at that place at that time is
a testament to the tenuousness of it all. It was really a fortunate
circumstance. I think most of the significant advances in computer
technology, especially in the systems part of computer science… were
simply extrapolations of Licklider’s vision. They were not really new
visions of their own. So he’s really the father of it all.” (Charles Babbage
Institute, Oral Interview with Robert Taylor, p. 8)
Crucial to the definition of today’s networks were the thoughts
awakened in the minds of those researchers interested in time-sharing.
These researchers began to think about social issues related to time-
sharing. One such topic was the formation of communities of the people
who used the time-sharing systems. Fernando Corbato and Robert Fano
wrote, “The time-sharing computer system can unite a group of
investigators in a cooperative search for the solution to a common
problem, or it can serve as a community pool of knowledge and skill on
which anyone can draw according to his needs. Projecting the concept
on a large scale, one can conceive of such a facility as an extraordinarily
powerful library serving an entire community – in short, an intellectual
public utility.” (“Time-sharing on Computers,” Information, p. 76)
Robert Taylor spoke about some of the unexpected circumstances
that time-sharing made possible: “They were just talking about a
network where they could have a compatibility across these systems, and
at least do some load sharing, and some program sharing, data sharing
— that sort of thing. Whereas, the thing that struck me about the time-
sharing experience was that before there was a time-sharing system, let’s
say at MIT, then there were a lot of individual people who didn’t know
each other who were interested in computing in one way or another, and
who were doing whatever they could, however they could. As soon as
the time-sharing system became usable, these people began to know one
Page 8
another, share a lot of information, and ask of one another, ‘How do I
use this? Where do I find that?’ It was really phenomenal to see this
computer become a medium that stimulated the formation of a human
community.… And so, here ARPA had a number of sites by this time,
each of which had its own sense of community and was digitally isolated
from the other one. I saw a phrase in the Licklider memo. The phrase
was in a totally different context – something that he referred to as an
‘intergalactic network.’ I asked him about this later…recently, in fact I
said, ‘Did you have a networking of the ARPAnet sort in mind when you
used that phrase?’ He said, ‘No, I was thinking about a single time-
sharing system that was intergalactic….’” (Charles Babbage Institute,
Oral Interview with Robert Taylor, p. 24)
As Taylor recounts, the users of the time-sharing systems would,
usually unexpectedly, form a new community. People now were
connected to others who were also interested in these new computing
systems.
Licklider was one of the first users of the new time-sharing systems,
and took the time to play around with them. Examining the uses of this
new way of communicating with the computer enabled Licklider to
think about the future possibilities. This was helpful because Licklider
went on to establish the priorities and direction for ARPA’s IPTO
research monies. Many of the interviewees in the CBI interviews said
that ARPA’s money was given in those days to help seed research which
would be helpful to society in general and only secondarily helpful to
the military.
The vision driving ARPA inspired bright researchers working on
computer related topics. Roberts explains that Licklider’s work (and that
of the IPTO’s directors after him) educated people who were to become
the leaders in the computer industry in general. Roberts describes the
impact that Licklider and his vision made on ARPA and future IPTO
directors: “Well, I think that the one influence is…the production of
people in the computer field that are trained, and knowledgeable, and
capable, and that form the basis for the progress the United States has
made in the computer field. That production of people started with Lick,
when he started the IPTO program and started the big university
programs. It was really due to Lick, in large part, because I think it was
Page 9
that early set of activities that I continued with that produced the most
people with the big university contracts. That produced a base for them
to expand their whole department, and produced excitement in the
university” (Charles Babbage Institute, Oral Interview with Lawrence
Roberts, p. 29)
The important effect on academia led to an even more profound
effect on the future of the computer industry. Roberts continues: “So it
was clear that that was a big impact on the universities and therefore, in
the industry. You can almost track all those people and see what effect
that has had. The people from those projects are in large part the leaders
throughout the industry” (ibid., p. 30)
Licklider’s “Intergalactic Network” was a time-sharing utility which
would serve the entire galaxy. This early vision of time-sharing spawned
the idea of interconnecting different time-sharing systems by networking
them together. This network would allow those on geographically
separated time-sharing systems to share data, programs, research, and
later other ideas and anything that could be typed out. Licklider and
Taylor collaborated on an article titled “The Computer as a Communica-
tions Device” which foresaw today’s Net. They wrote: “We have seen
the beginnings of communication through a computer – communication
among people at consoles located in the same room or on the same
university campus or even at distantly separated laboratories of the same
research and development organization. This kind of communication –
through a single multiaccess computer with the aid of telephone lines –
is beginning to foster cooperation and promote coherence more
effectively than do present arrangements for sharing computer programs
by exchanging magnetic tape by messenger or mail.” (Licklider and
Taylor, p. 28)
Later in the article, they point out that the interconnection of
computers leads to a much broader class of connections than might have
been expected. A new form of community is described: “The collection
of people, hardware, and software – the multiaccess computer together
with its local community of users – will become a node in a geographi-
cally distributed computer network. Let us assume for a moment that
such a network has been formed…. Through the network of message
processors, therefore, all the large computers can communicate with one
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another. And through them, all the members of the super community can
communicate – with other people, with programs, with data, or with a
selected combinations of those resources.” (ibid., p. 32)
Licklider and Taylor demonstrate their interest in more than just
hardware and software when they write about the new social dynamics
that the connections of disperse computers and people will create. They
explain: “[These communities] will be communities not of common
location, but of common interest. In each field, the overall community
of interest will be large enough to support a comprehensive system of
field-oriented programs and data.” (ibid., p. 38)
In exploring this community of common affinity, the pair look for
the possible positive reasons to connect to and be a part of these new
computer facilitated communities: “First, life will be happier for the
online individual because the people with whom one interacts most
strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals
than by accidents of proximity. Second, communication will be more ef-
fective and productive, and therefore more enjoyable. Third, much com-
munication and interaction will be with programs and programming
models, which will be (a) highly responsive, (b) supplementary to one’s
own capabilities, rather than competitive, and (c) capable of representing
progressively more complex ideas without necessarily displaying all the
levels of their structure at the same time – and which will therefore be
both challenging and rewarding. And, fourth, there will be plenty of op-
portunity for everyone (who can afford a console) to find his calling, for
the whole world of information, with all its fields and disciplines, will
be open to him, with programs ready to guide him or to help him ex-
plore.” (ibid., p. 40)
Licklider and Taylor conclude their article with a prophetic ques-
tion. Since the advantages that computer networks make possible will
only happen if these advantages are available to all who want to make
use of them. The question is posed as follows: “For the society, the
impact will be good or bad depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to
be on line’ be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the
population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of ‘intelligence amp-
lification,’ the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum
of intellectual opportunity.” (ibid., p. 40)
Page 11
The question they raise is one of access. The authors point out that
the positive effects of computer networking would only come about if
the networks are made easy to use and available. Lastly they argue that
access should be made available because of the global benefits which
they predict would ensue. They end by writing: “…if the network idea
should prove to do for education what a few have envisioned in hope, if
not in concrete detailed plan, and if all minds should prove to be
responsive, surely the boon to humankind would be beyond measure.”
(ibid., p. 40)
Licklider and Taylor raise an important point that access should be
made available to all who want to use the computer networks. The
relevance to today is that it is important to ask if the National Informa-
tion Infrastructure is being designed with the principle of making
equality of access as important. There was a vision of the interconnec-
tion and interaction of diverse communities guiding creation of the
original ARPAnet. In the design of the expansion of the Network, it is
important to keep the original vision in mind to consider if the vision
was correct, or if it was just important in the initial development of
networking technologies and techniques. However, very little emphasis
has been placed on either the study of Licklider’s vision or the role and
advantages the Nets have played up to this point. In addition, the public
has not been allowed to play a role in the planning process for the new
initiatives which the federal government is currently undertaking. This
is a plea to you to demand more of a part in the development of the
future of the Net.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fernando Corbato and Robert Fano, “Time-sharing on Computers”, in Informa-
tion, (A Scientific American Book), San Francisco: 1966.
Charles Babbage Institute Oral Interview with Fernando Corbato.
Charles Babbage Institute Oral Interview with Robert Fano.
Kemeny, John, Man and the Computer, Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1972.
Charles Babbage Institute Oral Interview with J. C. R. Licklider.
Page 12
Licklider, J. C. R. and Robert Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication
Device,” in Science and Technology, April, 1968, p. 40.
Charles Babbage Institute Oral Interview with Lawrence Roberts.
Charles Babbage Institute Oral Interview with Robert Taylor.
Net Cultural Assumptions
by Gregory G Woodbury
[Author’s Note: This article was originally written on July 5, 1992. This
version is edited and expanded somewhat. The question was about the
application of copyright law to Usenet. New material is enclosed in
[ ]’s.]
Recalling a bit of the history of the net, we need to look at the way
that the Net started and how it has grown. The seminal concept of the
Net is that folks on different machines *desire* to share information in
an easy and timely manner, despite the spatial separation between them
and the machines they are using.
That is that the persons using the Net to communicate *want to
communicate* and are willing to cooperate in effecting that communica-
tion.
This is the absolute basic principle: you want to communicate with
the other folks on the net.
There is no one holding a gun to your head telling you that you
*must* post something to the net. (At least, I hope no one is doing that!)
From this, everything else follows. The mechanics of how it
happens have changed drastically from the original shell script imple-
mentation of simply checking the time stamps on files and sending files
that had changed since the last check to some other machine. The first
attempt was barely adequate for two machines, and required a lot of
human effort to assure that directory structures between the machines
was identical.
Page 13
As soon as one other machine was added to the mix, it became
obvious that some sort of automated methods of assuring that the
communication would not breakdown when someone wanted to start a
new topic.
Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis and Steve Bellovin, with assistance from
lots of folks at Duke and UNC, convened an informal conference and
hashed the basic facilities and needs out in about three hours. Then in
about two weeks, they wrote it and got it working on the “original three”
sites, duke (computer science), unc (computer science) and phs (dept of
physiology, in the duke medical center). At that time, the “A version” of
NetNews (as it was originally called) had been placed on the conference
tape at the Toronto USENIX meeting in January of 1980.
[There is some disagreement over this. I clearly recall using
Netnews prior to getting married in January of 1980. Our honeymoon
was delayed since my wife’s supervisors were at the Toronto USENIX
Conference. She was a programmer at the phs site. :-)]
Under the conditions of the academic UNIX licenses in those days,
the software was placed in the “public domain” and it was the most
popular program from that Conference Tape. I do not recall that anyone
was quite expecting the explosion that followed.
[Steve Bellovin wrote me to confirm this. His comment was that
they expected maybe a 100 machines and ONE net.group. An updated
version of Netnews, with much expanded capacity was on the spring
conference tape.]
The early ARPAnet already had a number of mailing lists, and the
management of them was already quite a headache for the folks
involved. The NetNews software was quickly recognized as a superior
means of dealing with very active lists and was quickly placed into
service.
At that point, there were already problems with providing e-mail
service between the ARPAnet machines and the UUCP based network.
The confusion between bangpath notation and the domain-name system
was well established, with lots of rancor and confusion already evident.
In any case, one of the early assumptions was that there would be
“local” groups of machines sharing news, and that there would be little
crossover between groups. The model was that a campus of a university
Page 14
would have a news network, and it might be shared with another
university that was logically and physically close to it, but spatially
inconvenient for folks to get together physically, and that NetNews
would allow them to share information in a timely manner.
But again, there was a basic point to the model, that the people
wanted to communicate, and would cooperate in effecting that commu-
nication.
The sharing of information was to be handled in local/regional
areas, and the details of who would pay for the phone calls, and the legal
mumbo-jumbo of “responsibility” was to be handled with the usual
academic hand waving and under color of academic freedom. [Well,
there were some arrangements, but they didn’t impinge on my view of
the situation. It wasn’t all hand waving.]
When the direction of evolution took an unexpected turn, and a
continental network emerged, spanning the continent from California to
North Carolina, and Toronto to San Diego, it was sort of a shock to
realize what had happened.
And, since everyone was in an academic environment (well, decvax
was commercial, but it was a very special case – Bell Labs was
academic really, but it was another special case) and involved in
computer science, there was never any kind of special concern for the
legal mumbo-jumbo. Everyone *wanted* to be on the net, and it was
clear that they were cooperating in doing so. (Some folk at Bell Labs
were watching the legal stuff, not in terms of individual posters’ rights,
but in terms of protecting AT&T’s rights in and to UNIX source code
and proprietary information.)
The conventions of net.<name>, fa.<name> and <name> developed
as being netwide, gated mailing lists, and local topic groups. And the
hierarchical subcategories soon appeared. Moderated groups appeared
and were placed in the mod.* hierarchy.
Under the strain of being an international network, with several new
machines being added daily, certain limitations in the basic assumptions
made themselves painfully obvious. And the rewrite known as B-news
made room for the continuing expansion.
And still, folks *wanted to communicate* and cooperated in doing
so. An informal structure for the efficient management of the topology
Page 15
of the network arose, based around a set of sites willing to transfer news
over a set of “backbone” links, and then fan out distributions to the
mid-level and leaf sites. The administrators of these backbone sites knew
each other, and respected each other in terms of cooperating and man-
aging the growth of a Net that had *no formal existence!*
The “backbone cabal” (as it was mockingly referred to, in recogni-
tion of its extra-legal existence) established some general procedures for
adding groups, and for dealing with problems that threatened the
voluntary cooperative nature of the net.
The debate over copyright of postings became, for the first time,
truly acrimonious. As more sites joined, more and more of them being
non-academic in nature, the missing or hidden assumptions that guided
the folk attempting to manage the net, began to exert pressure. It *was*
stated, plainly and clearly, in several places, that a person posted to the
Net as a voluntary act, and that they were assumed to understand that
asserting copyright was not a “friendly” action IN THE LIGHT OF
THIS ASSUMPTION.
[NOTE Well: At the time the Net was formed, the U.S. of A. was
*not* a signatory to the Berne Convention on International Copyrights!
The U.S. had its own peculiar set of laws about copyrights, and
something without a notice was not copyrighted.]
Meanwhile, AT&T was “liberated” by the MFJ ruling by Judge
Green, in the U.S. Justice Department’s Anti-Trust suit against AT&T,
to compete in the computer industry (with certain limitations). All at
once, the whole nature of things changed, the universities were no longer
bound by the license restrictions that programs and utilities developed
on the “free license” UNIX brand Operating System be placed in the
public domain, and the Net continued to grow by leaps and bounds.
The power of the backbone cabal held through the time of the Great
Renaming, when the old net.*, fa.* and mod.* was transformed
overnight into the “Seven sisters” of {comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc,
and talk}, plus a smattering of local hierarchies.
And more sites became connected to the net. Still under the
assumption that the sites wanted to communicate, and would cooperate
in doing so. It was noted that postings were voluntary, and that the
backbone considered all postings to be essentially placed in the public
Page 16
domain.
But now, this discussion was being held in news .admin, not out in
net.general or net.admin where all would see it, and all were, in fact,
encouraged to read and comment. And most net.readers were simply no
longer directly involved in the guidance and development of the net.
Partly to remedy this lack of direct involvement, but more as a result of
the dissolution of the backbone cabal (which happened when a vocal
group of folks established the alt.* hierarchy because the backbone folk
had decided that there would *not* be a rec.sex group – several of the
backbone administers threw up their hands and recognized that the
anarchy was no longer under control) the “Guidelines” were worked out
that provided for a popularity poll (a “vote”) for the establishment of
new newsgroups.
And the Net continued to grow, but now sites coming into the Net
were no longer really reminded of the basic assumptions before coming
on line, that they were joining a voluntary association, and that people
posting were assumed to be communicating in public because they
wanted to, and that it was a “public domain” situation. There was no
backbone cabal to contact the new site admin. and assure the Net that the
new site understood the voluntary nature of the association.
Home sites and commercial sites began to proliferate in much
greater numbers than before, and anyone could get a feed of as much or
as little of the news as they wanted, and it was no longer assured that all
sites *would* see an item posted to news.annunce.important.
And in 1987 and 1989 – BANG! The second of the really major
assumption changes hit. The U.S.A. signed the Berne Convention, and
practically overnight, the Net went from a default of no copyrights, to
a situation where copyright was automatic. The results of this are still
resounding throughout the net.
This change still did not really undo the underlying assumption —
people using the Net WANT to communicate. Those who worry about
the law and being risk free tend to loose sight of this. The poster of an
item is seeking to communicate their ideas, and they (posters) *don’t*
worry about the copyrights and other restrictions until they are brought
to their attention by some other poster or administrator.
The Net has lost sight of its basic nature, a voluntary association of
Page 17
sites exchanging news in a standard format *under the assumption* that
the site and its users want to communicate, and will cooperate in doing
so.
The Net is acknowledged as a working anarchy. There is no
authority beyond the administrator of a single machine, and links
between machines are still (by and large) informal arrangements. The
adding of commercial providers merely makes the model very murky,
since the feeding of a group TO the commercial providers are still
generally informal arrangements. [No comments have been made
otherwise to me.]
So what is the point of this overly long history lesson? When
NetNews began, it was clearly a situation where items were donated to
the Net freely and voluntarily. The resolution of an early debate on the
appearance of a copyright notice on a posting was the clearly stated
principle that posting on the Net was contributing the item to the public
domain (in some sense, the moral rights were *not* at issue then, before
the U.S. joined the Berne Copyright Convention.) Postings with a
copyright did not make it very far before someone noticed and corrected
the misapprehensions of the poster.
Today, this assumption is forgotten, folk forget that they are in a
voluntary situation (if they were ever informed of it) and that this was
started as a public domain forum.
In My Opinion, folks posting an item to the Net are doing so
*voluntarily* and they mean to have that item distributed anywhere “the
net” may send it. I consider it a feckless argument to try and maintain a
distinction between whether that distribution takes place automatically
or with human direction or control. It is known (or should be known)
before posting that the automatic systems are going to send it to places
that the poster has absolutely no control over, either in terms of space,
or in terms of time. They intend to have that item seen and read by other
humans on the other end of the virtual circuit. And they implicitly invite
that other human to react to that item.
Being a “nominally reasonable” person, with due regard for the
moral rights of an author to be known as the author of a particular work,
I will maintain attributions on the items. But they have also granted
automatic systems the right to send that item to me without compensa-
Page 18
tion (or even a [imo] reasonable expectation of compensation,) that is,
it is a gift.
[Actually, certain situations have happened that actually make me
care about some of these “niceties” in relation to the operation of my
site. I now am of the opinion that a poster “pressing the send key” is
commanding his machine to connect to other machines and to place
copies of his article there as a gift for the readers on that machine. These
machines (connected directly or indirectly to the posters machine) do
simply what the poster has commanded them to do. The poster is the
responsible party. Furthermore, in exchange for having the privilege of
commanding other machines to distribute the posting, the poster allows
other posters to use his machine for the same purpose. Not a contractual
obligation, but a simple exchange of favors. Informal and cooperative.]
Finally, in my opinion, if they do *not* want me to receive the item,
then they should not post it “on the net.”
And a prediction: Someday, someone who does not understand the
*voluntary* nature of the net, is going to actually sue someone for some
misunderstanding. I would sure enjoy being called as an “expert
witness” for that trial (if it ever gets to trial.)
__________
[Editor’s Note: The US joined the Berne Convention on March 1, 1989.
To be consistent with that convention, once a work or idea is fixed in a
tangible form, the creator holds the copyright and no © or other notice
is required for copyright status.]
Page 19
The Ethics of Usenet Etiquette
A Short Essay Concerning Advertising
on the Internet.
by Cal Woods
The anarchy and absence of rules on the Internet* has brought it
both fame and infamy. This feature of such a vast and potentially
influential organ brings both benefits and disadvantages. In the former
category, the equality of status in opinion, combined with accessibility
of information, opens an opportunity for dynamism and self-expression
that would normally have been quashed by simple discouragement at the
effort required. The Internet provides a platform for experiment and
allows many people to combine their knowledge. It also provides superb
resources for making knowledge available through various means. I
think we are individually well-aware of the benefits of the net, so I will
let it speak for itself.
The equality of access to those with the appropriate technological
means and mind grants great liberties and opportunities, but concur-
rently with freedom comes the possibility for its abuse, an abuse that the
‘lawless’ society of the Net may seem ill-fit to deal with. Yet for a soci-
ety without laws, the Internet functions with an incredible fluidity. You
can say anything on Usenet, (even advertise,) yet while there are no
written rules as to how you can say it, the Net regulates itself well
enough to avoid collapse.
This apparent weakness adds to what the Internet is and does. The
weakness that allows Canter & Siegel to argue that they did nothing
‘illegal’ because there are no laws, is an integral part of the Net commu-
nity’s make-up. As well as the advantages mentioned above, the very
fact that sense of community and a realization of the need for coopera-
tion is emphasized by knowledge of the fact that the enterprise is open
to attack and could be destroyed by one person.
The ‘Highway’ code, such as it is, is based on common-sense, a
mutual respect of others, and the fear of the loss of that respect and
Page 20
exclusion from the community. I know not to post messages pertaining
to the guitar archive to rec.gardens.orchids because it does not take
much effort to see that it would be inappropriate to do so. It serves me
no purpose, it annoys the readers of that group, and it damages the Net
community in wasted bandwidth.
Usenet, a public forum, should remain lawless, as any attempt to
impose strictures on so amorphous an entity is destined to practical
failure. The only method of discipline at our disposal is education, and
if transgressions continue, to ostracize offenders and ask to have them
physically removed from the community. The Internet is designed for
mass communication of information, and it effectively fights back by
educating those who, inadvertently or not, fall foul of the unwritten rules
of etiquette.
The subject of this essay is the recent abuse of Usenet that is known
as ‘spamming’ – when a message, usually advertising some product or
service, is sent to a large number of newsgroups, many of which are in-
appropriate for its distribution. In short, the problem of advertising on
Usenet, and on the Internet in general.
It would obviously be a claim of those wishing to advertise that they
would like to go out and attempt to attract clients. This is understand-
able, but is not the way Usenet functions – it is constructed into groups
that pertain to particular interests. To send messages to groups dealing
with topics unconcerned with the product you advertise is a breach of
etiquette. No one would have minded if Canter & Siegel had hawked
their wares ONLY in groups such as alt.visa.us. It may be true that many
gardeners or guitar players might have been interested in their service,
but if this is so, those people would have searched for that information.
With any group, the creator, moderator, or simply those active in the
group, must rely on the initial interest of the user being sufficient that
they actively seek the information that will get them to forums and sites
pertaining to their topic of interest. All news reading programs, in my
experience, allow a search by subject-name, and many tools have and
are being developed to enable searching (e.g. Archie, and the capabilities
of Mosaic). This is the case whether I am looking for gardening tips,
guitar chords or legal assistance.
An advertiser who spams, implicitly considers that the purpose it
Page 21
serves them in gaining new customers, outweighs the annoyance caused
to readers and the waste of resources. Not many can see this. Even this
may not be true: in terms of pure numbers, Chris Kwasnicki (victim of
the recent ‘Weight Loss’ spam and forgery) reports that he received
more hate-mail than interest expressed. But even if Canter & Siegel’s
current claim to financial success remains true in the long-run, this does
not validate any right to mass-advertising. The reason they have gained
the enmity of countless thousands is because they put their own personal
gain above the Net itself. Usenet does provide for advertising, and for
personal and corporate gain, but it will clearly do so only in ways that
does not threaten Usenet itself.
Learning how to behave, on the Net as in society, is something we
pick up with practice, and whose justification we largely ‘come to
understand.’ If people can’t see why it is ridiculous to post guitar chords
to gardening groups, they are not fit to be granted a license to sail in
cyberspace. Everyone makes mistakes while learning or while entering
a new field, but a general sense of etiquette will provide reasonable
bounds. Newcomers to Usenet (“newbies”) or those who are beguiled by
the promise of ‘Making Money Fast’, who step over the line are quickly
informed by their peers of their mistake, and their willingness to
co-operate in the larger endeavor ensures that they attempt never to
bring attention upon themselves again.
A much more serious transgression is a failure to adopt the correct
attitude when using the Net. Canter & Siegel may have been newcomers
to Usenet and thought their motive of personal gain was appropriate (it’s
a stretch, I know). To my knowledge, they made no use of the Net in
explaining or apologizing for their actions. And the subsequent
glorification of their deeds shows that they have learned nothing, and
will continue to abuse the Net. They should therefore, in so far as it is
possible, be excluded from it – shunned while on the Internet, and
denied access to it. If there must be a ‘law’ which they have trans-
gressed, at its most minimal it can be this: that the network itself could
not cope with many people making such widely cross-posted articles,
which is why the rest of us are bound in not taking such acts. If ‘One
must be honest to live outside the law,’ then because of the very
structure of the Internet, we must all be honest.
Page 22
The whole basis of the above argument derives from the fact that
‘we’ and not business, nor any government, ‘own’ the Internet. By ‘we’
I mean that the Internet is produced by, and used by, individuals. This
is in contrast to television, where the material on offer is produced by
another. Additionally, the Internet is largely profit-free. The attempt of
companies such as America-On-Line or Prodigy to provide their own
services, to construct an Internet of their own, is entirely valid; (as is the
charging for material retrieved from a personal or corporate archive.)
Nor do I have any substantial gripe against these companies as providers
of access to the Internet, but this is provisional on the fact that while
they design and run their other services, they do not have any say in the
content or construction of the ‘net.’
Canter & Siegel of course paid nothing for their ad except the fee
for connection. There is advertising to be done, and with it money to be
made, on the Net, by companies and by individuals. But it cannot be at
the expense of either the opinion, information and products freely given
and maintained on the Net, nor the ‘ettiq’al’code that sustains it.
Make no mistake about it, the Internet could greatly benefit from the
influx of cash that paid advertising might bring; the important thing
however is to retain control. If Gibson guitars were to offer the
University of Nevada a fee to have a ten-line ASCII ad appended to the
welcome screen of anonymous ftp users, I would encourage them to
accept. But if it meant any restriction on the content of what Jim Carson
and I could archive there, I would hope they reject.
This issue, of control of the Internet, is the real challenge that the
Net community must ready itself for. In the end, as with the radio and
television in the United States, a controlling hand may be granted to
business. But the diversity, multi nationalism and the fact that we have
come this far WITHOUT the help of either of these agencies, gives us
a strong base with which to maintain our independence.
*Note: By ‘Internet’ I mean the entire network of sites and boards allowing communi-
cation by e-mail, ftp, telnet, gopher, WWW, etc. By ‘Usenet’ I mean the bulletin-board
system of alt, rec, comp, etc., also known as ‘NetNews’. I hope these are fairly
accurate, or at least understandable.
© Copyright September 1994 cal woods
Page 23
[Author’s Note: This paper can also be found on WWW:
URL:
http://scrg.cs.tcd.ie/scrg/u/rcwoods/ettics.html]
Ethics and the Internet:
RFC 1087
Status of this Memo
This memo is a statement of policy by the Internet Activities Board
(IAB) concerning the proper use of the resources of the Internet.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Introduction
At great human and economic cost, resources drawn from the U.S.
Government, industry and the academic community have been assem-
bled into a collection of interconnected networks called the Internet.
Begun as a vehicle for experimental network research in the mid-1970s,
the Internet has become an important national infrastructure supporting
an increasingly widespread, multi-disciplinary community of researchers
ranging, inter alia, from computer scientists and electrical engineers to
mathematicians, physicists, medical researchers, chemists, astronomers
and space scientists.
As is true of other common infrastructures (e.g., roads, water
reservoirs and delivery systems, and the power generation and distribu-
tion network), there is widespread dependence on the Internet by its
users for the support of day-to-day research activities.
The reliable operation of the Internet and the responsible use of its
resources is of common interest and concern for its users, operators and
sponsors. Recent events involving the hosts on the Internet and in
similar network infrastructures underscore the need to reiterate the
professional responsibility every Internet user bears to colleagues and to
the sponsors of the system. Many of the Internet resources are provided
by the U.S. Government. Abuse of the system thus becomes a Federal
Page 24
matter above and beyond simple professional ethics.
IAB Statement of Policy
The Internet is a national facility whose utility is largely a conse-
quence of its wide availability and accessibility. Irresponsible use of this
critical resource poses an enormous threat to its continued availability
to the technical community.
The U.S. Government sponsors of this system have a fiduciary
responsibility to the public to allocate government resources wisely and
effectively. Justification for the support of this system suffers when
highly disruptive abuses occur. Access to and use of the Internet is a
privilege and should be treated as such by all users of this system.
The IAB strongly endorses the view of the Division Advisory Panel
of the National Science Foundation Division of Network, Communica-
tions Research and Infrastructure which, in paraphrase, characterized as
unethical and unacceptable any activity which purposely:
(a) seeks to gain unauthorized access to the resources of the
Internet,
(b)disrupts the intended use of the Internet,
(c) wastes resources (people, capacity, computer) through such
actions,
(d) destroys the integrity of computer-based information, and/or
(e) compromises the privacy of users.
The Internet exists in the general research milieu. Portions of it
continue to be used to support research and experimentation on
networking. Because experimentation on the Internet has the potential
to affect all of its components and users, researchers have the respons-
ibility to exercise great caution in the conduct of their work. Negligence
in the conduct of Internetwide experiments is both irresponsible and
unacceptable.
The IAB plans to take whatever actions it can, in concert with
Federal agencies and other interested parties, to identify and to set up
technical and procedural mechanisms to make the Internet more resistant
to disruption. Such security, however, may be extremely expensive and
may be counterproductive if it inhibits the free flow of information
Page 25
which makes the Internet so valuable. In the final analysis, the health
and well-being of the Internet is the responsibility of its users who must,
uniformly, guard against abuses which disrupt the system and threaten
its long-term viability.
The Internet Society
by Ram Samudrala
One of the greatest wonders of this world is not a crumbling edifice,
nor is it a towering monolith; rather, it is the throbbing, pulsating mesh
of circuitry referred to as the Internet.
The beauty of the Internet (sometimes referred to as “the Net”) is
visible not just at the primal architectural level (the basic paradigm is
chopping data up into little packets and sending the packets separately
across a coaxial cable and reassembling these packets at the other end
— that this simple idea works so well is a wonder in and of itself), but
also at an intermediate level (the existence of lucid protocols such as
SMTP, message routing, NFS, …), and at the social level.
The latter level is what will be addressed most in this posting. By
“social” (I hate this word!), I mean the level at which users interact with
the net. This can involve transferring of files, creating virtual sessions,
obtaining information, and inter-personal activities such as exchanging
e-mail and using TALK to communicate. The big advantage of the
Internet is that it is real-time. That is, whatever the exchange of data that
takes place, it is instantaneous. The potential of such a faculty is
enormous and to this date, it has almost always been used to its fullest.
However, a disturbing change in attitude has manifested in the social
structure of the net.
The social structure of the Internet is anarchistic. Power is highly
localized to a domain (in my case “nist .gov”) or sub-domains
(“carb.nist.gov”) or even hosts (“iris1.carb.nist.gov”). System adminis-
trators at a given domain/host have as much power as any other admin-
Page 26
istrator across the net. The Internet flourishes mainly due to the
cooperation of the local nodes. In fact, even for compilation of the
Internet’s size, SRI international relies on the cooperation of system
administrators. It is difficult to appreciate how much it truly relies on
simple trust and openness. The protocols and the programs that make the
Internet (FTP, Telnet, SMTP) are based on forbearance. A lot of tools
we see today used to navigate the Net were made possible simply
because of this leniency of access (users without privilege could write
sophisticated programs and experiment with various aspects of the Net).
Changing this will not only dissuade development of better software, but
will also make the Net into a travesty of what it currently is.
Take for example the way the protocol works as it transfers data
across the Net. A packet of information is usually sent to ALL machines
in a LAN before it gets to the outside world. The only thing that prevents
this data from being accessed “illegally” is a “gentleman’s agreement”.
It is at this place that security is most lax. Changing this would change
the basic design of how the Internet works, and if implemented
inefficiently (I see no way how this could be done in an efficient
manner), it would make it a slower network. The beauty of the Internet
is based on the fact that transmission of data can happen in a simple,
unhindered manner.
Why should one want to change it? There has been a lot of hype
about security (or lack thereof) on the Net. People lament the rising
“crime rate” and loss of open collaboration. Some of it is undeniably
true. However, it has existed from the time the ARPAnet shelved off to
form the Internet. At that time, the people using the Net knew how to
take care of themselves. With rising population, the Internet’s security
has become a factor. But the Internet rose because of its lax and
free-flowing nature (the decline of the more rigorous network, the
BITNET, is an example that illustrates that flexibility flourishes). The
problem is visible mainly because of the incompetence of system
administrators: Any security problem can be handled best by simply
configuring a system correctly. Even AIX (IBM’s UNIX), which is so
bug ridden, can be made into a secure system at a certain cost (of
accessibility). But, the more you want to be part of the Net, the less
privacy you have.
Page 27
There are two sorts of individuals whose ideas are destructive to the
very nature of the Net. The first are those who claim that extra security
(and some of their ideas involve an entire restructuring of the Net) in the
form of encryption schemes, etc., are the answer to the Net’s problems.
My response is that if you wish to be protected, it’s easy enough; people
have been doing this for ages. Set up firewalls, remove complete access
to the Net, and set up layers of machines to shield yourself from the Net.
But no, these people aren’t content with having THEIR system secure
— they wish to impose their inane ideas on the rest of the Net.
The classic example of this, of course, is the Clipper chip and SKIP-
JACK encryption scheme which supposedly guarantees “secure
communication,” but the government has the privilege to monitor this
communication anytime. As John Perry Barlow has put it, “trusting the
government with your privacy is like trusting a Peeping Tom to install
your window blinds.” (If you are interested in more information on this
proposal and how you can oppose it, let me know.)
Any general scheme like the above is very unrealistic because it
entails the cooperation of all the people across the Net. Instead, the
paranoid people can take steps to protect their systems as much as they
want. Eventually, the local user community, if incensed enough, will
rebel, or find alternative measures, in order to gain access to the Net
(from personal experience, this HAS happened). But the important thing
is that security lies in configuration. You can protect your house ade-
quately if you are willing to invest in a lot of alarm systems and locks,
but you shouldn’t force this unrealistic view on everyone else around the
world. This approach, approved by a few, is held in contempt by most
of the Net and in the current foreseeable future will NOT happen.
Most of the Internet protocols are very open: the SMTP protocol is
one example where one can fake e-mail messages in an instant (as
demonstrated here – I could be “president@whitehouse. gov”). But this
is the same openness which, I believe, has resulted in us having very
cool mail packages such as pine or elm. NFS is another protocol that
weakens a system’s security to a great extreme. Can you implement NFS
with so much security (such as encryption, etc.) and have it still be
efficient? I don’t think so. Gopher servers are another security risk, but
only if improperly configured. With the right set of locks, your machine
Page 28
can indeed exist reasonably securely on the Net. The Net, and its
simplicity should not be compromised for human misdemeanors.
But why do we need locks in the first place? Why can’t everything
be open? This brings us to the sort of individuals abusing the Net. These
are unemployed morons who have nothing better to do than to waste the
Net’s resources in several ways. These are the sort of people who
indulge in muds and IRC. While the latter does have potential, what it
is now is best emphasized by what Bobby wrote me once: “… I hope it
haunts you till the day IRC actually turns into a real medium, not some
combination of losers, net-junkies, net-surfers, role-players and ‘I’m
wiredom I’m cool’ freaks.”
This could also apply to those who MUD and the ones who attempt
to crack machines. The security holes are there! What are they trying to
prove? The fact remains that most people of this sort don’t appreciate
the Net. This is part of a letter I read in the U. Magazine:
“…The power of GOPHERS and other data access tools are restructur-
ing the way we get info. Not to mention the fun things like e-mail (even
to the president!), IRC servers, netTREK, and other net-based games.”
It clearly shows this person’s inclination of how the Net should be
used. Net-based games are expensive and cost the whole Net. IRC, well,
it is a medium that could be used for better purposes, but it is a loss right
now. I say all this because it is this attitude that is prevalent among those
who steal passwords and exploit other system’s weaknesses (this is
different from those finding out how to do it and then not doing it).
Commercialization also brings the need for security. As long as the
Net is used to simply exchange ideas, it is reasonable to expect that most
people would not be interested in forging addresses, etc. But now you
can order merchandise over e-mail! There’s economic incentive
involved. While I am not sure about how this should be handled, it can’t
be denied that commercialization (in any form, including “selling”
access to the Net, allowing for business transactions, etc.) brings in
people whose motives aren’t in the best interests of the Net. With the
system the way it is, you can’t keep these people out and I doubt if this
is the solution.
In the past, there was an automatic filter – you had to do something
special (go to college, work in a big enough company, etc.) in order to
Page 29
gain access to the net. This was appreciated and thus the people who
used it were less prone to abuse it. These days, for $40 a year, a modem
and a computer, you have access. When it becomes so easily available,
people start taking it for granted.
To summarize, people who cry about security should mind their
own business and properly configure their systems. The same people
who whine so much are those who have a single system manager for a
hundred networked computers. This is clearly bound to cause problems.
There is NOTHING that can’t be made secure with existing protocols –
provided you are willing to pay the price of less access to the Net. I
would also argue that there is NOTHING one can do to have completely
access to the Net and STILL have the privacy one wants.
The root of the problem, however, is with users who have no respect
for the wondrous nature of the Net. While this is simply human nature,
encouraging a healthy respect towards what the Net can do, for both
those who believe in making the Net so rigid that nothing gets done, and
those who intend to “harm” the net, is the way to go.
References:
Wire Pirates, Scientific American, March 1994.
Usenet newsgroups such comp.security.*, etc.
The Internet: Maintaining and
Extending Diversity
by Cal Woods
Introduction
The structure of this essay is to briefly describe pertinent features
of the Internet as it now stands in relation to the key questions that face
the rapid, burgeoning, development – ‘Who pays?’ ‘Who runs the
Page 30
Internet?’ and ‘What for?’ – and argues that the situation as it currently
stands is well suited to withstanding monopolization by any one sector.
The essay then swings to the other end of the spectrum and
considers issues relating to how access to the Internet might be expanded
to all members of society, as an inexpensive public commodity, rather
than an expensive, personal, luxury good; and takes a broad survey of
possibilities for the Net as an instrument of social policy-making on a
national level.
Staying a Part of the Culture : Resisting Takeovers
The first thing that it is important to realize when beginning a
discussion on the future of the Internet is to realize that the multi-
nationalism of the Net means that it is unlikely that any decisions will
be taken on a global level.
Being divided into nations is a fundamental identification that many
people, never query or think beyond. The Internet blows away this
barrier, enabling communication at lightning speeds between continents.
Yet the key factors in determining the direction the Internet takes are
profoundly affected by the fact that many nations, each thinking
independently of the other, are involved.
The very broadest platform for discussion of these issues will be at
the level of nations – NOT internationally – simply because that’s the
way things are done in the twentieth century. Americans and the
American government will decide what happens in America, Irish
society will decide what is allowable in Ireland, and so on. The nation
is our biggest unit of co-operation, and it will be a long time before the
upstart ‘Internet’ makes any real impression upon people’s minds to
encourage us to communicate globally.
No decision can be taken in a void, but in the context of the existing
structure and past history of the Internet.
The Internet has risen gradually, growing like a web, extending ever
outward. The huge costs associated with developing and maintaining the
Internet’s infrastructure are shared. As each business or academic insti-
tution becomes aware of the benefits of being connected to the Internet
they must be prepared to pay for the development required. Certain
people or groups might be said to ‘own’ certain parts of the physical
Page 31
infrastructure, but no one owns it all. Commercial investment is used as
the demand becomes apparent. Commercial companies make money on
everything, from selling computers and software to leasing the lines on
which the information flows.
At a more profound level than ownership, no one is in control of the
Internet as a whole. Again, the person who runs a site can refuse to carry
certain groups or material, but they do so only for that site, and for
nowhere else. Even if governments restrict the material coming into a
country, they do so only for that country. Those who invest in the
Internet have some say as to what goes on there. If a nation decides what
material is suitable for its population and what not, that information is
reachable somewhere in the world, and if there is a demand for it, then
it will be obtained. It is probably wisest, then, that restrictions on the
Internet remain minimal, since oppressive strictures only force problems
underground. Previous history of the repression of ‘social vices’
repeatedly demonstrates complete failure.
This feature of diversity means that any absolute control of the
Internet by a government or a corporation would now be very difficult
to achieve. In the same way as we each download into our accounts only
what we want there, some measure of control could be gained on a wider
scale by ‘owning’ the sites or the link to the Internet, created by
individuals or companies or governments using their own capital.
An obvious example that illustrates both of these points about
diversity and control is the recent upsurge throughout the world in
commercial companies offering access to on-line services and the
Internet. The various companies have to pay wages, equipment and
overheads for maintaining the bulletin boards and other services they
themselves provide, but not for the information on the Internet, which
‘looks after itself.’ This has led at least one operator to advertise that
clients get the Internet ‘free’!
Online services do two things as regards the net: they provide
access, and they also help structure the net, so that it is easily negotiable.
The latter of these the Internet is learning to do for itself, in particular
via freely available programs such as Mosaic, so once on the net, a user
can set themselves up fairly well. The only problem is getting on in the
first place.
Page 32
As far as I can see, the crucial factor in maintaining the freedom on
the net as a whole is the freedom given to users within the larger groups.
In other words, so long as schools, universities and colleges, and bus-
inesses, as the main groups of users, give their students and employees
complete access to the Internet, enabling them to work beyond and
outside of their academic or company purposes, then the Net as a whole
will be beyond the hands of any one group. Put in their most obvious
form – control by a large number makes control by any one person more
difficult; and freedom of expression by a large number makes any
repression more difficult for those who would restrict access.
In sum: to talk of people ‘taking decisions’ as though some power
group has the potential to sit down and decide how the Net is going to
be, is an abuse of language, given the current determining factors of the
Internet.
BECOMING A PART OF THE CULTURE 1 : COMMU-
NITY ACCESS
In the U.S., Federal and State Governments are drawing on property
and sales taxes, and on state lotteries, in order to plough money into
education, and thereby, into the net. But the clear beneficiaries of this
cash are not the general public. The Internet began as a means of
communicating information between professionals in the computer and
scientific worlds, and its original nodes are places of research –
universities and large companies. But since then much wider uses for the
Internet have become apparent – Usenet has become a gathering place
for serious discussants interested in every conceivable subject,
1
and the
material kept at archives worldwide has similarly diversified. Leisure
has also found its way onto the Net because of the potential to encode
information in pictures, sounds and movies. The Internet has even been
touted (and implemented in small scale
2
) as a discussion forum and
decision making process for social policy on many levels.
Taxpayers who have no problem donating a percentage of their
hard-earned income to academic institutions on the basis that it
ultimately benefits society may now have reason to feel aggrieved that
they themselves are not seeing the benefit of the tax money they
Page 33
contribute. Those in academic establishments are perceived to have an
unfair advantage that the ordinary citizen could well do with — access
to information and education. Despite the perceived egalitarianism of the
net, that equality is available only to an intellectual and business elite.
The technological capabilities exist that mean the Net can reach into any
building – not just universities and office-blocks but libraries and
individual homes as well. If the ordinary tax-payer is supporting the net,
then why aren’t they seeing any of it?
Further, if the Net is to become a social instrument with potential
quorums of entire communities, states and even populations, giving
access to the public at large will require the current ‘indirect stream’ to
turn itself into a direct flood.
A certain small proportion of the education money to Colleges and
universities reaches the public in the form of ‘Freenets’ in local
communities, but the numbers are small. The dependence on academic
institutions is waning, and some Freenet projects are now looking to
local online providers and to government to play their part in communi-
ties by allowing non-profit groups to give access.
3
4
5
But despite all these efforts, if use of the Internet is to occur on a
grand scale, then investment on a grand scale will be required. It is
tempting then to send out a call to governments to provide funds for
nationwide investment, perhaps by the creation of the same kind of
companies as AOL and Delphi except non-profit and tax funded.
Internet’s history suggests that this grand investment will come
from a myriad of diverse locations. This is probably best, since with
large scale ‘ownership’ of Net resources must come the feeling of
‘controlling’ the Net – the piper calls the tune – especially if that inves-
tor is a government. Unless governments are prepared to grant the same
sweeping freedoms as the majority of academic and business institu-
tions, than such large player in the field would bring an unbalancing
effect. Despite the circumstances depicted in the first part of this paper,
I think that the area of public access has yet been inadequately colonized
by the public at large, so that large scale investment by governments
now would potentially grant them a large measure of control.
It is probably best then, that the call goes out for government
investment not in national systems that it can call its own, or to put in
Page 34
place infrastructure over which it has exclusive control, but from local
communities and states to apply for grants for use toward the foundation
(and expansion
6
) of smaller-scale groupings.
The interest in Freenets and community access will hopefully grow
from its present trickle and see a similar rate of growth similar the
Internet’s own exponential spread. Freenet providers are always in a
difficult position, because they need to obtain funds, but without any
strings attached. Optimistically, there is a promising analogy between
the examples quoted here and the initially ‘indirect’ development of
networking technology from university and other research funds.
What people fear about involvement of a dominant body in
providing Internet services is that it will impose some kind of restric-
tions or censorship. If a government runs sites, it is perfectly entitled to
do whatever it wants with those sites, but in the same way as AOL and
Prodigy have found that the Net is ‘bigger than they are’, central
government will find local and state communities organized and ready
to assert their power.
BECOMING A PART OF THE CULTURE 2 : NATION-
WIDE ACCESS
In the long term, possibilities exist for nationwide use of computer
networks. Community leaders have been made aware of the Internet’s
potential for regaining some of the ‘bottom-up’ made difficult by
centralized governments and parliaments. Very often, not only is a
system ‘top-heavy’ but its top is one that is widely mistrusted as being
a representative voice of ordinary people. If discussion of national issues
were to take place in a forum accessible to the masses, there would be
an opportunity for citizens to express their opinions directly, and bring
politicians to greater account.
True ‘polis’-ticians will realize the opportunity of returning power
to a public forum with an informed public, and perhaps encourage it,
even though it means a radical crumbling of their own ivory towers. The
whole idea of Internet for the people is to stop prophecies like this
coming true, “I think companies like AOL are well positioned to be the
way most Americans connect to the Internet.”
7
yet avoid having to tow
Page 35
the line in return for government cash.
A fully functioning democratic federation does not simply involve
local people being responsible for local decisions, but also having an
effective voice in national policy. In order to achieve this, it must be
possible for communication to pass smoothly between lower to higher
echelons and back. The requirements of such an organ are that informa-
tion be widely disseminated, discussion that grants an equal voice to all
participants, and, even if decisions are taken by a minority, the power to
call those decision-makers to account. These are inherent characteristics
of the Internet.
The Internet has thus far survived the arrival of commercial
enterprises due in a large measure to the fact that it was already home to
the enterprises that businesses wanted to use computers and computer
networks for. The Internet can strengthen its chances of surviving a
(national) governmental influx by already being the place were policy
discussion is held. Preparation is already underway in the form of these
local groups who are organizing locally. And the power to turn these
into national and even international forums resides in the compatibility
of the technology itself.
Notes:
1. The perfect example of this is the recent Call for Discussion of a separate ‘arts’
hierarchy on Usenet.
Message-ID: <mccombtmCwvB2J.3E0@netcom.com>
Subject: RFD: New Hierarchy for Arts & Humanities
From: mccombtm@netcom.com (Todd Michel McComb)
Newsgroups: <wide arts cross-posting; taken from sci.classics>.
2. e.g. Santa Monica’s ‘Public Electronic Network’ “Paid for entirely by taxpayer
dollars and accessible to all city residents, PEN is the first free, government-sponsored
electronic network in the United States.” ‘Yakety-Yak, Do Talk Back!’ Joan Van
Tassel _Wired_ Jan. 94.
3. “Since our Freenet is non-profit we are trying to get our Net connection donated
from a local service provider.”
Message-ID: <JCOLLIE.94Sep2923[email protected] .uiowa.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp, alt.culture.usenet, alt.
Page 36
internet.mediacoverage
From: jeffrey-ollie@uiowa.edu (Jeffrey C. Ollie)
Date: 29 Sep 1994 23:29:17 -0500
He continues however: “Since the service provider is donating the Net connection
to someone that will be giving access away (we won’t charge users anything, we’ll be
entirely run on donations and grants), the service provider has a valid interest in
limiting what we give away as we would be taking away their business.” For more on
the argument as to whether commercial companies will lose or benefit from Freenets,
see Tom Grundner’s Letter to the Editor “Free-Nets benefit commercial networks.” in
Sept.7 _Chronicle_.
4. “We, at dorsai, have requested $1.3 million from the government (which we will
match with equivalent funds coming from the private sector) to build 16 sites on the
Net. Those will be put in schools, libraries, community centers…”
Message-ID: <Cwwu[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp, alt.culture.usenet, alt. internet.mediacoverage
From: [email protected] (Net-Runner)
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 21:27:41 GMT
5. In ‘Putting Citizens on Line’ in the _Chronicle of Higher Education_ David L.
Wilson reports that “All of the nearly $2 million budgeted for the [Sailor] project came
from federal money funneled to public libraries.” (page A19)
6. Wilson quotes Ken Klingenstein: “‘In general, the community networks I have seen
failed because they never reached critical mass, or because they reached critical mass
and collapsed under their own weight.’ Once a community understands the power of
networking, he says, the system becomes flooded. If money isn’t available to expand
users become frustrated as the system slows down, and eventually they stop partic-
ipating.”
7. Steve Case, president of America Online. Quoted in ‘Hooked Up To The Max’ Philip
Elmer-Dewitt. _Time_ magazine article posted to alt.internet.media-coverage 94-09-23
12:28:12 EDT
© Copyright 1994 cal woods
[Author’s Note: This paper can be found on the WWW at:
Page 37
Do You Want to Lose Your Voice
by Ken Malone
(Reprinted from The Searchlight Jan 20, 1944, p. 8, Flint, MI)
[Editor’s Note: The following article was written in 1944 by Ken
Malone, an editor of the uncensored local union newspaper The
Searchlight. The fight by Chevrolet auto workers in Flint, Michigan, to
defend freedom of the press is reminiscent of the battle over the Net
today. Therefore, we are including this article in this special issue
because of the helpful perspective it can provide for today. Sadly, Ken
Malone, who was a Flint Sit Down Striker in 1936-37 died in August
1993.]
Brothers and Sisters, do you wish to have your Searchlight
suspended?
If you do, then just listen to the whispering campaigns that are
going on in the shop and in the lobby of the union hall. These campaigns
are being carried on daily. They are being carried on by people who con-
tribute nothing to the paper. It may be they can’t write.
In the last membership meeting there were several desperate
attempts by a very few to emasculate the paper. Some even advocated
control a la Hitler. I mean complete abolition of it.
These few people who would take your paper from you are those
who want complete control of your union to the detriment of the
membership.
Comparatively speaking, there are few members who attend
membership meetings, so consequently few know what goes on in their
union. One might answer that by saying that it is any member’s fault that
he doesn’t attend meetings to keep abreast of his union. That is very
true, but suppose each of our 11,000 members decided to attend a
membership meeting, how would we accommodate them? Our main
auditorium will seat probably 500 at most.
Others may say, oh well, that is a remote possibility that all our
members may decide to attend the same meetings. With that I agree. But
because of such excuses are we going to close our eyes and ears to these
Page 38
attempts to remove the last semblance of aggressiveness from our
union? I say we aren’t going back to the last membership meeting, I said
there were a few bold attempts to wrest the most potent voice of you
brothers and sisters from you. One proposal read thus: We recommend
that The Searchlight be suspended until the election of a new editorial
staff.
The two people responsible for the above attempt at keeping you
ignorant of what your union is doing, promised a very small handful of
people who were blindly led into supporting such a move, that they (the
two) would take the floor in membership meeting and fight to put it
across. But these two who, by the way, are in favor of the incentive or
bonus plan, didn’t even try to get the floor on so vicious a thing, much
less fight for its passage.
The membership has never had access to so broad a knowledge of
union affairs until they established The Searchlight. Now that many
members are reading and becoming inquisitive about union affairs, it has
caused a few who would keep you in the dark about your own union to
become panicky.
Knowing they can’t justify their arguments through the paper, they
stoop to whispering campaigns and snaring innocent victims into
temporarily supporting legislation that would make Hitler wince.
It isn’t so long ago we were unable to get enough people interested
in their own union affairs to get a quorum to hold a meeting. But since
The Searchlight has awakened many of them to what may happen to our
union, we have large turn-outs at each membership meeting. There was
a time that for months we had no membership meetings because of the
lack of interest due to a lack of enlightenment as to what transpired in
the union. That isn’t so today and if we protect and preserve our free
speech and press by defeating these would-be blinders, we will continue
to have large, interesting and enlightening membership meetings.
In closing, Brothers and Sisters, don’t allow your strongest union
protection to die for the lack of support. If this paper is controlled as
some few wish it to be, then you may as well read the shop talk column
in the Sunday Journal as far as learning the score on union issues.
Presently The Searchlight is controlled by you, the membership.
Keep it that way. Beware of these whispers and ghost stories. Better still,
Page 39
recapture control of every branch of your union.
Summary — Royal Society of London
as Scientific Perspective
[Editor’s Note: The following article is part 3 of “From ARPAnet to
Usenet.” Parts 1 and 2 appeared in The Amateur Computerist, vol 5 no.
3/4 and vol 6 no. 1.]
Part III
The early 1600s, like contemporary times, was a period in Britain
when new forms and methods of production were becoming possible.
An attitude of respect for data that comes from the physical world and
scientific observations based on that data had been developing in Great
Britain and on the Continent (especially in Italy.)
Interested in putting into practice the scientific method and
principles that had been developed by Sir Francis Bacon, and in
applying their science to serve the well being of the British people, a
group of amateur scientists began to gather. Meeting in each other’s
homes and then in Gresham College in London, they formed what came
to be known as the Invisible College. They met on Wednesdays and
conducted experiments in different areas of production and science. The
following stanzas are from a ballad of the period describing their
activities:
“If to be rich, and to be learned
Be every nations chiefest glory,
How much are Englishmen concerned
Gresham to celebrate in story
Who built th’ Exchange to enrich the Citty
And Colledge founded the Witty”
“A second hath described at full
The Philosophy of making Cloth
Page 40
Tells you, what Grass doth make course Wooll
And what it is that breeds the Moth
Great learning is ‘ith art of Clothing
Though vulgar People think it nothing.
43
The experiments conducted by amateur scientists like Robert Boyle,
Sir Christopher Wren, Thomas Hooker, and Sir William Petty, and the
understanding of the laws of how the physical world operated generated
from their experiments, led to a significant increase in the ability of
British industry to modernize its methods of production. This break-
through made possible the industrial revolution.
44
This same need for an experiential basis for knowledge and for a
broadness of knowledge and honesty about problems was understood by
the researchers who worked on the ARPAnet. A similar attitude
nourished the birth and early development of the uucp network that was
born and grew up as the child of the UNIX community, Usenet News.
Putting one’s theories and models into a form actually tested and
revised based on the data received, has been the basis for the startling
developments in the field of computer communication and automation
which have made the global network possible.
U.S. government funding through the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) and the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that accompa-
nies U.S. government funding, helped to create an atmosphere encourag-
ing experimentation and innovation. The ARPAnet pioneers were free
from the limitations of commercial objectives and artificial time
pressures.
The obligation of the academic community to keep scientific work
open to the public and to avoid using their funds to support any
particular commercial interest, in a similar way, made it possible for
Usenet pioneers to create and develop a network that has made possible
the cooperative solving of technical and scientific problems.
45
The development of the ARPAnet and its evolution into the NSF
backbone of the Internet, and the creation and expansion of Usenet
News, are the harbinger of a significant new capacity of our society to
produce for the needs of its people. It is this potential capacity, which is
only beginning to be realized and is helping to change governments and
economic systems like those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Page 41
Union, that obstruct its fruition.
46
This capacity has been developed by
those free of market forces, by scientists and researchers, by computer
scientists working under academic conditions or government contracts,
and by student and amateur participants. The active cooperation of
people around the world is a force to continue to expand the participa-
tory nature of Usenet News and the global computer network, the
Internet, and to oppose efforts to commercialize and freeze these
developments. A cooperative culture has been created and has in turn
nurtured the growing Global Computer Communications Network that
has developed over the past 25 years. This cooperative networking
culture, this Net Commonwealth, portends to transform society as we
now know it.
Notes:
43. Taken from “In praise of the choice Company of Philosophers and Wits who meet
on Wednesdays weekly at Gresham College,” in “The Economic Writings of Sir
William Petty,” ed. Charles Henry Hull, vol II, Cambridge, 1899, p. 324.
44. See “Sir Francis Bacon and the Shorter Hours Bill,” The Amateur Computerist, vol.
5, no. 1-2.
45. See “Arte, Computers and Usenet News,” in “The Amateur Computerist,” vol. 4
Supplement, Fall ‘92.
46. See for example “The Information Technologies and East European Societies,” by
Gary L. Geipel, A. Tomatz Jarmoszko, and Seymour Goodman, in “East European
Politics and Society,” vol. 5, no. 3, p. 394-438.
Page 42
BOOK PROPOSAL
THE NET AS AN AGENT FOR CHANGE
On the History and Impact of the Global Computer
Network
The story of the creation and development of the Global Computer
Network, an achievement that is one of the great achievements of human
society, is a story as important as the reality of the Net itself. The story
of how the Net has been built is not only helpful in its own right, but it
is also needed to gain much needed perspective on the impact that this
development will have for human society in the upcoming new
Millennium. This book will tell the story of the building of the Net and
it will present some of the many experiences and observations of people
around the world about the impact that the Net is having on their lives.
Chapter Outline
Introduction and Preface
Chapter 1 – The Vision – Interactive Computing and Creating a
Supercommunity of Cooperative Online Communities
The early experience of interactive computing and of time-sharing
instead of batch processing led computer science pioneers to realize that
they were on the verge of the creation of an important new technology.
This chapter will describe the vision and the developments that gave
birth to the foundation on which the Global Computer Network was
built.
Chapter 2 – ARPA and the ARPAnet
This chapter will describe the process that made it possible to build
the Net. J. C. R. Licklider, whose vision of an intergalactic computer
network helped to inspire computer scientists and graduate students who
built the ARPAnet, convinced the U.S. Department of Defense to
support research to advance computer science technology. He and the
Page 43
subsequent directors of the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) made government support and funding available to academic
and research computer scientists to carry on the advanced computer
science research needed to build the ARPAnet.
Chapter 3 – The Network Working Group Solves the Problem of
Host to Host Protocols and Creates the basis for the Internet.
While the ARPA contractor BBN established a network of IMPs to
make a network possible, graduate students at sites with ARPA contracts
were charged with the task of making it possible for different computers
on the ARPAnet to communicate with each other. Creating a body of
common experience as part of the Network Working Group, and
common knowledge and discussion through the Requests For Comment
(RFC’s), the Network Working Group learned how to solve the Host to
Host protocol problem and the basis was set for the Internet.
Chapter 4 – Meanwhile UNIX is born
UNIX grew out of the collaboration of academic and industrial
researchers, sponsored by the U.S. government on the Multics project.
During the late 1960s, the increased demand on AT&T for telephone
service led to pressure to make its operations more efficient. During this
same time period, Bell Labs computer science researchers who had been
involved with research on operating systems and time-sharing with the
Multics project had their site withdrawn from the Project in 1969. In
order to have access to the advanced form of computing first provided
by CTSS and then Multics, Bell Labs researchers created their own
time-sharing system, which came to be known as UNIX, based on the
lessons they learned from the Multics collaboration. Then when AT&T
had to automate its switching and telephone support operations, UNIX
made it possible.
Chapter 5 – TCP is created and the Internet is Born
Building on the experiences of the Network Working Group (NWG)
and the body of technical knowledge it created, the problem of how to
build a network of networks was clarified. This chapter describes the
process by which Transport Control Protocol (TCP) was created and
Page 44
then how this made possible the Internet.
Chapter 6 – The Evolution of Usenet News – The Poor Man’s
ARPAnet
This chapter describes how Usenet News began and how it grew.
Using UNIX and UNIX tools, particularly uucp, which were released
with UNIX Edition 7 in the summer of 1979, graduate students at Duke
University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill designed
the Netnews software to make it possible for different UNIX sites to
create a communications network. From a small local uucp network
connecting the computers at their different sites, a global uucp network
grew up that surprised even the pioneers themselves. From its early
beginnings as an online community which provided needed online
support for the UNIX community, Usenet News continues to grow and
expand at an amazing rate today. This chapter will also describe the
participatory online community that Usenet News makes possible today.
Chapter 7 – UCB gives the world BSD and bundles TCP/IP with
it
The U.S. government realized that it needed to standardize its
computer operating systems and turned to the University of California
Berkeley to create a version of UNIX to do so. When it built TCP/IP into
the new Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) of UNIX, an important
step in making computer networking available to the world was made.
Chapter 8 – Other Nets Link Up
CSNet, BITNET, Fidonet, Freenet – these are some of the other
Nets that have developed as part of or alongside the Internet, but which
have helped to develop the Global Network that now exists. This chapter
describes some of the forces that helped these Nets develop and what
has happened with them.
Chapter 9 – Hello World! We’re all ears!
Who is out there? Comments from people around the world who are
connecting to the Net about what they see as the importance of the Net
and what they feel are the problems to continued network expansion.
Page 45
Chapter 10 – The Net and the Netizens
What does the Net mean to those who are on it? This chapter
describes experiences that Netizens have had and observations they have
offered in response to questions posted on the Net as to its impact for
those who are online. This chapter describes the importance of the Net
for an ever expanding set of people around the world.
Chapter 11 – The Soul of the Net: The Netizens and the coopera-
tive online Culture.
This chapter describes the cooperative culture that many have
observed is the “Soul of the Net.” Something very important has been
created online and it has helped to promote both a new vision of what is
possible and a new understanding of the challenge to our society that
these developments represent. A long standing aspect of Net culture is
the concern that the exploding growth of the Net can’t be sustained. This
has come to be known as “The Imminent Death of the Net is Predicted.”
Many are once again predicting “the imminent death of the net.” This
chapter explores how the Net survived and flourished thus far and
examines how and why the Net will continue to expand and flourish.
THE NET AND NETIZENS:
The Impact the Net has on
People’s Lives
by Michael Hauben
[Editor’s Note: The Preface to the following article appeared in the
Amateur Computerist Vol. 5 no. 3/4]
Introduction
The world of the Netizen was envisioned some twenty five years
ago by J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor in “The Computer as a
Page 46
Communication Device” (Science and Technology, April 1968).
Licklider brought to his leadership of the Department of Defense’s
ARPAnet a vision of “the intergalactic computer network.” Whenever
he would speak of ARPAnet, he would mention this vision. J. C. R.
Licklider was a prophet of the Net. In this paper, “The Computer as a
Communication Device”, that Licklider wrote with Robert Taylor, they
established several principles which would make the computer play a
helpful role in human communication. They clarified their definition of
communication as a creative process by writing: “But to communicate
is more than to send and to receive. Do two tape recorders communicate
when they play to each other and record from each other? Not really –
not in our sense. We believe that communicators have to do something
non-trivial with the information they send and receive. And to interact
with the richness of living information – not merely in the passive way
that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as
active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it
through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving from it by our
connection to it…. We want to emphasize something beyond its
one-way transfer: the increasing significance of the jointly constructive,
the mutually reinforcing aspect of communication – the part that
transcends ‘now we both know a fact that only one of us knew before.’
When minds interact, new ideas emerge. We want to talk about the
creative aspect of communication.”
Licklider and Taylor defined four principles for computers to make
a contribution towards human communication. They are:
1) Communication is defined as an interactive creative process.
2) Response times need to be short to make the “conversation” free
and easy.
3) Larger networks would form out of smaller regional networks.
4) Communities would form out of affinity and common interests.
In this paper I will explore the uses Netizens have discovered for the
Net. Licklider’s and Taylor’s understandings from their 1968 paper have
stood the test of time, and do represent the Net today. In a later paper
Licklider co-wrote with Albert Vezza, “Applications of Information
Networks” (Proceedings of IEEE, Vol. 66, No. 11, Nov. 1978), they
explore the possible business applications of information networks.
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Licklider and Vezza’s survey of business applications in 1978 come
short of the possibilities Licklider and Taylor outlined in their 1968
paper, and represent but a tiny fraction of the resources the Net currently
embodies.
In the 1968 paper, Licklider and Taylor focused on the Net being
comprising of a network of networks. While other researchers of the
time focused on the sharing of computing resources, Licklider and
Taylor kept an open mind and wrote: “…The collection of people,
hardware, and software – the multi-access computer together with its
local community of users – will become a node in a geographically
distributed computer network. Let us assume for a moment that such a
network has been formed…. Through the network of message proces-
sors, therefore, all the large computers can communicate with one
another. And through them, all the members of the super community can
communicate – with other people, with programs, with data, or with a
selected combinations of those resources.”
32
Their concept of the sharing of both computing and human
resources together matches the modern Net. The networking of various
human connections quickly forms, changes its goals, disbands and
reforms into new collaborations. The fluidity of such group dynamics
leads to a quickening of the creation of new ideas. Groups can form to
discuss an idea, focus in or broaden out and reform to fit the new ideas
that have been worked out.
Netnews, irc, mailing lists and mud/mush/moo/m** (various of the
available discussion tools on the Net) are extremely dynamic. Most can
be formed immediately for either short or long term use. As interests or
events form, discussion groups can be created. (e.g., 9NOV89-L about
Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Unification.)
The virtual space created on (non-commercial) computer networks
is accessible universally. This space is accessible from the connections
that exist, whereas social networks in the physical world generally are
connected by limited gateways. So the capability of networking on
computer nets overcomes limitations inherent in non-computer social
networks. This is important because it reduces the problems of popula-
tion growth. Population growth now does not mean limited resources
any more – rather that very growth of population now means an
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improvement of resources. Thus growth of population can be seen as a
positive asset. This is a new way of looking at people in capitalist
society. Every new person can mean a new set of perspectives and
specialities to add to the wealth of knowledge of the world. This new
view of people could help improve the view of the future. The old model
looks down on population growth and people as a strain on the environ-
ment rather than the increase of intellectual contribution these individu-
als can make. However, access to the Net needs to be universal for the
Net to fully utilize the contribution each person can represent. Once
access is limited – the Net and those on the Net lose the possible
advantages the Net can offer. Lastly the people on the Net need to be
active in order to bring about the best possible use of the Network.
Licklider foresaw that the Net allows for people of common
interests, who are otherwise strangers, to communicate. Much of the
magic of the Net is the ability to make a contribution of your ideas, and
then be connected to utter strangers. He saw that people would connect
to others via this Net in ways that had been much harder in the past.
Licklider observed as the ARPAnet spanned two continents. This
physical connection allowed for wider social collaborations to form.
This was the beginning of computer data networks facilitating connec-
tions of people around the world.
The Net is alive because of its use by ordinary people. Pioneering
research is happening, but the meat of the Net experience is the normal
everyday use of the Net. Thus I have included many of the responses to
my research in this paper. In response to another survey of Net uses,
Steve Cavrak recently wrote the following to the COMMUNET mailing
list: “The Internet is NOT a place of ‘innovative stories.’ Rather it is a
place of impressively common, every day electronic activity. It is not a
hot bed of dangerous, high-tech, experimentation, it is a place where
pretty much ordinary people do their day to day work.”
My research on and about the Net was very exciting for me. When
I posted my inquiries, I usually received the first reply within a couple
of hours. The feeling of receiving that very first reply from a total
stranger is always exhilarating! That set of first replies from people
reminds me of the magic of E-Mail. It is nice that there can be reminders
of how exciting it all is – so that the value does not become lost in the
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shuffle.
What follows is a collection and presentation of but a little of the
wonderful data that I received in the process of my research utilizing the
Net.
A. CRITICAL MASS
The collection of individuals add to the interests and specialties of
the whole. Most people can now gain something from the Net, while at
the same time helping it out. A critical mass has developed on the net.
Enough people exist that the whole is now greater than any one
individual and thus makes it worthwhile to be part of it. People are
meshing intellects and knowledge to form new ideas. As Larry Press
said: “I now work on the Net at least 2 hours per day. I’ve had an
account since around 1975 but it has only become super important in the
last couple of years because a critical mass of membership was reached.
I no longer work in LA, but in cyberspace.”
Many technical people on the Net think only “their type” currently
inhabit the Net. Many different kinds of people are now connected to the
Net. Even the original users of the Net (then several unconnected
test-beds of network research) were not only from exclusively technical
and scientific communities. Previously, the nets were only available in
a few parts the world. Now however, people of all ages, from most parts
of the globe, and of many professions make up the net.
From: Michael J. MacDonald
“One of the advantages that benefitted a close friend of mine was
the immediate access to hundreds of people amateur and professional….
Her [health] prospects are much better than before the week of network
monitoring.”
The original prototype networks (e.g., ARPAnet in the USA, NPL
in the United Kingdom, CYCLADES in France and other networks
around the world) developed the necessary physical infrastructure for a
fertile social network to develop. As Einar Stefferud wrote,
“The ARPAnet has produced several monumental results. First, it
provided the physical and electrical communications backbone for
development of the latent social infrastructure we now call ‘THE
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INTERNET COMMUNITY.’” (ConneXions, Oct. 1989 vol 3 No. 10. p.
21)
Many different kinds of people comprise the Net. The university
community sponsors access for a broad range of people (students,
professors, staff, professor emeritus, etc.) Many businesses are also
connected. A K-12 Net exists within the lower grades of education
which invite younger people to be a part of our community. Special
bulletin board software (e.g., Waffle) exists to connect personal
computer users to the Net. Various UNIX bulletin board systems exist
to connect other users. It is virtually impossible to tell what kinds of
people connect to public bulletin board systems, as only a computer (or
terminal) and modem are the prerequisites to connect. Many if not all
Fidonet BBS’s (a very common BBS type) have at least e-mail and
many also participate through a gateway to Netnews. Prototype
community network systems are forming around the world (e.g.,
Cleveland Freenet, Wellington Citynet, Santa Monica Public Electronic
Network (PEN), Berkeley, Singapore) Access via these community
systems can be as easy as visiting the community library and member-
ship is open to all who live in the community.
In addition to the living body of resources this diversity of Netizens
represents, there is also a continuity growing body of digitized data that
forms another body of resources. Whether it is Netizens digitizing great
literature of the past (e.g.: the Gutenberg Project), or it is people
gathering otherwise obscure or non-mainstream material (e.g., various
Religions, unusual hobbies, gay lifestyle, fringe.), or if it is Netizens
contributing new and original material (e.g., The Amateur Computerist
newsletter), the Net follows in the great tradition of other public
bottom-up institutions, such as the public library or the principle behind
public education. The Net shares with these institutions that they serve
the general populace. This data is just part of the treasure. Often living
Netizens provide pointers to this digitized store of publicity available
information. Many of the network access tools have been programmed
with the principle of being available to everyone. The best example is
the method of connecting to file repositories via ftp (file transfer
protocol) by logging in as “anonymous.” Most (if not all) WAIS (Wide
Area Information Systems), and gopher sites are open for all users of the
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Net. It is true that the current membership of the Net Community is
smaller than it will be, but the Net has reached a point of general
usefulness no matter who you are.
All of this is exactly why the Net can not be allowed to be taken
over by commercial entities. Once the commercial interests gain control,
the Net will be perverted so as to make it no longer powerful for the
ordinary person. Commercial interests vary from those of the common
person. They attempt to take profit from any available way. Thus, the
Netiquette of being helpful will soon have a price tag attached if com-
mercial interests are allowed to gain control of distribution and ways of
access. Adam Smith writes about the difference in interests between the
common person and the business owner in The Wealth of Nations. Smith
speaks about manufacturers when he writes: “It comes from an order of
men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public,
who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public,
and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and
oppressed it.” (Modern Library Edition., p. 250)
The Net has only developed because of the hard work and voluntary
dedication of many people. It has grown because the Net is in the control
and power of the people at a bottom-level, and because these people
developed it. People’s posts and contributions to the Net have been the
developing forces. [See “The Social Forces Behind the Development of
Usenet News,” The Amateur Computerist, Volume 4, Issue 4/5]
B. GRASS ROOTS:
The Net brings people together. People put into connection with
other people can be powerful. There is power in numbers. The Net
allows an individual to realize his power. The Net, uncontrolled by
commercial entities, becomes the gathering, discussion and planning
center for many people.
The combined efforts of people interested in communication has led
to the development and expansion of the global communications system.
Ithiel de Sola Pool in Technologies Without Boundaries wrote: “The
system becomes part of the largest machine that man has ever con-
structed – the global telecommunications network. The full map of it no
one knows; it changes every day.” (Cambridge, 1990, p. 56)
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What’s on the Net? Well – Usenet News, Freenet, e-mail, Libraries,
ftp sites, free software, electronic newsletters and journals, Multi-User
Domain/Dungeon (mud)/mush/moo, internet relay chat (irc) and various
kinds of data banks. Different servers, like WAIS and Gophers attempt
to order and make utilizing the vast varieties and wide spread informa-
tion easier. There exist both public and private services and sources of
information. The public and free services often come about through the
voluntary efforts of one or a few people. These technologies allow a
person to help make the world a better place by making his unique
contribution available to the rest of the world. People who have been
overlooked or have felt unable to contribute to the world, now can. Also,
these networks allow much more open and public interaction over a
much larger body of people than available before. The common people
have a unique voice – which is now being aired in a new way.
The emphasis is that this new machine introduces every single
person as someone special and in possession of a useful resource.
“Simple – by access to a vast amount of information and an
enormous number of brains!” Brian May
“For a geographically sparse group as it is, MU* allows people to
get to know one another, the relevant newsgroup gives a sense that
there’s a community out there and things are happening, and an
associated ftp site allows art and writing to be distributed.” Simon
Raboczi
“In summary, nets have helped enormously in the dissemination of
information from people knowledgeable in certain areas which would be
difficult to obtain otherwise.” Brent Edwards
“I get to communicate rapidly and cheaply with zillions of people
around the world.” Rosemary Warren
The following examples help to show how this is possible.
People are normally unprotected from the profit desires of large
companies. Steven Alexander from California is using the Net to try to
limit the power of otherwise money-hungry oil companies. This is an
example of the power of connecting people to uphold what is fair and in
the best interest of the common person in this society:
From: Steven Alexander
“I have started compiling and distributing (on the newsgroup
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ca.driving) a list of gas prices at particular stations in California to
which many people will contribute and keep up to date, and which, I
hope, will allow consumers to counteract what many of us suspect is the
collusive (or in any case, price-gouging) behavior of the oil companies.”
Someone else from Germany also reported using the Net to
muckrake. He writes: “A company saying they were an e.V. – which
means that they do not make profit but do it all for the public
(eingetragener Verein). They did not give their phone number, but their
address.
They offered a mailbox-account including service for 70,00 DM and
said they would like to connect you to others – it was clearly aimed at
people who do not know anything about the existing networks, thinking
this was something new.
Asking publicly about this company resulted in the following:
Someone looked them up in the e.V. Register, where everyone must
be named before he can call himself e.V. (and pay less taxes), they did
not exist there.
And they did not exist in the IHK, where any company must be
named before they can claim to be one.
Someone else said that he had contact with the person who sent the
letter, only under another company-name, and that he simply ignored
this person since he looked like a swindler.
So they are swindlers, and people from the Net proved it to us, we
then of course did not engage with them at all.
Worst part is – they look like they might be a sub-organization of
***********, which were recently discovered to try infiltrating public
institutions by writing software for them containing backdoors for their
informal organizations…”
The Net has proved its importance in other contemporary critical
situations. As the only available line of communications, the Net helped
defeat the attempted coup in the ex-Soviet Union in 1990. The members
of the coup either did not know about or understand what RELCOM
was, or the connections proved resilient enough for info about the coup
to slip around the inside and out of the country in time to inform the
world and encourage resistance to the coup. (See comp.risks article by
Larry Press from 6 Sep. 91)
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The Net has also proved its value in providing a useful medium for
students to use. Students participating in the Chinese Pro-Democracy
movement have kept in touch with others around the world via their
fragile connection to the Net. The Net provided an easy way of evading
government censors to get news around the world about events in China
and to receive back encouraging feedback. Such feedback is vital
support to keep the fight on when it seems impossible or seems wrong
to do so. Students in France used the French Minitel system to organize
a successful fight against attempted tuition raises by the French
government.
The information flow on the Net is controlled by those who use the
Net. People actively provide the information that they personally and
other people want. This control is much more active than what is
provided by other forms of mass media. Television, radio, magazines are
all driven by who owns them and who writes for them. The Net gives
people a media they can control. This control of information is a great
power that has not been available before to the common everyday
person. Declan McCreesh explains this by talking about access to the
most up to date information.
From: Declan McCreesh
“You get the most up to date info. that people around the world can
get their hands on, which is great. For instance, the media report who
wins a Grand Prix, what happened and not a great deal more. On the net,
however, you can get top speeds, latest car and technology develop-
ments, latest rumors, major debates as to whether Formula 1 or Indy cars
are better etc.”
The Net helps to make the information available more accurate
because of the many-to-many or broadcast and read and write capability.
That new capability (which is not normally very prevalent in our
society) allows an actual participant or observer to report something.
This capability gives the power of journalism or the reporter to
individuals. This new medium allows the source to report. This is true
because the medium allows everyone online to make a contribution
while the old media control who reports and what they say. The
possibility of eyewitness accounts can make the information more
accurate. Also this opens up the possibility for a grassroots network.
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Information is passed from person to person around the world. Thus a
German citizen learned about the Chernobyl explosion from the Net
before the German government decided to release it to the public via the
media. The connection is people to people rather than governments to
governments. Citizen Journalists can now distribute to more than those
they know personally. The distribution of the writings of ordinary people
is the second step after the advent of the inexpensive personal computer
in the early 1980s. The personal computer and printer allowed anyone
to produce mass quantities of documents. Personal publishing is now
joined by personal wide-distribution.
Not only is there grass-roots reporting, but the assumption that
filtering is necessary has been challenged. People can learn to sort
through the various opinions themselves. Steve Welch disagreed with
my first point, but agrees with discriminatory reading skills.
“When you get more information from diverse sources, you don’t
always…get more accurate information. However, you do develop skills
in discerning ‘accurate information’… Or rather, you do if you want to
come out of the infoglut jungle alive.”
Governments who rule based on control of information have been
and will be undermined from the bottom up, if they have not already and
will succumb to the tides of democracy. As Dr. Sun Yat-Sen of the
Chinese Democracy Movement once said, “The worldwide democratic
trend is mighty. Those who submit to it will prosper and those who resist
it will perish.” The Net reintroduces the basic idea of democracy as
people power to Netizens. Governments can no longer easily keep
information from their people.
Many groups which do not have a strong established form of
communications in society have found the Net to be a powerful tool. It
has proved a fertile ground for groups which are not firmly established
in their local culture. For example, for people far away from their
homeland, the Net provides a new link.
From: Con Hennessy
“One use of e-mail is to send a weekly Irish news letter to those
interested with e-mail addresses. This letter is to keep those Irish (and
others) up to date with what has been in the news in Ireland for the last
7 days. The amount is usually around 40K and it is sent to over 1,500
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addresses, with some of these addresses forwarding and faxing further
so that the estimate of final recipients is 10,000.”
From: Godfrey Nolan
“The Net has immeasurably increased the quality of my life. I am
Irish, but I have been living in England for the past five years. It is a lot
more difficult to get information about Ireland than you would expect.
However a man called Liam Ferrie who works in Digital in Galway,
compiles a newspaper on the weeks events in Ireland and so I can now
easily keep abreast of most developments in Irish current affairs, which
helps me feel like I’m losing touch when I go home about twice a year.
It is also transmitted to about 2000 Irish people all over the first and
third worlds.”
From: Madhur K. Limdi
“I read your above posting and wanted to share my experience with
you. I have been a frequent reader of news in Usenet groups!! Such as
soc.culture.indian, misc.news.southasia and both of these keep me
reasonably informed about the happenings in my home country India.”
For example in the United States, the Net has been proven as stable
communications for people of various religious and sexual persuasion
(homosexual people, Buddhists, Universalists, etc.).
From: Carole E. Mah
“For me and many of my friends, the Net is our main form of
communication. Almost every aspect of interpersonal communication
on the network has a gay/lesbian/bi aspect to it that forms a tight and
intimate acquaintanceship which sometimes even boils over into
arguments and enmities. This network of connections, friends, enemies,
lovers, etc. facilitates political goals that would not otherwise be
possible (organizing letter-writing campaigns about the Gays in the
Military Ban via the ACT-UP list, being able to send e-mail directly to
the White House, finding out about activism, bashing, etc. in other states
and around the world, etc.).”
From: Greg “Wolves” Woodbury
“ We will be going to a march on Washington and are coordinating
our plans and travel with a large number of other folks around the
country via e-mail and conversations on Usenet.”
From: Jann VanOver
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“I’m a member of a Buddhist organization and just found a man in
Berkeley who keeps a Mailing List that sends daily guidance and
discussions for this group. So I get a little religious boost when I log on
each day.”
Many other communities have also found the Net to be a excellent
medium to help increase communications:
From: Rob Dean
“As a member of the science fiction community, I’ve met quite a
few people on the net, and then in person.”
C. COMMUNICATION WITH NEW PEOPLE
In many of the Netizens’ lives the Net has alleviated feelings of
loneliness which seem extremely too prevalent in today’s society. The
Net’s ability to help people network both socially and intellectually
makes the Net valuable and unreplaceable in people’s lives. This is
forming a group of people who want to keep the Net accessible and
open.
The Net brings together people from diverse walks of life, and
makes it easier for these people to communicate. It brings them all
together into the same virtual space and removes the impact or influence
of first impressions.
Malcolm Humes writes, “I’m in awe of the power and energy
linking thousands into a virtual intellectual coffee-house, where
strangers can connect without the formalities of face to face rituals
(hello, how are you today…) to allow a direct-connect style of commun-
ication that seems to transcend the ‘how’s the weather’ kind of conversa-
tion to just let us connect without the bulls---.”
Strangers are no longer strange on the Net. People are freed to
communicate without limits, fears or apprehension. As people new to
the Net find out quickly, there is a rather generous atmosphere that
thrives on the Net. People are happy to help others, and eventually get
help in return.
From: Jean-Francois Messier
“My use of the Net is to get in touch with more people around the
world. I don’t know for what, when, how, but that’s important for me.
Not that I’m in a small town, far from everybody, but that I want to be
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able to establish links with others. In fact, because of those nets I use, I
would !NOT! want to go to a small town, just because the phone calls
would be too expensive. I’ve to say that I’m not an expressive people.
I’m not a great talker, nor somebody who could make shows…. I’m
more an ‘introvert’….”
But yet Jean-Francois has made contact with me. This is an example
of the social power of the net.
From: Laura Goodin
“Last summer I was traveling to Denver and I used a listserv
mailing list to find out whether a particular running group I run with had
a branch there. They did, and I had a wonderful time meeting people
with a common interest (and drinking beer with them); I was no longer
a stranger.”
D. BROADENED AND WORLDLY PROSPECTIVE:
Easy connection to people and ideas from around the world has a
powerful effect. Awareness that we are just member of the human
species that spans the entire globe changes a persons point of view. It is
a broadening perspective. It is very easy for people to assume a limited
point of view if they are only exposed to certain ideas. The Net brings
the isolated individual into contact with people, opinions, and views
from the rest of the world. Exposure to many possible opinions gives the
reader a chance to actually think something over before making a
decision as to a personal opinion. Having access to the “Marketplace of
Ideas” allows a person to make a reasoned judgement of something.
Both James Mill and Flint auto workers involved with their local union
newspaper believed in this principle. (see “The Computer as
Democratizer”, The Amateur Computerist, Fall 1992, Vol. 4 No. 5 and
“The Story of the Searchlight,” Flint, Michigan, 1987.)
For example, from: Jean-Francois Messier
“Since that, my attitudes to other peoples, races and religions
changed, since I had more chances to talk with other peoples around the
world. When first exchanging mail with people from Yellowknife,
Yukon, I had a real strange feeling: Getting messages and chatting with
people that far from me. I noticed around me that a lot of people have
opinions and positions about politics that are for themselves, without
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knowing others.
Because I have a much broader view of the world now, I changed
and am more conciliatory and peaceful with other people. Writing to
someone you never saw, changes the way you write, also, the instancy
of the transmission makes the conversation much more ‘live’ than
waiting for the damn slow paper mail.
Telecommunications opened the world to me and changed my
visions of people and countries….”
From: Anthony Berno
“I could not begin to tell you how different my life would be
without the Net. My life would be short about a dozen people, some of
them central, I would be wallowing in ignorance on several significant
subjects, and my mind would be lacking many broadening and enlight-
ening influences.”
From: Henry Choy
“More things to look at. Increased perspective on life. The computer
network brings people closer together, and permits them to speak at will
to a large audience. I recommend that the telecommunications and
computer industry make large scale computer networking accessible to
the general public. It’s like making places accessible to the handicapped.
People brought closer together will release some existing social tensions.
People need to be heard, and they need to hear.”
From: Paul Ready
“You don’t have to go to another country to meet people from there.
It is not the same as personally knowing them, but I always pay special
attention to information from people outside the States. They are likely
to have a different perspective on things.”
From: Leandra Dean
“I love to study people, and the Net has been the best possible
resource to this end. The Net is truly a window to the world, and without
it we could only hope to physically meet virtually thousands of people
every day to gain the same insights. I shudder to think about how
different and closed in my life would be without the Net.”
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E. MATERIAL CHANGES TO PEOPLE’S LIVES AND
LIFESTYLES.
We live in the physical real world material space. The Net forms a
virtual space of information. The connections, interfaces or collabora-
tions between these two worlds form an interesting area of study.
Netizens attest to the power of the Net by explaining the effect the Net
has had on their lives. Because of the information available and the new
connections possible, people have both changed the way they live their
lives and material possessions they have. There are examples of both
changes in the material possessions and changes in lifestyle. The
changes to lifestyle are probably the more profound changes, but the
new connections made possible are important. Often the material gains
are not financial, but rather the redistribution of worthwhile goods that
might have lost personal value but circulate among others who it would
be worthwhile for.
From: William Carroll
“Primarily because of the information and support from rec.bikes,
three years ago I gave up driving to work and started riding my bike. Its
one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
A Response I received via E-Mail:
“When I started using ForumNet (a chat program similar to irc, but
smaller – [Now called icb]) back in January 1990, I was fairly shy and
insecure…I had a few close friends but was slow at making new ones.
Within a few weeks, on ForumNet, I found myself able to be open,
articulate, and well-liked in this virtual environment. Soon, this
discovery began to affect my behavior in “real” face-to-face interaction.
I met some of my computer friends in person and they made me feel so
good about myself, like I really could be myself and converse and be
liked and wanted.
Of course, computer-mediated social interaction is not properly a
crutch to substitute for face-to-face encounters, but the ability to
converse via keyboard and modem with real people at the other end of
the line has translated into the real-life ability for me to reach out to
people without the mediating use of a computer. My life has improved.
I wouldn’t trade my experience with the Net for anything.”
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From: Jack Frisch
“ I must begin my comments on the Internet with one simple yet
significant statement: the availability and use of the Internet is changing
my life profoundly.”
From: Carole E. Mah
“ I also used to facilitate a vegetarian list, which radically altered
many people’s lives, offering them access to mail-order foods, recipes,
and friendship via net-contact with people who live in areas where non
meat alternatives are readily available.”
From: Charles Bandes
“I’ve spent three of my four years here at the Rhode Island School
of Design actively hooked into the net, and I’ve got to say that it’s been
of great influence to me. I’ve met a number of correspondents with
whom I’ve swapped art and ideas, as well as finding muds and mushes,
where I was able to test out my ideas on vast quantities of people. The
ability to access information instantly has changed my outlook on art to
a certain degree, I’ve become very interested in networked art,
e-mail-art, hypertext, multimedia, and mail art in general, and the Net is
at least partially to thank for it. I have swapped snail mail mail-art as
well as digital images across the country with artists I met online, as
well as collaborating on written projects via the net.”
From: Jann VanOver
“ Well, the first thing I thought of is purchases I’ve made through
the Net which have “changed my life” I drove my Subaru Station wagon
until last fall when I acquired a VW Camper van that I saw on a local
Net ad. I wasn’t looking for a van, wasn’t even shopping for another
vehicle, but the second time this ad scrolled by me, I looked into it and
eventually bought it. I will certainly say that driving a 23 year old VW
camper van has changed my life! I thought I would be ridiculed, but
have found that people have a lot of respect and admiration for this car!
Through the Net, I heard that Roger Waters was going to perform
“The Wall” again, an event I had promised myself not to miss, so I made
a trip to Berlin (East and West) in 1990 to see this concert. This was
CERTAINLY a life changing event, seeing Berlin less than one week
after the roads were open with no checkpoints required. I don’t think I
would have known about it soon enough if not for the Net.”
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From: Rob Dean
“As for me, my main hobby is and was playing wargames and
role-playing games. Net access has allowed me to discuss these games
with players across the world, picking up new ideas, and gathering opin-
ions on new games before spending money on them. In addition, I’ve
been able to buy and sell games via Net connections, allowing me to
adjust my collection of games to meet my current interests, and get
games that I no longer wanted to people who do want them, whether
they live down the road from me in Maryland, or in Canada, Austria,
Finland, Germany or Israel.
I have also taken an Esperanto course via e-mail, and correspond
irregularly in Esperanto with interested parties world wide.”
From: Caryn K. Roberts
“Usenet & Internet (what I think you meant by “Net”) are available
to me at work and by dialup connection to work from home. I have been
materially enriched by the use of the Net. I have managed to sell items
I no longer needed. I have been able to purchase items from others for
good prices. I have saved money and am doing my part to recycle
technology instead of adding burdens to the municipal waste disposal
service.
Using the Net I have also been enriched by discussions and
information found in numerous newsgroups from sci.med to sci.skeptic
to many of the comp.* groups. I have offered advice to solve problems
and have been able to solve problems I had by using information in these
forums.”
F. THE NET AS A SOURCE OF ENORMOUS RE-
SOURCES:
Before the Net was known as an enormous social network, it was
developed to provide a sharing of resources. Many people originally
joined in order to take advantage of those information resources they had
heard about. The following are some examples of ways Netizens utilize
the information resources available on the Net.
From: Tim North
“I’m faculty here at…University and I use the Net as a major source
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of technical information for my lectures, up-to-date product information,
and informed opinion. As such I find that I am constantly better
informed than the people around me. (That sounds vain, but it’s not
meant to be. It’s simply meant to emphasize how strongly I feel that the
Net is a superb information resource.)”
From: R.J. White
“I used the Net to find parts for my 1971 Opel GT. I was living in
North America at the time, and going through the normal channels, like
GM, are no good. The Net was like an untapped resource.”
From: John Harper
“Uses of the network (1) I once asked a question about an obscure
point in history of math. on the sci .math newsgroup and got a useful
answer from Exeter, UK. Beforehand I had no idea where anyone
knowing the answer might be. I had drawn a blank in Oxford. (2) I asked
a question about a slightly less obscure point on comp.lang.fortran
which generated a long (and helpful) discussion on the Net for a week
or two.”
From: Paul Ready
“Yes, it is a worldwide rapid distribution center of information, on
topics both popular and obscure. It may not make the information more
valuable, but it certainly increases the information, and the propagation
of information. To those connected, it is a valuable resource. Flame wars
aside, a lot of generally inaccessible information is readily available.”
From: Lee Rothstein
“Usenet and mailing lists create a group of people who are moti-
vated and capable of talking about a specific topic. The software allows
deeply contextual conversations to occur with a minimum of rehash. As
experience develops with the medium, each user realizes that the other
that he talks to or will talk to generally help him/her, and can do him/her
no harm because of the remoteness imposed by the cable.”
From: Lu Ann Johnson
“Hi! Usenet came to my rescue – I’m a librarian and was working
with a group of students on a marketing project. They were marketing
a make-believe product – a compact disc of “music hits of the 70's”.
They needed a source to tell them how much it cost to produce a CD –
without mastering, etc. I exhausted all my print resources so I posted the
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question in a business newsgroup. Within hours I learned from several
companies that it cost about $1.50 to produce a CD :) The students were
very grateful to get the information.”
From: Laura Goodin
“I teach self-defense, and just yesterday in rec .martial-art someone
posted information about a study on the effectiveness of Mace for
self-defense that I had been looking for for years.”
From: Cliff Roberts
“I have been using Internet through a program in New Jersey to
bring the fields of Science and Math to grammar school children grades
K-8.
We have implemented a system where the class rooms are equipped
with PC’s and are able to dial in to a UNIX system. There they can send
e-mail and post questions to a KidsQuest ID. The ID then routes the
questions to volunteers with accounts on UNIX. The scientists then
answer or give advice of where to find the information they want.
Another well accepted feature is to list out the soc.penpals list and
e-mail people in different countries that are being studied in the
schools.”
From: Joe Farrenkopf
“I think Usenet is a very interesting thing. For me, it’s mostly just
a way to pass (waste :-) time when bored. However, I have gotten some
very useful things from it. There is one group in particular called comp
.lang.fortran, and on several occasions when I’ve had a problem writing
a program, I was able to post to this group to get some help to find out
what I was doing wrong. In these cases, it was an invaluable resource.”
G. COLLECTIVE WORK
As new connections are made between people more ideas travel
over greater distances. This allows either like-minded people or
complementary people to come in touch with each other. The varied
resources of the networks allow these same people to keep in touch even
if they wouldn’t have been able to be in touch before. Electronic Mail
allows enough detail to be contained in a message that most if not all
communications can take place entirely electronically. This medium
allows for new forms of collaborative work to form and thrive. New
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forms of research will probably arise from such possibilities. Here are
some examples:
From: Wayne Hathaway
“One ‘unusual’ use I made of the Net happened in 1977. (Yep, it
existed and had most of the e-mail infrastructure in place by then.)
Along with five other ‘Net Folks’ I wrote the following paper: ‘The
ARPAnet TELNET Protocol: Its Purpose, Principles, Implementation,
and Impact on Host Operating System Design,’ with Davidson, Postel,
Mimno, Thomas, and Walden: Fifth Data Communications Symposium,
Snowbird, UT; September 27-29, 1977.
What’s so unusual about a collaborative paper, you ask? Simply that
the six of us never even made a TELEPHONE call about the paper,
much less had a meeting or anything. Literally EVERYTHING — from
the first ideas in a ‘broadcast’ mail to the distribution of the final
‘troff-ready’ version — was done with e-mail.
These days this might not be such a deal, but it was interesting back
then.”
From: Paul Gillingwater
“About the most interesting thing here in Vienna was an on-line
computer mediated art forum earlier this month, with video conferencing
between two cities, plus an on-line discussion in a virtual MUD-type
conference later that evening.”
A Response I received via e-mail:
“In response to your question about having fun on the net, and being
creative, one incident comes to mind. I had met a woman on ForumNet
(a system like IRC). She and I talked and talked about all sorts of things.
One night, we felt especially artistic. We co-wrote a poem over the
computer. I’d type a few words, she’d pick up where I left off (in the
middle of sentences or wherever) and on and on. I don’t think we had
any idea what it was going to be in the end, thematically or structurally.
In the end, we had a very good poem, one that I would try to publish
if I knew her whereabouts anymore…”
H. IMPROVING QUALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Information flow can take various shapes. The strangest and perhaps
most interesting one is how emotion can be attached to information
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flow. They often seem like two very different things. I received a large
number of responses that reported real-life marriages arising from Net
meetings. The Net facilitates the meeting of people of like interests The
newness of the Net means we can not fully understand it as of yet.
From: Caryn K. Roberts
“I have found friends on the Net. A lover. And two of the friends I
met, also met online and got married. I attended the wedding (in
California).”
From: Scott Kitchen
“I think I can add something for your paper. I met my fiancee 4
years ago over the net. I was at Ohio State, and she was in Princeton, and
we started talking about an article of hers I’d read in rec.games.frp. We
got to talking, eventually met, found we liked each other, and the rest is
history. We’ll be marrying soon. Scott Kitchen (e-mail) Jennifer Doyle
(e-mail)”
From: jj
“Well, I met my spouse by having an argument with her about how
to make pie crust in net.cooks. recipes (this was a while ago, needless to
say).”
From: Greg “Wolves” Woodbury
“I met the woman who became my wife when I started talking to the
folks at “phs” (the third site of the original Usenet) during the develop-
ment of NetNews. I would not have been wandering around that area if
I hadn’t been interested in the development of the net.”
From: Laura Goodin
“And now, the BEST story: about eight months ago I was browsing
soc.culture.australia and I noticed a message from an Australian
composer studying in the US about an alternative tune to “Waltzing
Matilda.” I was curious, so I responded in e-mail, requesting the tune
and just sort of shooting the breeze. We began an e-mail correspondence
that soon incorporated voice calls as well. One thing led inexorably to
another and we fell in love (before we met face to face, actually). We
did eventually meet face to face. Last month he proposed over the
Internet (in soc.culture.australia) and I accepted. Congratulatory
messages came in from all over the United States, Australia, and New
Zealand. Houston (that’s his name) and I keep our phone bills from
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resembling the national debt by sending 10 or 12 e-mails a day (we’re
well over 1400 for eight months now), and chatting using IRC. A
long-distance relationship is hellish, but the pain is eased somewhat by
the Internet.”
From: Chuq Von Rospach
“(oh, and in the “how the Net made my non-net life better”
category, I met my wife via the net. Does that count?)”
I. WORK
The fluid connections and the rapidly changing nature of the
networks make the Net a welcome Media for job hunters and job
placers. The Networks have a large turnover of people who are looking
for jobs. The advertising is free and can be perpetuated as long as the job
is offered. E-mail allows for the quick and easy applications by sending
resumes in the e-mail. Companies can respond quickly and easy to such
submissions, also by e-mail.
Besides finding work, the Net helps people who are currently
working preform their job in the best manner. Many people utilize the
Net to assist them with their jobs. Several examples of both follow:
From: Laura Goodin
“My division successfully recruited a highly-qualified consultant (a
Finn living in Tasmania) to do some work for us; the initial announce-
ment was over Usenet; subsequent negotiations were through e-mail.”
From: jj
“I’ve hired people off the net, and from meeting them in muds,
when I find somebody who can THINK. People who can think are hard
to find anywhere.”
From: Diana Gregory
“I have learned to use UNIX, and as a result may be able to
keep/advance in my job due to the ‘net.”
From: Neil Galarneau
“It helps me do my job (MS Windows programming) and it helps
me learn new things (like C++).”
From: Kieran Clulow
“The Internet access provided me by the university has greatly
facilitated my ability to both use and program computers and this has
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had the direct result of improving my grades as well as gaining me a
good job in the computer field. Long live the Internet (and make it
possible for private citizens to get access!)”
From: Mark Gooley
“I got my job by answering a posting to a news-group.”
From: Anthony Berno
“I develop for NEXTSTEP, and the Net is very useful in getting
useful programming hints, info on product releases, rumors, etc.”
From: Greg “Wolves” Woodbury
“Due to contacts made via Usenet and e-mail, I got a job as a
consultant at BTL in 1981 after I lost my job at Duke. Part of the
qualifications that got me in the door was experience with Usenet.”
From: Carole E. Mah
“ Lastly, the network helped my best friend get a job, helped me
find an apartment one year.”
J. IMPROVED COMMUNICATIONS WITH FRIENDS
Another way of improving daily life is by making communications
with friends easier. The penning of a computer letter is making the art
of letter writing no longer a thing of the past. However, the immediacy
of e-mail means less care is made in the process of writing. E-mail, IRC
and netnews allows keeping in touch with friends outside one’s local
area much easier.
From: Carole E. Mah
“It also facilitates great friendships (most of my friends, even in my
own town, I met on the network. This can often alleviate feelings of
loneliness and “I’m the only one, I must be a pervert” feelings among
queer people just coming out of the closet – they have a whole world of
like-minded people to turn to – on Usenet, on BITNET lists, on IRC, in
personal e-mail, on BBSs and AOL type conferences, etc.”
From: Bill Walker
“I also have an old and dear friend (from high school) who lives in
the San Francisco area. After I moved to San Diego, we didn’t do very
well at keeping in touch. She and I talked on the phone a couple of times
a year. After we discovered we were both on the net, we started
corresponding via e-mail, and we now exchange mail several times a
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week. So, the Net has allowed me to keep in much closer touch with a
good friend. It’s nothing that couldn’t be done by phone, or snail mail,
but somehow we never got around to doing those things. E-mail is
quick, easy and fun enough that we don’t put it off.”
From: Anthony Berno
“Incidentally, it is also one of my primary modes of communication
with my sister (who lives in N.Z.) It’s more meditative than a phone call,
faster than a letter, and cheaper than either of them.”
From: Jann VanOver
“Apart from purchases, I have been contacted by:
1) a very good friend from college who I’d lost track of. SHE got
married to a man she met in a singles newsgroup (they’ve been married
2 years+)
2) someone who went to my high school, knew a lot of the same
people I did, but we didn’t know each other. We are now “mail buddies”
3) an old girlfriend of my brothers. They went out for eight years,
but I learned more about her from ONE e-mail letter than I had ever
learned when meeting her in person.”
From: Godfrey Nolan
“Above all it helps me keep in touch with friends who I would
inevitably lose otherwise. The Net helps those that move around for
economic reasons to lessen the worst aspects of leaving your friends in
the series of places that you once called home.
It’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
K. PROBLEMS
With all of the positive uses and advantages of the Net, it is still not
perfect. The blind-view of people on the Net seems to shield everyone,
but women. There is a relatively large male to female percentage
population on the Net. The women feel the effects of this difference.
Women who have easily identifiable user names or IDs are prone to be
the center of much attention. While that might be good in itself, much
of that attention can be of a hostile or negative nature. This attention
might be detrimental to women being active on the Net. Net harassment
can spread against other users too. People with unpopular ideas need to
be strong to withstand the outlash of abuse they might receive from
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others.
The worst non-people problem seems to be information overflow.
Information adds up very quickly and it can be hard to organize it all and
sort through. This problem should be able to be solved as the technology
is developed to handle what is now possible. As my last quote in this
section describes, users can be harassed by other users for whatever
purposes, and by the inactivity of the power structure to respond to such
problems. This is a problem that will be hard to deal with as it concerns
politics and power, but one of the most important.
From: Scott Hatton
“There is a problem with this brave new world in that a lot of people
don’t appreciate there’s another human being at the other keyboard.
Flaming is a real problem — especially in comp.misc. This is all a new
facet of the technology as well. People rarely trade insults in real life
like they do on Internet. There’s a tendency to stereotype your opponent
into categories. I think this is because you’re not around to witness the
results. I find this more on Internet newsgroups than on CompuServe. I
think this is down to maturity — a lot of folk on the Internet are students
who aren’t paying for their time on the system. Those on CompuServe
are normally slightly older, not so hot-headed and are paying for their
time. Damn. Now I’m at stereotyping now. It just goes to show…”
From: Joe Farrenkopf
“There is something else I’ve discovered that is really rather
fascinating. People can be incredibly rude when communicating through
this medium. For example, some time ago, I posted a question to lots of
different newsgroups, and many people felt my question was inappropri-
ate to their particular group. They wrote to me and told me so, using
amazingly nasty words. I guess it’s easier to be rude if you don’t have
to face a person, but can say whatever you want over a computer.”
From: Brad Kepley
“I get a little irritated with people always claiming someone else is
‘wasting bandwidth’ because they disagree with them. About half the
time it turns out that the person being told to shut up was right after all.
Then again, when you look at things like alt.binaries .pictures.erotica
and other ‘non-bandwidth-wasting’ activities, it seems almost comical
to me when someone says this. There is nothing more wasteful than 95%
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of what Usenet is used for. It’s a joke to say that a particular person is
‘wasting’ it. To say that they are off-topic makes more sense.
I guess this is just a gripe rather than what you are looking for.
Wasting bandwidth again. :)”
From: Patt Leonard
“In response to your request for examples of harassment on the net,
I would point you to some of the older (four months? five months?)
discussion on the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.soviet. To generalize
grossly, some of the male Russians and Russian emigres are really
savage toward women on the net, and willing to gleefully hound them
off with obscenities and hostile messages. There was an American
women (signed her name Patricia Schwartz, I think, though her mail
header said Margaret — or maybe I have that backwards) — there was
this American woman, staying in Moscow, posting her impressions of
the city, and some poetry, and whatever else she felt like. I didn’t care
for her poetry, but some of her observations were interesting. The
Russian men (not all of them — some of them defended her) were
merciless to her. She posted a note saying she had had a miscarriage, and
some man wrote back, saying he wished that she had bled to death. Their
harassment was not of me *directly*, but these messages created an
environment so hostile, that I am reluctant to post anything on that
group. It is a very male-dominated discussion, and that is due, in part, to
the fact that some men posting on it are so unrestrained in their misog-
yny.”
Conclusion
Despite the problems, for people of the world, the Net provides a
powerful way of peaceful assembly. Peaceful assembly allows people to
take control over their lives, rather than control being in the hands of
others. This power has to be honored and protected. Any medium or tool
that helps people to hold or gain power is something that is special and
has to be protected. (See “The Computer as Democratizer” in The
Amateur Computerist, Vol. 4 No. 5, Fall 1992)
The Net has made a valuable impact on human society. As my
research has demonstrated, people’s lives have been substantially
improved via their connection to the Net. This sets the basis for
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providing access to all in society. As J. C. R. Licklider and Robert
Taylor wrote: “For the society, the impact will be good or bad depending
mainly on the question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a privilege or a right? If
only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the
advantage of ‘intelligence amplification,’ the network may exaggerate
the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.”
40
Society will improve if Net access is made available to people as
a hole. Only if access is universal will the Net itself advance. The
ubiquitous connection is necessary for the Net to encompass all possible
resources. One Net visionary responded to my research by calling for
universal access. Steve Welch writes: “If we can get to the point where
anyone who gets out of high school alive has used computers to com-
municate on the Net or a reasonable facsimile or successor to it, then we
as a society will benefit in ways not currently understandable. When
access to information is as ubiquitous as access to the phone system, all
Hell will break loose. Bet on it.”
Steve is right, “all Hell will break loose” in the most positive of
ways imaginable. Thomas Paine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, those
responsible for the Bill of Rights and French Declaration of the Rights
of Man, and the all fighters for democracy would have been proud.
As Licklider predicted, the Net is fundamentally changing the way
people live and work. Summing up the important potential of the Net,
Paul Ready observed: “News and transfer of data are revolutionary in
their speed and the way they are done. It is likely to change the way
things are produced in the future just as other advances in communica-
tions in the past did: roads, printing presses, relayed “pony express”
mail, railroad, cars, airplanes, tv/radio, and the telephone have all
dramatically changed the way things were done, and computers already
are too.”
Bibliography
Hauben, Michael, “The Social Forces Behind the Development of Usenet News”,
The Amateur Computerist newsletter, Vol 5 No 1-2 Winter/Spring 1993.
Hauben, Michael, “The Computer as Democratizer”, Amateur Computerist, Vol.
Page 73
4 No. 5, Fall 1992.
Licklider, J. C. R. and Albert Vezza, “Applications of Information Systems”,
Proceedings of the IEEE, Nov 1978.
Licklider, J. C. R. and Robert Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication
Device” from “In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915-1990,” Aug. 7, 1990, p. 40;
reprinted by permission from Digital Research Center; originally published as “The
Computer as a Communication Device,” in Science and Technology, April, 1968, p. 40.
Personal Computing, October 1989, (Special Issue “Computing in America IV”),
“Fighting City Hall at 2400 Baud”, p. 170-172.
Quarterman, John, The Matrix, Digital Press, Bedford, Mass., 1990.
Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, London, 1776.
Stefferud, Einar, in “ConneXions”, Vol 3 No 10, October 1989, p. 21.
Proposed Declaration of the
Rights of Netizens
[Note: The following is a beginning effort to put together a Declaration
of the Rights of Netizens and a request for other Netizens contributions,
ideas, and suggestions of what rights should be included.]
In recognition that the Net represents a revolution in human
communications that was built by a cooperative non-commercial
process, the following Declaration of the Rights of the Netizen is
presented for Netizen comment.
As Netizens are those who take responsibility and care for the Net,
the following are proposed to be their rights:
* Universal access at no or low cost
* Freedom of Electronic Expression to promote the exchange of
knowledge without fear of reprisal
* Uncensored Expression
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* Access to Broad Distribution
* Universal and Equal access to knowledge and information
* Consideration of one’s ideas on their merits
* No limitation to access to read, to post and to otherwise contribute
* Equal quality of connection
* Equal time of connection
* No Official Spokesperson
* Uphold the public grassroots purpose and participation
* Volunteer Contribution – no personal profit from
the contribution freely given by others
* Protection of the public purpose from those who
would use it for their private and money making purposes
The Net is not a Privilege but a Right. It is only valuable when it is
collective and universal. Volunteer effort protects the intellectual and
technological commonwealth that is being created. DO NOT UNDER-
ESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE NET AND NETIZENS.
Inspiration from: RFC 3 (1969), Thomas Paine, Declaration of
Independence (1776), Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen (1789), NSF Acceptable Use Policy, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and
the current cry for Democracy worldwide.
“…what’s past is prologue; what to come, in yours and my discharge.”
William Shakespeare
The opinions expressed in articles are those of their
authors and not necessarily the opinions of the
Amateur Computerist newsletter. We welcome sub-
missions from a spectrum of viewpoints.
Page 75
EDITORIAL STAFF
Ronda Hauben
William Rohler
Norman O. Thompson
Michael Hauben (1973-2001)
Jay Hauben
The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.
Articles can be submitted via e-mail:
Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in a
non profit publication provided credit is given, with name
of author and source of article cited.
ELECTRONIC EDITION
ACN Webpage:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/
All issues of the Amateur Computerist are on-line.
Back issues of the Amateur Computerist are available at:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/
All issues can be accessed from the Index at:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/NewIndex.pdf
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