Without a press that can function

independently of government the

public is left disarmed

A critical question raised by the 2004 election in

the U.S. is the role played by the media. Democracy

and vibrant public discussion are intimately related.

An election campaign in a democratic society is a

time to encourage public discussion on the most

pressing policy issues facing the society. The debate

and discussion during an election campaign can

become the basis for the policy decisions that the

successful candidates will be under pressure to

Page 5

implement.

Such a process traditionally requires a press

which raises the issues and supports the exchange and

consideration of a broad range of viewpoints. The

2004 election in the U.S. was a test of the nature and

quality of democracy in the U.S. It was a test of how

the supposed “democracy” the U.S. government

claims to be promoting in other countries functions at

home.

The 2004 election campaign was notable by its

failure to provide the needed debate on issues. Take

the U.S. policy in Iraq, as a commentator in the

current issue of Foreign Affairs notes:

The recent American presidential cam-

paign has had the perverse effect of postpon-

ing any serious national debate on the future

U.S. course in Iraq.

The writer does not directly indict the press for

the failure. Others, including a number of professional

journalists, however, have been critiquing the U.S.

press and trying to analyze the problem that is at the

root of the current media crisis. In a segment of a

recent PBS program, the Jim Lehrer Report

, several

journalists discussed the crisis in their profession.

They acknowledged the low regard with which the

public in the U.S. views the press. They also noted the

long term attack on the press as “liberal”, and the lack

of professionalism among some of their own people.

They considered what actions are needed to change

the critical view of them held by the public.

Another analysis of the problem is offered by

Jonathan Mermin in an article

in the World Policy

Journal. Mermin proposes that the U.S. press fails in

its professional obligation to be an independent critic

of government:

A fundamental tenet of our First

Amendment tradition is that journalists do

not simply recount what government offi-

cials say, but function instead as the peo-

ple’s ‘watchdog’ over the government,

subjecting its words and deeds to independ-

ent scrutiny.

He admits, though “this is rare.” Mermin points

particularly to the example of Judith Miller’s articles

in the New York Times in early 2003. These articles

stressed the existence of weapons of mass destruction

in Iraq, echoing uncritically the pretext being given

by the U.S. government to justify its invasion of Iraq.

When asked about her articles, Miller’s response was:

My job isn’t to assess the government’s

information and be an independent intelli-

gence analyst myself. My job is to tell

readers of the New York Times what the

government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.

Without a press that can function independently

of government, and which is able to critique govern-

ment and its actions, the public is left disarmed.

Given this situation, it is not surprising that the 2004

election could be anything but a rubber stamp for the

incumbent.

A different situation prevailed, however, in the

2002 Presidential election in South Korea. In the

Korean election there was a press that functioned to

help Korean netizens replace the conservative

President with a reform candidate, Roh Moo Hyun,

who had been outside the mainstream of Korean

politics.

In a talk given at Harvard in December 2004, Oh

Yeon Ho, the publisher of the OhmyNews

on-line

newspaper, spoke about the role of his newspaper in

the Korean election. He describes

the collaboration

between Korean netizens and the on-line newspaper.

He gives as an example an event that happened

on the eve of the Korean Presidential election. Eight

hours before the start of voting, another candidate

who had been supporting Roh, withdrew from the

campaign. The conservative newspaper Chosun

Daily was quick to call Korean voters to follow this

example and withdraw their support for Roh. The

on-line community of Korean netizens who were

backing Roh sprang into action, posting messages

about the challenge and urging each other to help to

counter it. OhmyNews covered the netizens activities,

updating coverage every 30 minutes. “Thanks to

nonstop reporting through the night, OhmyNews was

the epicenter of reform-minded netizens,” Oh says

proudly.

Compare this episode with the way the U.S.

press covered the netizen movement supporting the

Howard Dean campaign during the Democratic

primaries. There was no press in the U.S. like Ohmy-

News. Instead the mass media was filled with nega-

tive campaign ads. There was pressure exerted on the

Dean campaign to focus on traditional campaign

tactics. Without a professional press ally to challenge

the conservative role being played by the media, the

netizens movement supporting Dean lost the ability

to counter the conservative media and the conserva-

tive powers in the Democratic Party.

OhmyNews is an on-line newspaper that has a

Page 6

professional newspaper staff, but which welcomes

articles from citizen reporters. The newspaper also

welcomes discussion of its articles by readers, and

seeks to involve its readers in a participatory role in

adding to the content of the newspaper. Mr Oh reports

that the newspaper has 40 professional journalists and

35,000 citizen reporters submitting articles. When

articles by citizen reporters appear, the citizen re-

porter may receive a small sum of money.

Mr Oh’s talk about the experience in Korea was

presented at a conference held at the Berkman Center

for Internet and Society at Harvard University in

December 2004.

The schedule focused on topics like

the weakness of the U.S. netizen movement and the

ways that business models can help to shape politics.

The program for the conference did not question the

effect of the lack of a newspaper like OhmyNews on

the U.S. election campaign.

In an interview

that OhmyNews journalists did

with the Managing Editor of the Washington Post,

they asked whether he thought that a newspaper like

OhmyNews in the U.S. could have helped the Kerry

campaign. He replied:

That’s an intriguing question. There was

a point early in the campaign when it

seemed that Howard Dean had harnessed the

power of the Internet, but it wasn’t enough

to lead him to the Democratic nomination.

Will the current ferment among professional

journalists in the U.S. lead them to find a way to ally

with the on-line netizen community? The continuation

of the occupation of Iraq and the U.S. government’s

efforts to demonize Iran and North Korea present

professional journalists and the on-line netizen

community with a continuing challenge. The 2004

election in the U.S. presented the world with the

desire of netizens in the U.S. to challenge the conser-

vative pro war politicians in both the Democratic and

Republican parties. The lack of a professional press to

support the netizens was a handicap they could not

overcome. Will the post election ferment over the role

of the professional press make it possible to solve this

problem? The future of the professional media in the

U.S. is in limbo.

Will there be professional media efforts to

contribute to a form of on-line press like OhmyNews

which welcomes netizen reporters and their contribu-

tions? The answer to this question may well deter-

mine whether there can be any effective political

opposition to challenge the conservative media and

conservative politicians in upcoming future elections

in the U.S.

Notes:

1.[http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050101faessay84102/james-

dobbins/iraq-winning-the-unwinnable-war.html]

2. Jim Lehrer Report [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour

_index.html], On-line NewsHour Index for Jan. 12-14, 2005

“Credibility Gap”.

3. [http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/

mermin.htm]

4. “James Mill, writing 180 years ago in his article ‘Liberty of

the Press’ proposes that unless the people find some way to

check government abuse and corruption, they will be plagued

by corrupt government.

“‘Those in the position to rule would abuse their power for their

own advantage.’ Mill felt, ‘If one man saw that he might

promote misrule for his own advantage, so would another; so,

of course would they all’.” quoted in Michael Hauben, “The

Effect of the Net on the Professional News Media”, Chapter 13,

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet

[www.columbia .edu/~rh120/ch106.x13].

5. [http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?

article_class=8&no=201423&rel_no=1]

6. [ http://english.ohmynews.com]

7. Berkman Center for Internet and Society Conference,

H a r v a r d U n i v e r s i t y , c o n f e r e n c e s c h e d u l e

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ is2k4/schedule]. “Are information

and communications technologies making it possible for new

forms of citizenship? Are new technologies drawing new people

into the political process? Are we able to engage in politics in

more meaningful ways than before? Is the impact greatest on

local, state, federal campaigns? Are we able to become global

citizens?”

8. [http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp

?menu=c10400&no=204679&rel_no=1]

This article appeared in TELEPOLIS at the URL:

http://www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/19/19296/1.html

Page 7

Netizen and Professional

Journalism

by Daniela Scott

Ronda Hauben’s writing in “The Crisis in the

U.S. Media and the 2004 Election” (see above)

presents a truly interesting point of view. Ronda is

saying contemporary journalism is corrupted and less

socially effective than years ago and she is saying that

so called direct democracy sooner or later will take its

place in our social life.

I would disagree with only one point: that the

ordinary citizen can replace professionals easily and

that the netizen should have now a shorter/easier road

to participation in our political and social life.

Theoretically a professional journalist is sup-

posed to be a person whose writing is moral and

socially/politically focused. Few American journalists

are people like that. The rest of them are spoiled by

everyday life, corruption etc.

However even let’s say a spoiled writer should be

a writer. Whether he/she wants or not, he/she must

represent a certain standard in writing techniques

which makes his/her text “easy to swallow” by the

public.

As I observe in the local versions of the Internet

(Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and also some lists in

English) even people who have something smart and

moral to say can’t express themselves in the shortest

possible way, in the certain manner which makes their

ideas popular. As I observe, even smart people have

the tendency to make their material too long, not

going to the point as quickly and clearly as possible.

Long material without its necessary publicistic “tem-

perature”, even if its author is right, doesn’t attract

anybody. By temperature plus analytical style I

understand a kind of “marriage” between generous

thoughts and necessary techniques of writing. There

is no question that some non-professional people on

the Internet are intelligent and talented in their writ-

ing. There is no question that such people should be

really welcomed to the world of journalism, but they

are a minority.

I agree that some really talented writers should

even be paid by certain media. A few, not all of them.

When I started on the Internet in 1988 the media

looked more promising. Now, after so many years,

the Internet looks to me still not strong enough to

compete with professional journalism. In my opinion

both journalism and the network groups should

coexist but exist separately. As much as they can,

they should support each other in certain sensitive

points and issues. So far the full support and cooper-

ation is almost impossible for a couple of reasons.

One of them is that contemporary journalism in

many countries not only in the U.S. (as much as

every single profession) cannot be free of all possible

influences: corporate money, corporate culture,

corruption etc. Let’s do not forget that the journalism

is a guild profession which means a lots of money.

A really influential direct democracy supported

by a good people involved in their country’s affairs

equals netizens, is almost impossible now. Maybe it

will become a reality some time in the future. When?

Only when the transparency of political/economic

life will be strongly forced by some strong (still

unknown today) revolutionary factors. I would

compare the role of those factors to DNA testing in

forensic science :) today. 2/2/05

The Effect of the Net on the

Professional News Media:

The Usenet News Collective

– The Man-Computer News

Symbiosis

by Michael Hauben

[Editor’s note: The following analysis of the relation

between professional news media and on-line news

media appears as Chapter 13 in the book Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet.]

“The archdeacon contemplated the gigantic

cathedral for a time in silence, then he sighed and

stretched out his right hand towards the printed book

lying open on his table and his left hand towards

Notre Dame, and he looked sadly from the book to

the church:

“‘Alas,’ he said, ‘this will kill that’....

This was the presentiment that as human

ideas changed their form they would

change their mode of expression, that the

Page 8

crucial idea of each generation would no

longer be written in the same material or in

the same way, that the book of stone, so

solid and durable, would give way to the

book of paper, which was more solid and

durable still.”

(Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris)

I. Media-criticism

Will this kill that? Will the new on-line forms of

discourse dethrone the professional news media?

The French writer Victor Hugo observed that the

printed book rose to replace the cathedral and the

church as the conveyor of important ideas in the

fifteenth century. Will Usenet and other young on-line

discussion forums develop to replace the current news

media? Various people throughout society are cur-

rently discussing this question.

The role of modern journalism is being reconsid-

ered in a variety of ways. There are journalists and

media critics like the late Professor Christopher

Lasch, who have challenged the fundamental pre-

mises of professional journalism. There are other

journalists like Wall Street Journal reporter Jared

Sandberg, who cover an on-line beat, and are learning

quickly about the growing on-line public forums.

These two approaches are beginning to converge to

make it possible to understand the changes in the role

of the media in our society brought about by the

development of the Internet and Usenet.

Media critics like Christopher Lasch have estab-

lished a theoretical foundation which makes it possi-

ble to critique the news media and challenge the

current practice of this media. In “Journalism, Public-

ity, and the Lost Art of Argument”, Lasch argued:

“What democracy requires is public debate, and

not information. Of course, it needs information, too,

but the kind of information it needs can be generated

only by vigorous popular debate.”

Applying his critique to the press, Lasch wrote:

“From these considerations it follows the job of

the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the

public with information. But as things now stand the

press generates information in abundance, and no-

body pays any attention.”

Lasch explained that more and more people are

getting less and less interested in the press because,

“Much of the press...now delivers an abundance of

useless, indigestible information that nobody wants,

most of which ends up as unread waste.”

Reporters like Jared Sandberg of the Wall Street

Journal, on the other hand, recognize that more and

more of the information which the public is inter-

ested in, is starting to come from people other than

professional journalists. In an article about the April

1995 Oklahoma Federal building explosion,

Sandberg writes:

“In times of crisis, the Internet has become the

medium of choice for users to learn more about

breaking news, often faster than many news organi-

zations can deliver it.”

People curious and concerned about relatives

and others present on the scene turned to the Net to

find out timely information about survivors and to

discuss the questions raised by the event. Soon after

the explosion, it was reported and discussed live on

IRC and in newsgroups on Usenet such as

alt.current-events.amfb-explosion and elsewhere

on-line. Sandberg noted that many logged onto the

Internet to get news from first-hand observers rather

than turning on the TV to CNN or comparable news

sources.

Along with the broader strata of the population

which has begun to report and discuss the news via

the Internet and Usenet, a broader definition of who

is a media critic is developing. Journalists and media

critics like Martha Fitzsimon and Lawrence T.

McGill present such a broader definition of media

critics when they write, “Everyone who watches tele-

vision, listens to a radio or reads...passes judgment

on what they see, hear or read.”

Acknowledging the

public’s discontent with the traditional forms of the

media, they note that, “the evaluations of the media

put forward by the public are grim and getting

worse.”

Other journalists have written about public

criticism of the news media. In his article, “Encoun-

ters On-Line”, Thomas Valovic recognizes some of

the advantages inherent in the new on-line form of

criticism. Unlike old criticism, the new type “fosters

dialogue between reporters and readers.”

He ob-

serves how this dialogue “can subject reporters to

interrogations by experts that undermine journalists’

claim to speak with authority.”

Changes are taking place in the field of

journalism, and these changes are apparent to some,

but not all journalists and media critics. Tom

Goldstein, Dean of University of California Berkeley

Journalism School observes that change is occurring,

but the results are not fully understood.

Page 9

II. Examining the role of Internet/

Usenet and the Press

There are discussions on-line about the role of

the press and the role of on-line discussion forums.

The debate is active, and there are those who believe

the print press is here to stay, while others contend

that interactive discussion forums are likely to replace

the authority of the print news media. Those who

argue for the dominance of the on-line media present

impassioned arguments. Their comments are much

more persuasive than those who defend the traditional

role of the print media as something that is handy to

read over breakfast or on the train. In a newsgroup

thread discussing the future of print journalism,

Gloria Stern stated:

“My experience is that I have garnered more

information from the internet than I ever could from

any newspaper. Topical or not, it has given me com-

munity that I never had before. I touch base with

more informed kindred souls than any tonnage of

paper could ever bring me.”

Regularly, people are commenting on how they

have stopped reading newspapers. Even those who

continue to read printed newspapers, note that Usenet

has become one of the important sources for their

news. For example, a user wrote:

“I do get the New York Times every day, and the

Post and the Washington Times and the Wall Street

Journal (along with about 100 other hard-copy

publications), and I still find Usenet a valuable source

of in-depth news reporting.”

More and more people on Usenet have

announced their discontent with the traditional

one-way media, often leading to their refusal to

seriously read newspapers again. In a discussion

about a Time magazine article about the Internet and

Usenet, Elizabeth Fischer wrote:

“The point of the whole exercise is that for us,

most of us, paper media is a dead issue (so to

speak).”

In the same thread, Jim Zoes stated the challenge

posed by the on-line media for reporters:

“This writer believes that you (the traditional

press) face the same challenge that the monks in the

monastery faced when Gutenberg started printing

Bibles.”

Describing why the new media represents such a

formidable foe Zoes continued:

“Your top-down model of journalism allows

traditional media to control the debate, and even if

you provide opportunity for opposing views, the

editor *always* had the last word. In the new

paradigm, not only do you not necessarily have the

last word, you no longer even control the flow of the

debate.”

He concludes with his understanding of the

value of Usenet to society:

“The growth and acceptance of e-mail, coupled

with discussion groups (Usenet) and mail lists

provide for a ‘market place of ideas’ hitherto not

possible since perhaps the days of the classic

Athenians.”

Others present their views on a more personal

level. One poster writes:

“I will not purchase another issue of Newsweek.

I won’t even glance through their magazine if it’s

lying around now given what a shoddy job they did

on that article.”

Another explains:

“My husband brought [the article] home...for me

to read and [I] said, ‘Where is that damn followup

key? ARGH!’ I’ve pretty much quit reading main-

stream media except when someone puts something

in front of me or I’m riding the bus to work....”

These responses are just some of the recent

examples of people voicing their discontent with the

professional news media. The on-line forum

provides a public way of sharing this discontent with

others. It is in sharing ideas and understandings with

others with similar views that grassroots efforts

begin to attempt to change society.

While some netusers have stopped reading the

professional news media, others are interested in

influencing the media to more accurately portray the

Net. Many are critical of the news media’s reporting

of the Internet, and other events. Users of the

Internet are interested in protecting the Internet.

They do this by watch dogging politicians and

journalists. Concern with the coverage of the Internet

in the press comes from first-hand experience with

the Internet. One netuser expressing such dissatisfac-

tion writes:

“The net is a special problem for reporters, be-

cause bad reporting in other areas is protected by

distance. If someone reports to the Times from

Croatia, you’re not going to have a better source

unless you’ve been there (imagine how many people

in that part of the world could correct the reports we

read). All points of Usenet are equidistant from the

Page 10

user and the reporter – we can check their accuracy at

every move. And what do we notice? Not the parts

that the reporter gets right, just the errors. And Usenet

is such a complete culture that no reporter, absent

some form of formal training or total immersion in

the net, is going to get it all right.”

Another on-line critic writes:

“It’s scary when you actually are familiar with

what a journalist is writing about. Kinda punches a

whole bunch of holes in the ‘facts’. Unfortunately it’s

been going on for a long time... we, the general

viewing public, just aren’t up to speed on the majority

of issues. That whole ‘faith in media’ thing. Yick. I

can’t even trust the damn AP wire anymore after

reading an enormous amount of total crap on it during

the first few hours of the Oklahoma bombing.”

In Usenet’s formation of a community, that com-

munity has developed the self-awareness to respond

to and reject an outside description of the Net. If the

Net was just the telephone line and computer infra-

structure making up a machine, that very machine

couldn’t object and scold journalists for describing it

as a pornography press or a bomb-production press.

Wesley Howard believes that the critical on-line com-

mentary is having a healthy effect on the press:

“The coverage has become more accurate and

less sloppy in its coverage of the Net because it (the

Net) has become more defined itself from a cultural

point of view. Partly because of growth and partly

because of what the media was saying fed debates and

caused a firmer definition within itself.... This does

not mean the print media was in any way responsible

for the Net’s self definition, but was one influence of

many.”

Another person, writing from Japan, believed that

journalists should be more responsible, urging that

“all journalists should be forced to have an e-mail

address.” He explained:

“Journalists usually have a much bigger audience

than their critics. I often feel a sense of helplessness

in trying to counter the damage they cause when they

abuse their privilege. Often it is impossible even to

get the attention of the persons responsible for the lies

and distortions.”

Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists provide a

media where people are in control. People who are

on-line understand the value of this control and are

trying to articulate their understandings. Some of this

discussion is being carried on on Usenet. Having the

ability to control a mass media, also encourages

people to try and affect other media. The proposal to

require print journalists to make available an e-mail

address is an example of how on-line users are trying

to apply the lessons learned from the on-line media

to change the print media.

III. People as Critics:

The Role the Net is Playing and Will

Play in the Future:

People on-line are excited, and this is not an

exaggeration. The various discussion forums con-

nected to the global computer communications net-

work (or the Net) are the prototype for a new public

form of communication. This new form of human

communication will either supplement the current

forms of News or replace them. One person on a

newsgroup succinctly stated:

“The real news is right here. And it can’t get any

newer because I watch it as it happens.”

The very concept of news is being reinvented as

people come to realize that they can provide the

news about the environment they live in; that people

can contribute their real-life conditions and this

information proves worthwhile for others. The post

continued:

“As other segments of society come on-line, we

will have less and less need for some commercially

driven entity that gathers the news for me, filters it,

and then delivers it to me, hoping fervently that I’ll

find enough of interest to keep paying for it.”

Such sentiment represents a fundamental chal-

lenge to the professional creation and dissemination

of news. The on-line discussion forums allow open

and free discourse. Individuals outside of the tradi-

tional power structures are finding a forum in which

to contribute, where those contributions are wel-

comed. Describing the importance of the open forum

available on the Net, Dolores Dege wrote:

“The most important and eventually most

powerful aspect of the net will be the effect(s) of

having access to alternative viewpoints to the pub-

lished and usually (although not always either

intentionally or consciously) biased local news

media. This access to differing ‘truths’ is similar to

the communication revolution which occurred when

the first printing presses made knowledge available

to the common populace, instead of held in the tight

fists of the clergy and ruling classes.”

This change in who makes the news is also

Page 11

apparent to Keith Cowing:

“How one becomes a ‘provider’ and ‘receiver’ of

information is being totally revamped. The status quo

hasn’t quite noticed – yet – THIS is what is so interest-

ing.”

While this openness also encourages different

conspiracy theorists and crack-pots to write messages,

their contributions are scrutinized as much as any

other posting. This uncensored environment leads to

a sorting out of mis-truths from thoughtful convic-

tions. Many people on-line keep their wits about

them, and seek to refute half-truths and lies. A post

from Australia notes that it is common to post refuta-

tions of inaccurate posts:

“One of the good things about Usenet is the

propensity of people to post refutations of false

information that others have posted.”

As the on-line media is in the control of many

people, no one person can come on-line and drasti-

cally alter the flow or quality of discussion. The

multiplicity of ideas and opinions make Usenet and

mailing lists the opposite of a free-for-all.

IV. Qualities of this new medium

A common assumption of the ethic of individual-

ism is that the individual is in control and is the prime

mover of society. Others believe that it’s not the

individual who is in control, but that society is being

controlled by people organized around the various

large corporations that own so much of our society –

whether those corporations are the media, manufac-

turers, etc. The global computer communications

networks currently allow uncensored expression from

the individual at a bottom rung of society. The

grass-roots connection of people around the world

and in local communities based on common interests

is an important step in bringing people more control

over their lives. Lisa Pease wrote in alt.journalism:

“There is nothing like finding a group of people

who share your same interests and background

knowledge. Some of my interests I didn’t know one

person in a hundred that shared – and now I’ve met

many. What makes it a community is ultimately in-

person meetings.”

She continued on in her message to state why

such connections and discussions are important:

“The net...requires no permissions, no groveling

to authority, no editors to deal with – no one basically

to say ‘no don’t say that.’ As a result – far more has

been said here publicly than has probably been said in

a hundred years about issues that really matter –

political prisoners, democratic uprisings, exposure of

disinformation – THIS is what makes the net more

valuable than any other news source.”

Similar views are expressed by others about the

power of the Internet to work in favor of people

rather than commercial conglomerates:

“The internet is our last hope for a medium that

will enable individuals to combat the overpowering

influence of the commercial media to shape public

opinion, voter attitudes, select candidates, influence

legislation, etc...”

People are beginning to be empowered by the

open communications the on-line media provides.

This empowerment is beginning to lead towards

more active involvement by people in the societal

issues they care about.

V. The Pentium Story

In discussions about the future of the on-line

media, people have observed how Usenet makes it

possible to challenge the privileges inherent in the

traditional news media. John Pike started a thread

describing the challenge the Net presents to the

former content providers:

“To me this is the really exciting opportunity for

Usenet, namely that the professional content provid-

ers will be directly confronted with and by their

audience. The prevailing info-structure privileges

certain individuals by virtue of institutional affilia-

tion. But cyberspace is a far more meritocratic

environment – the free exchange of ideas can take

place regardless of institutional affiliation.”

Pike continues by arguing that on-line forums

are becoming a place where “news” is both made

and reported, and thus traditional sources are often

scooped. He writes:

“This has tremendously exciting possibilities for

democratizing the info-structure, as the ‘official’

hard copy implementations are increasingly lagging

cyberspace in breaking news.”

An example of news being made on-line oc-

curred when Intel, the computer chip manufacturer,

was forced to recall faulty Pentium chips because of

the on-line pressure and the effect of that pressure on

computer manufacturers such as IBM and Gateway.

These companies put pressure on Intel because

people using Usenet discovered problems with the

Pentium. The on-line discussion led to people be-

coming active and getting the manufacturers of their

Page 12

computers, and Intel to fix the problems.

In the article “On-Line Snits Fomenting Public

Storms,” Wall Street Journal reporters Bart Ziegler

and Jared Sandberg, commented:

“Some industry insiders say that had the Pentium

flub occurred five years ago, before the Internet got

hot and the media caught on, Intel might have escaped

a public flogging and avoided a costly recall.”

Buried in the report is the acknowledgment that

the traditional press would not have caught the defect

in the Pentium chip, but that the on-line media forced

the traditional media to respond. The original report-

ing about the problem was done in the Usenet

newsgroup comp.sys.intel and further on-line discus-

sion took place in that newsgroup and other

newsgroups and on Internet mailing-lists. The Wall

Street Journal reporters recognized their debt to news

that people were posting on-line to come up with a

story which dealt with a major computer company

and with the real world role that Usenet played.

In another article in the Wall Street Journal,

reporter Fara Warner focused on the impact of the

on-line news on Intel. “[Intel] offered consumers a

promise of reliability and quality, and now that

promise has been called into question,” she writes

quoting the CEO of a consulting firm.

The people

who did this questioning were the users of the com-

puters with the faulty chips. Communicating about the

problem on-line, these users were able to have an

impact not otherwise possible. Ziegler and Sandberg

noted that the discussions were on-line rather than in

“traditional public forums like trade journals, newspa-

pers or the electronic media.”

On-line users were

able to work together to deal with a problem, instead

of depending on other forums traditionally associated

with reporting dissatisfaction with consumer goods.

After all of the criticisms, Intel had to replace faulty

chips in order to keep their reputation viable. The

Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other

newspapers and magazines played second fiddle to

what was happening on-line. In their article, Ziegler

and Sandberg quote Dean Tom Goldstein: “It’s

absolutely changing how journalism is practiced in

ways that aren’t fully developed.”

These journalists

acknowledge that the field of journalism is changing

as a result of the existence of the on-line complaints.

The on-line connection of people is forming a large

and important social force.

As a community where news is made, reported

and discussed, Usenet has been a hotbed of more than

just technical developments. Other late breaking

stories have included the Church of Scientology and

the suppression of speech. An Australian reporter,

John Hilvert, commented on the value of being

on-line:

“It [Usenet] can be a great source of leads about

the mood of the Net. The recent GIF-Unisys-

Compuserve row and the Intel Pentium bug are

examples of Usenet taking an activist and educative

role.”

Nevertheless, Hilvert, warned about the authen-

ticity of information available on-line:

“However the risk is you can easily be spooked

by stuff on the Net. Things have to be shaped, con-

firmed and tested off-line as well. One of the inter-

esting side-effects of Usenet is that we have to work

even harder to get a good story because, there is not

much value-added in just summarizing a Usenet

discussion.”

Though, it is hard to rely on any single piece of

information, Usenet is not about ideas in a vacuum.

Usenet is about discussion and discourse. Tom

Kimball, in a Usenet post, writes about the value of

a public Usenet discussion,

“I have great respect for the Usenet ideal of

everyone having the chance to respond to the ideas

of others and the resulting exchanges of information

and clashes of ideas I think is of some value (despite

the flame-war garbage that gets in the way).”

The great number and range of the unedited

posts on Usenet brings up the question of whether

editors are needed to deal with the amount of infor-

mation. Discussing the need to take time to deal with

the growing amount of information, a post on

alt.internet.media-coverage explained,

“The difference being that for the first time in

human history, the general populace has the ability

to determine what it finds important, rather than

relying on the whims of those who knew how to

write, or controlled the printing presses. It means

that we as individuals are going to have to deal with

sifting through a lot of information on our own, but

in the end I believe that we will all benefit from it.”

Such posts lead to the question of what is meant

by the notion of the general populace and a popular

press. The point is important as those who are on the

Net make up but a small percentage of the total

population of either the USA or the world. However,

that on-line population of an estimated 27.5 million

people

make up a significant body of people con-

Page 13

necting to each other on-line. The fast rate of growth

also makes one take note of the trends and develop-

ments. Defining what is meant by `general populace

and a popular press’ the post continues:

“By general populace, I mean those who can

actually afford a computer, and a connection to the

‘net’, or have access to a public terminal. As com-

puter prices go down, the amount of people who fit

this description will increase. At any rate, comparing

the 5-10 million people with Usenet access, to the

handful who control the mass media shows that even

in a nascent stage, Usenet is far more the ‘people’s

voice’ than any media conglomerate could ever be.”

The comments from the last two people lead to

asking whether or not the new technologies are help-

ing the human species to evolve or to deal with the

ever increasing amount of information. Computer

pioneers like Norbert Wiener, J.C.R. Licklider and

John Kemeny discussed the need for man-computer

symbiosis to help humans deal with the growing

problems of our times.

The on-line discussion

forums provide a new form of man-computer

symbiosis. They are helpful intellectual exercises. It

is healthy for society if all members think and make

active use of their brains – and Usenet is conducive to

thinking. It is not the answer to ask journalists to

provide us with the answers, the objective truth of

life. Even if someone’s life is busy, what happens

when they come to depend on the opinions and

summaries of others as their own? Usenet is helping

to create a mass community which works commu-

nally to aid the individual. Usenet works via the

active involvement and thoughtful contributions of

each user. The Usenet software facilitates the creation

of a community whose thought processes can accu-

mulate and benefit the entire community. The creation

of the book, and the printed book helped to increase

the speed of the accumulation of ideas. Usenet now

speeds up that process to help accumulate the

thoughts of the moment. The resulting discussion seen

on Usenet could not have been produced beforehand

as the work of one individual. The bias or point of the

view of any one individual is no longer presented as

the whole truth.

Karl Krueger describes some of the value of

Usenet in a posting to Usenet:

“Over time, Usenetters get better at being parts of

the Usenet matrix – because their *own* condensa-

tions support Usenet’s, and this helps other users. In

a way, Usenet is a ‘meta-symbiont’ with each user –

the user is a part of Usenet and benefits Usenet (with

a few exceptions...), and Usenet includes the user

and benefits him/her.”

Krueger points out how experienced Usenet

users contribute to the Usenet community. He writes:

“As time increases normally, the experienced

Usenet user uses Usenet to make himself more

knowledgeable and successful. Experienced users

also contribute back to Usenet, primarily in the

forms of conveying knowledge (answering ques-

tions, compiling FAQs), conveying experience

(being part of the environment a newbie interacts

with), and protecting Usenet (upholding responsible

and non-destructive use, canceling potentially

damaging spam, fighting ‘newsgroup invasions’,

etc.).”

As new users connect to Usenet, and learn from

others, the Usenet Collective grows and becomes one

person richer. Krueger continues:

“Provided that all users are willing to spend the

minimal amount of effort to gain some basic Usenet

experience then they can be added to this loop. In

Usenet, old users gain their benefits from other old

users, while simultaneously bringing new users into

the old-users group to gain benefits.”

The collective body of people, assisted by the

Usenet software, has grown larger than any individ-

ual newspaper. As people continue to connect to

Usenet and other discussion forums, the collective

global population will contribute back to the human

community in this new form of news.

VI. Journalists and the Internet

Professional journalists are beginning to under-

stand that the on-line discussion forums will change

their field, though they may not fully understand

what the changes will be. In posing the question:

“What, if any, effect do Usenet News and mailing

lists have on reporters and editors you are in contact

with?”, several journalists responded. Some stated

that Usenet and mailing lists are valuable informa-

tion and opinion gathering tools which also help

them to get in touch with experts, while others are

either timid about the new technology or did not

want to bother with yet another reporting tool.

Several of the reporters stated that they do not

participate in any discussion forums per se, but

rather lurk in these areas and contact posters by e-

mail who they feel will have valuable information

for a story. Their main concern was that they might

Page 14

waste time on-line trying to get information when

there would only be a small amount of worthwhile

material in a lot of waste. Lastly, one or two did not

see any value in on-line discussion forums, and have

stayed away from them after initial negative impres-

sions.

These reporters were asked if they sensed any

pressure to get Internet accounts or to connect to

Usenet and mailing lists. Josh Quittner of Time Mag-

azine said the pressure came from the publishing side,

where publishers are looking for the development of

new markets. John Verity of Business Week and

Lorraine Goods of Time Interactive said editors are

responding to interest about the Internet and want

stories about it. Brock Meeks, an independent journal-

ist, stated that the pressure comes from reporters such

as himself who have been on-line for some time and

have beaten other reporters to stories because of the

power of on-line communications. Some reported that

they understood that it was important to get on-line

without knowing why. A few said there is no push to

go on-line.

Asked whether it is important to be on-line, some

did not see it as necessary, given that they are already

connected to those they consider to be experts in their

respective field without being on-line. Others felt the

speed of e-mail helped to gather timely information

for the stories they were working on. Farhon Memon

of the New York Post compared today’s on-line

forums to conferences because they make contacting

experts much easier both in terms of time and place.

When asked about the best forms of reader feed-

back, a number of the journalists stated that letters to

the editor and op-ed pages were helpful. One reporter

noted that letters to the editor were not particularly

heeded. E-mail was named as the next most important

means for readers to send in commentary. Whether

this commentary is listened to or not is another story.

One reporter did suggest that the on-line criticism,

correct or not, encourages journalists to do the best

possible job.

When it came to the question of whether on-line

discussion forums would ever replace newspapers, the

journalists almost universally stated that each form

has its own role to play. Quittner didn’t think tradi-

tional journalists would evolve into on-line discussion

leaders. Such a job might emerge, but not as an

additional responsibility of the regular journalist.

Maia Szalavitz responded:

“The print media can’t beat on-line stuff for

interactivity; on-line stuff can’t beat print journalism

for organization, ease of portability and use at this

point.”

Goods offered a similar analysis:

“An on-line news outfit can obviously do things

that print cannot. However, there are certain things

you can do with a newspaper that you can’t do on a

computer (like read it on the subway on the way to

work, or in the bathroom). Just as TV did not replace

radio, computers will not replace newspapers. I do

think, however, that the introduction of new media

will have an effect on traditional media. What those

effects will be, however, I don’t know.”

There is a growing trend of journalists coming

on-line for various reasons. Coming on-line could

mean one of several things. Some use the Net as a

new information source, and some look for people to

interview. Lastly, there are those who are actually

joining the community or responding to their reading

audience. A growing number of journalists are

participating in such newsgroups as alt.internet

.media-coverage, alt.journalism.criticism, alt.news-

media, also in forums on some of the commercial

on-line services and in on-line communities such as

the Well, among other places.

Reporters are enter-

ing the discussion and both asking for people’s

suggestions on how to improve their coverage of the

Internet and for remarks on their stories.

Newspapers and magazines are developing on-

line counterparts of their print editions (e.g., San

Jose Mercury News, Business Week) on commercial

on-line services such as Prodigy and America

On-Line, and are experimenting with new content

differing from their print editions on the World Wide

Web (WWW) (e.g., HotWired, Time On-Line,

NandoNet). These on-line offerings sometimes

provide another interface between journalists and

readers. Message areas or public discussion boards

are offered along with publicized e-mail addresses

for e-mailing letters to the editor or particular jour-

nalists.

VII. Conclusion

Newspapers and magazines are a convenient

form for dealing with information transfer. People

have grown accustomed to reading newspapers and

magazines wherever and whenever they please. The

growing dissatisfaction with the print media is more

with the content than with the form. There is a

significant criticism that the current print media does

Page 15

not allow for a dynamic response or follow-up to the

articles in hand. One possible direction would be

towards on-line distribution and home or on-site

printing. This would allow for the convenience of the

traditional newspaper and magazine form to be

connected to the dynamic conversation that on-line

Netnews allows. The reader could choose at what

point in the conversation or how much of the discus-

sion to make a part of the printed form. But this

leaves out the element of interactivity. Still, it could

be a temporary solution until the time when ubiqui-

tous slate computers with mobile networks would

allow the combination of a light, easy to handle

screen, with a continuous connection into the Internet

from anyplace.

Newspapers could continue to provide entertain-

ment in the form of cross-word puzzles, comics, clas-

sified ads, and entertainment sections (e.g., entertain-

ment, lifestyles, sports, fashion, gossip, reviews,

coupons, and so on). However, the real challenge

comes in what is traditionally known as news, or

information and newly breaking events from around

the world. Citizen, or now Netizen reporters are

challenging the premise that authoritative professional

reporters are the only possible reporters of the news.

The news of the day is biased and opinionated no

matter how many claims for objectivity exist in the

world of the reporter. In addition, the choice of what

becomes news is clearly subjective. Now that more

people are gaining a voice on the open public elec-

tronic discussion forums, previously unheard “news”

is being made available. The current professional

news reporting is not really reporting the news, rather

it is reporting the news as decided by a certain set of

economic or political interests. Todd Masco contrasts

the two contending forms of the news media,

“Free communication is essential to the proper

functioning of an open, free society such as ours. In

recent years, the functioning of this society has been

impaired by the monolithic control of our means of

communication and news gathering (through televi-

sion and conglomerate-owned newspapers). This

monolithic control allows issues to be talked about

only really in terms that only the people who control

the media and access to same can frame . . . Usenet,

and News in general, changes this: it allows real

debate on issues, allowing perspectives from all sides

to be seen.”

Journalists may survive, but they will be second-

ary to the symbiosis that the combination of the

Usenet software and computers with the Usenet

community produces. Karl Krueger observes how

the Usenet Collective is evolving to join man and

machine into a news gathering, sorting and dissemi-

nating body. He writes:

“There is no need for Official Summarizers

(a.k.a. journalists) on Usenet, because everyone does

it – by cross-posting, following-up, forwarding rele-

vant articles to other places, maintaining FTP ar-

chives and WWW indexes of Usenet articles (yes,

FTP and WWW are Internet things, not Usenet

things – but if Usenet articles are stored in them, the

metaphor extends).”

He continues:

“Journalists will never replace software. The

purpose of journalists is similar to scribes in medi-

eval times: to provide an information service when

there is insufficient technology or insufficient gen-

eral skill at using it. I’m not insulting journalism; it

is a respectable profession and useful. But you won’t

*need* a journalist when you have a good enough

newsreader/browser and know how to use it.”

These on-line commentators echo Victor Hugo’s

description of how the printed book grew up to

replace the authority that architecture had held in

earlier times. Hugo writes,

“This was the presentiment that as human ideas

changed their form they would change their mode of

expression, that the crucial idea of each generation

would no longer be written in the same material or in

the same way, that the book of stone, so solid and

durable, would give way to the book of paper, which

was more solid and durable still.”

Today, similarly, the need for a broader, and

more cooperative gathering and reporting of the

news has helped to create the new on-line media that

is gradually supplanting the traditional forms of

journalism. Professional media critics writing in the

Freedom Forum Media Studies Journal acknowledge

that on-line critics and news gatherers are presenting

a challenge to the professional news media that can

lead to their overthrow when they write:

“News organizations can weather the blasts of

professional media critics, but their credibility

cannot survive if they lose the trust of the multitude

of citizens critics throughout the United States.”

As more and more people come on-line, and

realize the grassroots power of becoming a Netizen

reporter, the professional news media must evolve a

new role or will be increasingly marginalized.

Page 16

Notes:

1. Christopher Lasch, “Journalism, Publicity, and the Lost Art

of Argument”, Media Studies Journal, Vol 9 no 1, Winter

1995, p. 81.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 91.

4. Jared Sandberg, “Oklahoma City Blast Turns Users Onto

Internet for Facts, Some Fiction,” Wall Street Journal, April

20, 1995, p. A6.

5. Martha Fitzsimon and Lawrence T. McGill, “The Citizen

as Media Critic,” Media Studies Journal, Vol 9 no 2, Spring

1995, p. 91.

6. Ibid.

7. Thomas S. Volovic, “Encounters On-Line,” Media Studies

Journal, Vol 9 no 2, Spring 1995, p. 115.

8. Ibid.

9. Bart Ziegler and Jared Sandberg, “On-Line Snits Foment

ing Public Storms,” Wall Street Journal, December 23, 1994.

10. From: Gloria Stern <[email protected]>

Date: 7 April, 1995

Subject: Re: Future of print journalism

Newsgroups: alt.journalism

Message-ID:<1995Apr7.214157[email protected]>

11. From: John Pike <[email protected]>

Date: 24 April, 1995

Subject: Re: Usenet’s political power (was Re: Content

Providers – Professionals versus Amateurs on Usenet)

Newsgroups: alt.culture.Usenet

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

12. From: Elizabeth Fischer <efischer@wimsey.com>

Date: 20 July, 1994

Subject: Re: TIME Cover Story: pipeline to editors

Newsgroups: Alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID:

<efischer-200794133[email protected]>

13. From: Jim Zoes <mustang@mcs.com>

Date: 22 July, 1994

Subject: Re: TIME Cover Story: pipeline to editors

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <30nmf4$bgg@News1.mcs.com>

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. From: Catherine Stanton <[email protected].net>

Date: 21 July, 1994

Subject: Re: TIME Cover Story: pipeline to editors

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <30ltmc$huu@rodan.UU.NET>

17. From: Abby Franquemont-Guillory <abbyf[email protected]>

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Subject: Re: TIME Cover Story: pipeline to editors

Date: 22 Jul 1994 13:45:19 -0500

Message-ID: <30p[email protected]>

18. From: The Nutty Professor <flixman@news.dorsai.org>

Subject: Re: Reporter Seeking Net-Abuse Comments

Message-ID: <D2I3[email protected]>

Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 13:35:34 GMT

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

19. From: Mikez <m[email protected]>

Newsgroups: alt.journalism.criticism

Subject: Re: Mass media exploiting ‘cyberspace’ for ratings

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 95 03:58:55 GMT

Message-ID: <3nhs1v$cds_002@news.cris.com>

20. From: Wesley Howard <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: Does Usenet have an effect on the print news

media?

Date: 8 Apr 1995 05:39:43 GMT

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

21. From: John DeHoog <[email protected]>

Newsgroups: alt.journalism

Subject: Make journalists get an email address!

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 20:01:24 +0900

Message-ID:

<ABBDBF94966820B7[email protected]p>

22. Message-Id: <elknox.35.000[email protected]>

23. Ibid.

24. Delores Dege, “Re: Impact of the Net on Society,” e-mail

message, February 21, 1995.

25. From: Keith L. Cowing <kcow[email protected]>

Subject: Re: Content Providers – Professionals versus

Amateurs on Usenet

Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:33:23 -0500

Newsgroups: alt.culture.internet

Message-ID:

<kcowing-17049512332[email protected]43.0.239>

26. From: William Logan Lee <[email protected]>

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

Subject: Re: Is hobby computing dead? (was Creative

Message-ID: <1993Apr6.121613.1623[email protected]>

27. From: Lisa Pease <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: Future of print journalism

Newsgroups: alt.journalism

Message-ID: <lpeaseD6L4p[email protected]>

Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 23:17:24 GMT

28. Ibid.

29. From: Norman <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: Impact of the Net on Society

Date: 20 Mar 1995 21:05:54 -0500

Newsgroups: alt.culture.internet

Message-ID: <3klca2$ma1@newsbf02.news.aol.com>

30. From: John Pike <[email protected]>

Subject: Content Providers -- Professionals versus Amateurs

on Usenet, Date: 17 Apr 1995 12:21:49 GMT

Message-ID: <3mtm[email protected]>

31. Ibid.

32. Bart Ziegler and Jared Sandberg.

33. Fara Warner, “Experts Surprised Intel Isn’t Reaching Out

To Consumers More”, Wall Street Journal, December 14,

1994.

34. Bart Ziegler and Jared Sandberg.

35. Ibid.

36. From: John Hilvert <[email protected].au>

Subject: Re: Does Usenet have an effect on the print news

media?

Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 03:40:57 GMT

Newsgroups: alt.culture.Usenet

Message-ID: <hilvertj.107.2F82114[email protected]>

37. Ibid.

38. From: Tom Kimball <tom@europa.lonestar.org>

Page 17

Subject: Usenet impact upon reading habits and skills

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 02:25:28 GMT

Message-ID:

<1993Aug26.022528[email protected]nestar.org>

39. From: Miskatonic Gryn <[email protected]et>

Subject: Re: Cliff Stoll

Date: 17 Apr 1995 15:31:22 -0400

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <3mufmt$[email protected]>

40. The number of people accessible via e-mail was placed at

27.5 million as of October 1994 according to John

Quarterman and MIDS at:

http://www.tic.com/mids/howbig.html

41. Miskatonic Gryn

42. See John Kemeny, Man and the Computer, J.C.R.

Licklider, “Man Computer Symbiosis,” Norbert Wiener,

God & Golem, Inc.

43. From: Karl A. Krueger <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: Special Issue of TIME: Welcome to Cyberspace

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 08:58:33 GMT

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Maia Szalavitz, “Re: Questions about the effect of Usenet

on journalism,” e-mail message, April 18, 1995.

47. Goods, Lorraine. (1995, April 23) “Questions about the

effect of Usenet on journalism” [e-mail to M. Hauben],

[On-line]. Available e-mail: lg105@columbia.edu

48. While I was writing this paper, there was a debate on-line

over moving discussion from alt.internet.media-coverage

into a new newsgroup tentatively called

talk.media.net-coverage.

49. Jennifer Wolff wrote an interesting article entitled

“Opening Up, On-line: What Happens When the Public

Comes At You From Cyberspace” in the Columbia Journal

ism Review, Nov/Dec 1994, pp. 62-65.

50. From: L. Todd Masco <[email protected]>

Newsgroups:

news.future,comp.society.futures,ny.general

(No Subject Line)

51. Karl A. Krueger.

52. Ibid.

53. Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, translated by John

Sturrock, Penguin Books, London, 1978, p. 189.

54. Fitzsimon and McGill, p. 201.

Last Updated: October 15, 1995

This article is a chapter from Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben’s netbook titled, Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet available at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

The International Origins of

the Internet

and the Impact of this

Framework on its Future.

by Ronda Hauben

http://www.wsis-online.net/igov-form/forums/

[Editor’s note: The following is a talk given at

Columbia University on Nov. 4, 2004.]

The research I have been doing for the past 12

years is about the origin, development and social

impact of the Internet. I want to propose that know-

ing something of the nature of the Internet, of its

international origins and early vision and develop-

ment can provide a useful perspective for looking at

a process that is currently ongoing at the initiative of

the United Nations.

I want to share some of my research about the

original vision and the international origins of the

Internet and the implications of this heritage on the

Internet’s future. Just now, over the past two or more

years, and continuing through November, 2005,

there is a ongoing United Nations initiative in which

the world’s governments are participating, along

with NGO’s and corporate entities. Yet this high

level activity, as Wired reports, “has been largely

ignored by those not participating in it.” (Wendy

Grossman, “Nations Plan for Net’s Future”, October

11, 2004)

This process is known as the World Summit on

the Information Society (WSIS). After preparatory

activities for almost two years, the first of two plann-

ed summits was held in Geneva, Switzerland in

December 2003. Since that summit, a continuing

series of meetings are scheduled to set the foundation

for the second Summit which is planned to take

place in Tunisia in November of 2005.

Heads of state of many nations, particularly

developing nations came to the Geneva summit and

spoke about the importance of the Internet to the

people in their countries and to their present and

Page 18

future economic and social development and well

being. The participants recognized that the Internet is

an international network of networks, and that it has

been built by a great deal of public and scientific

effort and funding. The disagreement arises over the

nature of the present and future management structure

and processes for the governance of the Internet.

In 1998 the U.S. government, which had previ-

ously overseen the Internet’s infrastructure managed

as a non commercial, scientific and educational me-

dium, made a decision to begin to transition it to a

private sector entity which is called the Internet Cor-

poration for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

In the WSIS process there has been a lot of

contention over the form and processes of ICANN.

The concern is that ICANN was constructed as a

business and technical creation and that this process

marginalized governments.

Another way of describing this disagreement is

that there a contest about whether the development

and management of the Internet and its infrastructure

should be left to the market to determine or set by the

policies of governments.

Concern is being raised about what are the issues

pertaining to Internet governance. Stimulating the

spread of the Internet and who has access is one such

issue. Others include safeguarding the Internet’s

integrity, oversight of the distribution of Internet

addresses and domain names, determining the nature

of the public interest and how to protect that interest,

etc.

At the core of this dispute is the question of what

kinds of policy decisions need to be made about the

Internet and determining the process by which they

will be made.

The WSIS meetings include those who it is

claimed have an interest in questions of Internet

governance. These are called the “Stakeholders” and

thus far include representatives from:

governments

civil society (NGO’s)

private sector

Others are sometimes mentioned, such as the

scientific community, or the academic community.

In looking back at the origins of the Internet, I

feel it is helpful to start with the vision of JCR

Licklider, a psychologist, who was invited to begin a

research office within the U.S. Department of De-

fense in Oct 1962. Licklider called the office the

Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

Licklider was an experimental psychologist who had

studied the brain. For his PhD thesis he did pioneer-

ing work mapping where sound is perceived in the

brain of the cat. Licklider was also excited about the

development of the computer and of its potential to

further scientific research.

He was particularly interested in the potential of

the computer as a communication device. He saw it

as a means of helping to create a community of re-

searchers and of making it possible to strengthen the

education available to the whole society through

access to the ever expanding world of information.

He envisioned that increased social contact would

become available via the computer and computer

networks.

Licklider created a community of researchers

that he called the Intergalactic Network. He had in

mind a network of networks. Though it was too early

to create such a network when he began at IPTO in

1962, he set a foundation that inspired the research-

ers that followed him. He returned briefly to head the

IPTO from 1974-75 just at the time that the research

on the Internet was being developed.

In a paper Licklider wrote with another

researcher, Robert Taylor in 1968, Licklider outlined

a vision for a network of networks. Licklider’s vision

was of the creation and development of a human-

computer information utility. For this to develop and

be beneficial, everyone would have to have access.

The network of networks would be global. It

wouldn’t be just a collection of computers and of

information that people could passively utilize.

Rather his vision was of the creation of an on-line

community of people, where users would be active

participants and contributors to the evolving network

and to its development. To Licklider, it was critical

that the evolving network be built interactively.

Also Licklider believed that there would be a

Page 19

need for the public to be involved in the consider-

ations and decisions regarding network development.

He recognized that there would be problems with

pressure being put on government from other sectors

of society and that active citizen participation would

be needed to counter these pressures. Licklider,

writes:

“. . . many public spirited individuals must study,

model, discuss, analyze, argue, write, criticize, and

work out each issue and each problem until they reach

consensus or determine that none can be reached – at

which point there may be occasion for voting.”

Licklider believed that those interested in the

development of the global network he was proposing,

would have to be active in considering and determin-

ing its future. He also advocated that the future of

politics would require that people have access to com-

puters to be involved in the process of government.

Licklider writes:

“Computer power to the people is essential to the

realization of a future in which most citizens are

informed about, and interested and involved in the

process of government.”

Licklider and other computer pioneers of the

1950s and 1960s were concerned with the public

interest and how the computer and networking devel-

opments of the future would be maintained in the

public interest. Licklider writes that it is important to

not only seek to consider the public interest, but also

to make it possible for the public to be involved in the

decision making process:

“[Decisions] in the ‘public interest’ but also in

the interest of giving the public itself the means to

enter into the decision-making process that will shape

their future.”

Through the 1960s and into the early 1970s the

IPTO pioneered new and important computer technol-

ogy like the time-sharing of computers and then the

creation of packet switching and the ARPANET

computer network. The research was written up in

professional publications and widely distributed.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s it was recog-

nized that there was widespread interest in developing

computer networking in countries around the world.

A conference was held in 1972 at the Hilton Hotel, in

Washington DC from October 24-26. More than a

thousand researchers from countries around the world

attended and participated in the demonstration by

U.S. researchers that packet switching technology was

functional. The demonstration excited many of the

researchers. Also, however, international participa-

tion was recognized as critical to the development of

networking technology. “International participation

is no mere adornment to the Conference,” the orga-

nizers wrote. “It is a primary means towards achiev-

ing a diversity of interest and viewpoint.”

At the conference, a group was formed of those

working on networking developments in different

countries. It was called the International Network

Working Group (INWG).

The great interest worldwide in computer

networking was stimulating, but also it presented a

problem. To understand the nature of this problem,

it is helpful to consider the fact that there were

packet switching networks being developed in

different countries. These included Cyclades in

France, NPL in Great Britain, and ARPANET in the

U.S. These networks were different technically and

were under the ownership and control of different

political and administrative entities. Yet networking

researchers realized the importance of making it

possible for these networks to be able to intercon-

nect, to be able to communicate with each other.

This can be articulated as the Multiple Network

Problem.

There was the recognition that no one of these

different networks could become an international

network. There would need to be some means found

to make communication possible across the bound-

aries of different networks.

Collaboration among the researchers continued,

with a number of meetings and exchanges about how

it would be possible to design and create a means to

support communication across the boundaries of

these diverse networks.

At a meeting in Sept 1973 at the University of

Sussex, in Brighton, England, two U.S. researchers,

Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf presented a draft of a

paper proposing a philosophy and design to make it

possible to interconnect different networks. The

basic principle was that the changes to make commu-

nication possible would not be required of the

different networks, but of the packets of information

that were traveling through the networks.

To have an idea of the concept they proposed it

is helpful to look at a diagram to show what the

design would make possible.

In the gateways, changes to the packets would

be made to make it possible for them to go through

the networks. Also the gateways would be used to

Page 20

route the packets.

The philosophy and design for an Internet was

officially published in a paper over 30 years ago, in

May 1974. The paper is titled “A Protocol for Packet

Network Intercommunication” by Vinton Cerf and

Robert Kahn with thanks to others including several

from the international network research community

for their contributions and discussion.

Describing the process of creating the TCP/IP

protocol, Cerf explains that the effort at developing

the Internet protocols was international from its very

beginnings. Peter Kirstein, a British researcher at the

University College London (UCL) presented a paper

in Sept 1975 at a workshop in Laxenberg, Austria,

describing the international research process. This

workshop was attended by an international group of

researchers, including researchers from Eastern

Europe. Kirstein reports on research to create the

TCP/IP protocol being done by U.S. researchers,

working with British researchers and Norwegian

researchers. Here is the diagram that Kirstein presents

showing the participation of U.S. researchers via the

ARPANET, along with British researchers working at

the University College London (UCL) and Norwegian

researchers working at NORSAR.

Collaboration between the Norwegian, British

and U.S. researchers continued, demonstrated by the

research to create a satellite network, called

SATNET. Later researchers from Italy and Germany

became part of this work.

Describing this international collaboration, Bob

Kahn writes:

“SATNET... was a broadcast satellite system.

This is if you like an ETHERNET IN THE SKY with

drops in Norway (actually routed via Sweden) and

then the U.K., and later Germany and Italy.”

Networking continued to develop in the 1980s.

Among the networking efforts were those known as

Usenet (uucp), CSnet, NSFnet, FIDONET, BITNET,

Internet (TCP/IP), and others.

By the early 1990s TCP/IP became the protocol

adopted by networks around the world.

Figure 4(This diagram is from a memo by Vint Cerf, but it is

not an actual plan for the Internet)

Page 21

Figure 7In this map you can see the areas of the world

where TCP/IP networking was possible, the areas where

there was access to BITNET but not the Internet and the

areas there was only e-mail access via different networking

possibilities like uucp, FIDONET or OSI (X.25), etc.

It is also in the early 1990s that my co-author of

the book Netizens, Michael Hauben, did some

pioneering on-line research as part of class projects in

his studies at Columbia University. He explored

where the networks could reach and what those who

were on-line felt was the potential and the problems

of the developing Internet.

In the process he discovered that there were

people on-line who were excited by the fact that they

would participate in spreading the evolving network

and contributing so that it would be a helpful commu-

nication medium for others around the world. Michael

saw these users as citizens of the net or what at the

time was referred to as net.citizens

Shortening the term to ‘netizen,’ he identified

and documented the emergence of a new form of

citizenship, a form of global citizenship that is called

netizenship.

Describing these on-line citizens, the netizens,

Michael writes:

“They are people who understand that it takes

effort and action on each and everyone’s part to

make the Net a regenerative and vibrant community

and resource. Netizens are people who decide to

devote time and effort into making the Net, this new

part of our world, a better place.” (Michael Hauben,

1995)

What are the implications of this background to

the WSIS process? In October 1998, the U.S. gov-

ernment decided it needed to privatize the Internet’s

infrastructure. It created ICANN, the Internet Corpo-

ration for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN

provided only minimal input for governments in an

official way or for Internet users. There have been

many problems with the structure and functioning of

ICANN and lots of criticism.

The WSIS process led to holding a Summit in

Geneva in December 2003. A number of heads of

state attended. Issues raised included: Affordable

access available to all, what would be the role for

Governments in Internet governance? What would

be the role for others in Internet governance?

In February 2004 a workshop was held to try to

determine the components of Internet governance. At

the workshop there was a proposal for netizens to be

involved in Internet governance, recommending that

netizen involvement would make it possible to

counter the self interest of corporations who were

part of the Internet governance process. The follow-

ing diagram was submitted by Izumi Aizo of Japan.

It still shows only a minimal role for governments

but it introduces a role for netizens which is in line

with Licklider’s vision of the crucial nature of

citizen participation in the network’s development.

On-line, there is a forum involved with the

WSIS process. But few people who are involved

Page 22

with WSIS seem to pay attention to it. However, a

comment on the forum seemed quite relevant to the

problems being raised. The contributor to the forum,

Safaa Moussa was from Egypt. Moussa, too, echoed

Licklider’s concerns, writing that the crucial issues of

Internet governance involve the issue of public access

and the issue of how to widen the scope of public

engagement in the decision making process.

In September 2004, a meeting was held in

Geneva. Many contributions to that meeting seemed

in line with the vision of Licklider expressed to guide

computer network development. But there was con-

tention, also. Summarizing the conflict that has

developed in the WSIS process, a representative of

Egypt, H. E. Dr. Tarek Kamal, explains that there are

two conflicting view points. One view is that Internet

governance involves primarily technical and operative

issues which can be best coordinated by technical

groups and business organizations (this is the view of

those in favor of ICANN). The other view pointed to

by Dr. Kamal is that technical resource management

and other policy matters concerning the Internet are

social and public questions needing international and

government participation.

At the Sept 2004 meeting, supporting this second

viewpoint, a member of the Brazil delegation, Jose

Marcos Nogueira Viana, proposed the need to create

an inter-governmental forum – a meeting place for

governments to discuss Internet related issues. Also

putting public interest into the debate, was Hans Falk

Hoffman, a representative from the international

scientific institution CERN. He described how the

scientific community would continue to try to connect

universities and therefore major cities to the global

network with sufficient bandwidth at affordable

prices. A representative from the Chinese delegation

Madam Hu Quiheng, explained how:

“The Internet is a resplendent achievement of

human civilization in the 20th century. And that

government has to play the essential role in Internet

governance...creating a favorable environment boost-

ing Internet growth while protecting the public inter-

ests.”

I want to propose that this activity as part of the

WSIS process demonstrates the importance of under-

standing the fact that the Internet is international and

that there is a demand for an international manage-

ment process and structure.

Similarly, and perhaps even more important is

the need to understand how to determine the public

interest. In connection with this goal, I want to

propose the need to seriously consider whether the

goal of netizen empowerment is one of the important

policy issues to be injected into the WSIS process.

This would imply the need to provide means for the

on-line community to be able to be active partici-

pants in the WSIS process. In the on-line forum on

09 September 2004, Safaa Moussa wrote:

“This on-line forum constitutes an important

part of mobilizing efforts for the pursued effective

outcome. But, in view of the wide-ranging aspects

that Internet Governance covers, I believe it is duly

important to make it clearer the inclusion of on-line

contributions into the decision-making process.”

On-line interaction and feedback need to be seen

all along the decision-making and implementation

processes.

Another point I would like to underline is the

creation of on-line working groups to help integrate

and coordinate initiatives and efforts undertaken at

national regional and international levels.

(Safaa Moussa’s post can be seen at: http://

www.wsis-online.net/igov-forum/forums/message-

view?message_id=416031 )

The Tunis Summit will take place in November

2005. Will it be able to meet the challenges of the

continuing development and spread of the Internet?

There are promising signs that the public and inter-

national essence of the Internet as envisioned by JCR

Licklider which were so important in the origin and

development of the Internet are being taken up. But

will there be a means of welcoming the on-line

community, the community of netizens into the

WSIS process? Will there be a convergence of

netizen participation and defense of the public

essence of the Internet strong enough for the results

of the Tunis summit to be significant?

Page 23

[Editor’s note: In November 2005 there will be the

final event of the United Nations initiative known as

the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS).

The following was posted on-line as part of a forum

helping to prepare for the November 2005 event. We

include this post because it helps clarify some of the

issues. Saafa posted from Egypt. She also exchanged

e-mail with Ronda Hauben. One of her messages

follows her short post.]

WSIS Post

by Saafa Mousa

sfmoussa@aucegypt.edu

“Internet Governance covers different dimen-

sions and wide-ranging issues, hence daunting chal-

lenges in implementation. I would like to underline,

in this respect, the issue of public access and widen-

ing the scope of public engagement in decision-

making processes.”

message-view?message_id=349586

--------------

From: Saafa Mousa

To: Ronda Hauben

Subject: RE: about WSIS on-line forum

I would like to congratulate you on this Spring

issue. It brought up very important and key issues on

Internet Governance.

Referring to my posting in one of the WSIS on-

line forums, that you quoted in your interesting

magazine, I would like to underline the prime impor-

tance of on-line discussions and inputs to be taken

into consideration as part of the decision-making

process on issues related to the WSIS.

On-line interaction puts into effect the use of ICT

as a tool for quicker, more inclusive contribution to

any brainstorming mechanism or decision-making

process. It widens the spectrum of participation and

ideas involved, speeding up and enriching the debate.

The key issue here, when on-line forums are

available, is to integrate on-line contribution into the

WSIS participation process.

It should be noted, in this respect, that some

experts, whose viewpoints would be valuable, do not

have the time or the chance to be part of the official

process. That is why, I would consider it imperative

to have an all-inclusive mechanism making use of

the interactive participation that the Internet pro-

vides.

with my Best Wishes

[Editor’s note: We have gathered some documents

about the first successful international Usenet and e-

mail connections between Europe and Asia and

about getting the country code domain name for Viet

Nam.]

First Korean Post to the

International Usenet

From: Yoon Kim (y[email protected])

Subject: The land of morning calm says hello.

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Article-I.D.: kaist.827

Newsgroups: net.news.newsite

Posted: Sat Apr 21 07:27:41 1984

After a long period of not being able to post

news, we are finally introducing our self. We were

linked to the Usenet since the December of 1983.

Nice to say hi!

------------------------------------------------------------

Name of site? kaist

What the site is all about? Department of Computer

Science Korea Advanced Institute of Science and

Technology Running 4.2BSD on VAX 11/780 main-

ly developing System Development Network (SDN)

throughout Korea. And we will be the gateway to

SDN.

Name of contact person at site:

Prof. Kilnam Chon ...!hplabs!kaist!knchon

Yoon W. Kim ...!hplabs!kaist!yoonkim

Mailing address of contact person:

P.O. Box 150, Cheongryang, Seoul 131, Republic of

Korea, phone number of contact person: +82 2 966

1931 ext 3744, 4714.

Systems with whom mail & news articles are ex-

changed. Overseas links hplabs – we poll them 5

times weekly at 1200 baud UUCP. We only receive

the following news groups on-line:

net.announce net.bugs.4bsd

net.bugs.uucp net.dcom

Page 24

net.lan net.languages.st80

net.micro.68k net.micro.pc

net.news.adm net.news.sa

net.sources net.works

Domestic (SDN) links:

dacom – we poll them hourly/as needed at 1200

baud UUCP

ketri – we poll them hourly/as needed at 1200 baud

UUCP

kiet – we poll them hourly/as needed at 1200 baud

UUCP

snucom – we poll them hourly/as needed at 1200

baud UUCP

Comments.

The domestic links are connected via TCP/IP and

UUCP. Welcome any contacts.

[Editor’s note: In October 2004, Ronda Hauben and

Jay Hauben met Professor Werner Zorn in Berlin

Germany. They had heard that Zorn and Karlsruhe

University in Germany were involved with the first e-

mail connectivity between the People's Republic of

China and a foreign country. Zorn was happy to tell

about the historic events in which he took part. He

provided articles and papers documenting the early

history of computer networking in China and between

China and especially Germany. His story was very

informative toward understanding the international

origin and history of the Internet. What follows is

some of the story Zorn shared and that is told in the

documents.]

“Across the Great Wall”

The China-Germany E-mail

Connection 1987-1994

by Jay Hauben

In 1987 an e-mail connection was established

between the People’s Republic of China and the

Federal Republic of Germany. Many factors contrib-

uted to make that connection possible. The World

Bank extends credit and investments to developing

countries. In the early 1980s, it supported the import

of computers for use in universities in China. At that

time, export of computers from the U.S. to China

was forbidden by the U.S. government. The German

government also subscribed to the COCOM

export

rules but computers made by the German company

Siemens met the criteria to be allowed export to

China. In 1982, the World Bank Chinese University

Development Project II was allotted $145 million. It

used some of that money for the import into China of

19 Siemens BS2000 mainframe computers manufac-

tured in Germany.

Werner Zorn

who would play a crucial role in

the first China-Germany e-mail connection had

experience with Siemens computers. He gained that

experience in his work as Head of the Computing

Center IRA (Informatik Rechnerabteilung) and

Professor of Computer Science at Karlsruhe Univer-

sity, a major institute for education and research in

western Germany. Zorn’s specialty was computer

networks and performance analysis. Zorn was leader

of the project which worked in 1983 and 1984 to

make the first German e-mail connection with the

U.S. Computer Science Network (CSNET)

. Also, in

1983, he began a friendly and collaborative relation

with Professor Wang Yuen Fung (Yunfeng Wang),

Senior Advisor of the Chinese Institute of Computer

Applications (ICA)

in Beijing. That was when they

organized the first Chinese Siemens Computer User

Conference (CASCO – Symposium ‘83)

which took

place in September of that year. The ICA which was

under the Chinese State Commission of Machinery

Industry was to play the crucial role on the Chinese

side in establishing and maintaining the China-Ger-

many e-mail connectivity from 1987-1994.

At the first CASCO symposium in Beijing, Zorn

gave a keynote speech on the German Research

Network (DFN) project. He also led a seminar on the

same topic. One of the Chinese interpreters chal-

lenged Zorn, remarking that lecturing was not

enough. Would Zorn also do something more for

China? That comment planted a seed that grew as the

warmth and friendship developed between the

German visitors and their Chinese hosts. They

should try to do something together. Professor Wang

encouraged a Chinese-German computer network

collaboration.

The preparatory work for a China-Germany e-

mail connection began a few months after the

Germany-U.S. CSNET connectivity had been estab-

lished. The Siemens BS2000 was to be the computer

Page 25

at ICA available for use for the e-mail connection. It

was hoped that the China-Germany e-mail connection

would be a step toward connecting China with the

growing CSNET

, a network begun in the U.S. in

1980 to provide e-mail connections among university

computer science departments. To connect to CSNET,

a computer would need particular communication

functionality as part of its operating system. The

specifications or protocols describing that functional-

ity for CSNET were the CSNET/PMDF transport

protocols. This PMDF had not yet been implemented

in the Siemens BS2000 operating system. In late

1984, Zorn decided to undertake this task together

with his students but only as a background job.

Including the lower levels, it took at least two years to

complete. The work was financially supported after

November 1985 by the government of the West

German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, under Prime

Minister Lothar Spaeth.

CSNET e-mail traffic to and from Germany was

routed using the X.25 lower level protocols. The X.25

protocols were the result of an effort to create a

universal and global packet-switched network on

what was then the bit-error prone analog telephone

system. Much of the X.25 system is a description of

the rigorous error correction needed to achieve this.

In 1985, there was no physical path to carry X.25 e-

mail traffic between China and Germany. To have

such a path, telephone lines with switches that could

route X.25 e-mail traffic were needed. China had

begun to develop a network of such switches for

internal X.25. So had Germany. X.25 e-mail traffic

could be transported within China and within Ger-

many. But there was no X.25 link between them.

With the help of the PKTELCOM data network

administered by the Beijing Telecommunications

Administration, the Karlsruhe team made contact with

the Italian carrier Italcable which had some leased

lines between China and Italy. Italcable agreed to

open its switches to route the anticipated X.25 e-mail

traffic between China and Germany. Italcable was

able to open its switches on Aug. 26 1986. From that

day on, reliable remote computer-to-computer dia-

logue was available between Karlsruhe University

and ICA through PKTELCOM. This channel would

make possible the communication necessary one year

later during the implementation phase of the China-

Germany e-mail connection. Also, as soon as the

computer scientists at ICA and Karlsruhe could

implement X.25, PMDF, and other protocols on the

Siemens BS2000 computer at ICA in Beijing, the

China-Germany connection would have an X.25

route through Italy.

In late summer 1987, Zorn was in Beijing for

the third CASCO conference where he gave the

keynote address on “Computer Networks”. But also

he was there to work with the staff of the ICA to set

up the first e-mail connectivity between China and

Germany. His team at Karlsruhe University had

succeeded in getting the PMDF protocols to work on

their Siemens BS2000 computer. In a little over two

weeks, September 4 to 20, 1987, assisted by the staff

of ICA, Zorn with his team implemented within the

operating system of the ICA Siemens 7760/BS2000

computer the necessary protocols and installed the

necessary communications equipment to make

possible e-mail connectivity with Karlsruhe. For the

lower three OSI layers, X.25 with PAD

access over

telephone lines were used. For the higher layers, the

Karlsruhe BS2000/PMDF implementation of the

CSNET protocols was used. On September 14, 1987,

Professor Zorn and the ICA staff achieved the

breakthrough they needed, host-to-host connectivity

with Karlsruhe University. Zorn was able then to

leave half of his team in Beijing to work with their

Chinese colleagues to finish the job.

Before Zorn left, the joint German and Chinese

team composed an e-mail message with the subject

line, "First Electronic Mail from China to Germany".

The message began in German and English, “Ueber

die Grosse Mauer erreichen wie alle Ecken der Welt”

"Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in

the world." The message, with cc:s to Lawrence

Landweber, David Farber, Dennis Jennings, and to

themselves was signed by Professor Werner Zorn for

the University of Karlsruhe Computer Science

Department (Informatik Rechnerabteilung) and

Professor Wang Yuen Fung for the ICA. Eleven

coworkers are also listed as signatories, Michael

Finken, Stefan Paulisch, Michael Rotert, Gerhard

Wacker and Hans Lackner on the Karlsruhe side and

Dr. Li Cheng Chiung, Qiu Lei Nan, Ruan Ren

Cheng, Wei Bao Xian, Zhu Jiang and Zhao Li Hua

on the ICA side, suggesting the complexity of the

task. Zorn mentioned Dr. Li Cheng Chiung, in

particular, as playing an important role as the Direc-

tor of the ICA Computing Center. Successful con-

nectivity was achieved in a few more days. On

September 20, 1987, the first e-mail message, the

one composed on September 14, could actually be

Page 26

Figure 12Letter from Stephen Wolff, November 8, 1987

sent to the VAX 11/750 computer at Karlsruhe.

Figure 11The First e-mail Message to Leave China

(http://www.internetdigital.org/image/firstemail.jpg)

The transmission of this first e-mail message

went over an X.25 connection. At ICA, the sender

dialed using a 300 baud modem to one of the ports of

the PKTELCOM Beijing X.25 PAD, located at the

Beijing PTT. PKTELCOM Beijing was connected

over a satellite link to ITAPAC, which was the X.25

packet network of Italy. From there the message was

sent via a gateway to the German X.25 network,

DATEX-P, to be delivered to the Karlsruhe Siemens

host. The Siemens host in Karlsruhe was connected

via the Karlsruhe local area network with a VAX

11/750. That computer “irau11.germany.csnet” acted

as the central CSNET node for Germany. It polled the

CSNET relay in Boston several times a day. Thus the

CSNET node in Beijing was, with that first e-mail

message, fully integrated into CSNET and via

CSNET to the rest of the e-mail world. The official

status was however only experimental. At that time

the node-name was "beijing", so the simplest address

from Karlsruhe to Beijing was li@beijing. From then

on, the Beijing node normally tried to connect with

Karlsruhe once a day. Sometimes there was a delay

due to power off and other failures in between. Also,

there was often some noise on the line.

With this e-mail connection, the first step was

taken for the people of China to begin online commu-

nication with people around the world.

E-mail connectivity between China and Ger-

many was only the necessary technical precondition

for an e-mail service. Worldwide reachability was

already achieved and operational on Sept. 20, 1987.

What was missing was the official approval of the

U.S. authorities that funded CSNET. The U.S.

National Science Foundation (NSF) was the um-

brella institution for all CSNET networking within

the U.S. and also abroad at that time. Immediately

after the technical connectivity was achieved, Zorn

worked with Wang to win acceptance from the NSF

for worldwide e-mail traffic to and from China. With

the help of Lawrence Landweber

, the Chairman of

the CSNET project, and support from Dave Farber

and Ira Fuchs, acceptance by the NSF was achieved

less than two months later. On November 8, 1987, in

a letter to the executive committees of CSNET and

BITNET, Stephen Wolff, Director of the NSF

Division of Networking and Communications Re-

search and Infrastructure welcomed the CSNET e-

mail connectivity with China. This letter was the

official political approval, of what technically was

already implemented.

Page 27

Without Wolff's letter, the China-Germany e-

mail connection would have been vulnerable to a

cutoff if the NSF decided to deny forwarding of e-

mail messages to and from ICA in Beijing. Zorn

considers November 8, 1987 as the time China

became officially connected with the rest of the world

via the CSNET e-mail system. E-mail received from

China at Karlsruhe would be relayed from there to

whichever host worldwide it was addressed. And the

reverse, any host worldwide could send mail to ICA

in Beijing and it would be relayed from there to users

of the China Academic Net (CANET) throughout

China as well as to remote dialogue users in other

Chinese institutions outside CANET. The interna-

tional computer science community and Chinese

students abroad who learned of this connectivity

answered with their warm congratulations.

Still these were small steps. Even with the

support of the Chinese State Science and Technology

Commission (SSTC), hardly any Chinese institution

and no individual scientist could afford to send or

receive e-mail messages to or from abroad. That was

because X.25 for international traffic increased in cost

as the volume of e-mail traffic increased. The cost on

the Chinese side included charges for every message

received as well as sent. Zorn estimated that longer e-

mail messages could cost a professor the equivalent of

a whole month's salary. The charges, typically $2000

to $5,000 per month paid by each side were more of

a burden for the Chinese side than the German side

E-mail usage was thus severely restricted.

But for the five years during which expensive e-

mail connectivity was the only network connectivity

that could reach the rest of the world, China prepared

itself to truly join the Internet.

In November 1990, the ICA registered the .CN

country code domain name for China, again with

crucial help from Zorn and Karlsruhe University.

Qian Tianbai

, an ICA Engineer was appointed as the

Administrative Contact for .CN on the Chinese side.

During the following four years, the university

network center in Karlsruhe ran the primary domain

name server for .CN on their iraun1.ira.uka.de VAX

3500. The domain name service was fully operational

in January 1991. From then on e-mail service was

available in and to and from China with China's own

domain name.

With encouragement from the Chinese govern-

ment, knowledge and understanding of international

computer networking was spreading in China, espe-

cially in the scientific and computer communities.

The Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) be-

longing to the Chinese Academy of Science opened

an e-mail connection in 1989 with its partner in the

U.S., the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)

in California. Message Handling Systems (MHS)

were set up in 1990 between the German Research

Network (DFN) and the Chinese Research Network

(CRN) and between the Beijing Tsinghua University

Network (TUNET) and its partner in Canada at the

University of British Columbia (UBC). Also,

CHINAPAC an X.25 public telephone infrastructure

was developed and used for e-mail exchanged within

China.

The e-mail-only phase of connectivity between

China and the rest of the world through Karlsruhe in

Germany came to an end in 1994. That is when IHEP

worked together with SLAC to take the next big step

in connectivity between the people of China and the

people of the world. On May 17, 1994, IHEP and

SLAC established a full TCP/IP connection between

China and the U.S.

The use of the TCP/IP protocols

allows data packets to take independent paths which

meant the cost for e-mail could come down and file

transfer (FTP) and remote logon (Telnet) would now

be available. That connectivity opened the Internet to

China and China to the Internet.

Some of the story of the Internet in China after

1994 is told online at a number of web sites

2004

was the Tenth Anniversary of TCP/IP connectivity.

In early 2005, it was estimated that there were at

least 100 million Internet users in China and Internet

use was growing at perhaps 30% a year. There was

a dynamic netizens movement developing. All this

connectivity began with the first e-mail message to

leave China. It can only make computer network

pioneers like Wang Yuen Fung, Werner Zorn, and Li

Cheng Chiung proud of the early e-mail connection

they opened and celebrated by any of us who respect

the progress the Internet represents for human

society.

The author wants to thank Werner Zorn in Germany, without

whom many of the details and this story would have remained

unknown to him. In many ways he is a co-author. I thank him

and Dr. Li Cheng Chiung in China for encouragement to tell

this story. They are keeping the pioneer spirit alive.

1. COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral

Export Controls, was established during the Cold War to put an

Page 28

embargo on Western exports to the Socialist countries. It

established multilateral export controls for strategic and military

goods/materiel and technologies to proscribed destinations.

2. For over 30 years, Werner Zorn was affiliated with Karlsruhe

University in Karlsruhe, Germany. Today he is a professor of

Communications Systems at the Hasso-Plattner Institute

(www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de) at the University of Potsdam near

Berlin. The papers he gave the author include, “Wie China mit

den internationalen Rechnernetzen verbunden wurde” In: PIK –

Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation 11

(1988), No. 1 pages 22-29, and “Die Entwicklun des Internet in

China” written with Qian Tianbai, June, 1998. See also,

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2004/06/21/2349.htm

3. When Karlsruhe University joined CSNET in July 1984,

Werner Zorn was appointed the Administrative Liaison. At that

time, Karlsruhe University was one of two gateways between

CSNET and European research networks. (see CSNET NEWS

Summer 1984, No 5, pages 5 and 6). His e-mail address on

CSNET was zorn@germany.

4. The Institute of Computer Applications was located at the

Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). It was created to provide

data processing and computer services to small and medium

organizations that could not afford their own computer installa-

tions. The ICA became a foremost computer networking center.

From 1987 to 1994 it was the hub for CESNET e-mail exchange

between China and the rest of the world.

5. CASCO- Chinesische Anwender von Siemens Computern.

6. CSNET was the result of a proposal in 1979 submitted by

Lawrence Landweber at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in

the U.S. to make computer network connections among U.S. and

other university computer science departments. It started as a

simple telephone-based e-mail relay network which became

known as PhoneNet. In February, 1984, Israel became the first

international node on the CSNET, soon followed by Korea,

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan.

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25

8. A PAD is a device that receives data from one or more

terminals, assembles the data into packets and sends the data

packets out to the hosts it serves. It can do the reverse, receiving

data packets from network hosts, it can translate them into

character streams that can be displayed at terminals.

9. When Zorn read the above article he wrote to me about

Lawrence Landweber, "Without his everlasting support from

1984 and after, the whole work would not have been possible."

Zorn also wrote that the e-mail connection project was strongly

supported by many leading network people worldwide. He

named, besides Landweber, Dave Farber, Ira Fuchs, Richard

Mandelbaum and Stephen Wolff in the U.S., Wang in China and

for example Dennis Jennings in the U.S. and Daniel Karrenberg

in the Netherlands who attended the first CANET conference in

Beijing in March 1988 and Kilnam Chon in Korea who was

active in networking in the Asia/Pacific Rim region. (email

messages April 28 and May 18, 2005).

10. For computer networking activity, ICA was financially

better off than were the Chinese universities because ICA was

funded by the Ministry of Machinery Industry while the

universities were funded by the Ministry of Education which

could not distribute to each university as much money as ICA

received.

11. Qian Tianbai is sometime given credit for the first e-mail

message from China to Germany. (See for example

http://202.84.17.11/english/china_abc/internet.htm.) This does

not appear to be correct. Dr. Li Cheng Chiung who was the

director of the ICA from 1980 to 1990 writes that Qian Tianbai

was an Engineer at the ICA from 1980 to 1998 but that he was

in the U.S. studying at the CST Company for the whole of the

year in 1987 including when the first e-mail message was sent.

He includes that Mr. Qian was a good engineer who joined the

CANET project in 1990 and was made a Senior Engineer in

1993 (e-mail messages to the author May 10, May 11, and May

17, 2005). Online references indicate that Qian Tianbai was a

Vice-Chief Engineer at ICA in 1992. Werner Zorn writes that

his e-mail contact with Qian Tianbai started not before 1990 (e-

mail message to the author May 3, 2005). It can be noted that

in the first e-mail message from China to Germany (see above),

Qian Tianbai does not appear among the 13 signatories. Sadly,

Qian Tianbai died of a sudden heart attack on May 8, 1998.

12. http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-report/ID

=890202373777:497422478/fromPage=CN

13. See for example,

http://www.internetdigital.org/p222shinianqingdian.htm

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;854351844;fp;2

;fpid;1

http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/SubmittedDocuments/

archivedpapers/Fall2003/pdf_files/Internet%20and%20demo

cracy(xiguang).pdf

Domain Name for

Viet Nam

(See http://www.apng.org/xoops/archives/vietnam

.net.description.txt)

From [email protected] Mon Sep 14 1992

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

Received: fro m cos mos.kaist.ac.k r b y

buddle.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/SMI-4.1)

id AA04122; Mon, 14 Sep 92 10:44:35 KDT

Errors-To: [email protected]

Received: by cosmos.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/SMI-4.1)

Page 29

id AA27561; Mon, 14 Sep 92 10:47:14 KST

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 10:47:14 KST

From: [email protected] (Kilnam Chon)

Message-Id:

Errors-To: [email protected]

T o : j a n g m i @ c o s m o s . k a i s t . a c . k r ,

Subject: mail on Viet Nam during our holidays

Status: OR

------------------------------------------------------------

From [email protected] Wed Sep 9 1992

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

Received: from kum.kaist.ac.kr by cosmos.kaist.ac.kr

(4.1/SMI-4.1)

id AA09258; Wed, 9 Sep 92 16:09:27 KST

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(4.1/KUM-0.1)

id AA03709; Wed, 9 Sep 92 16:11:39 KST

Message-Id:

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SMTP (PP)

id <[email protected]>; Wed, 9 Sep 1992

Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 9:11:22 MET DST

From: “Prof. Dr. W. Zorn” <[email protected]>

Cc: zorn@ira.uka.de, rotert@ira.uka.de,

Subject: Domain “vn” for Vietnam

Status: OR

Kilnam,

Hello from Hanoi! Within a common project between

ioi -Hanoi (institute of informatics Prof. Khang) and

Xlink Karlsruhe we have just set up an experimental

IP connection. In order to establish an e- mail service

appropriately the definition of the top level domain

“vn” for Vietnam is needed. Am I right, that this falls

into your responsibility within apccirn? From the

Xlink side we can offer to operate as the primary

DNS. Could you post me a message how you ‘ld like

to proceed!? Steve Glodstein whom I asked in Kobe

had apparently no objections but I’ve just now con-

tacted him again as we are a good step further. I’ll

stay in Hanoi until Sept 16. and would be lucky to

hear from you.

Best Regards, Werner

-----------------------------------------------------------

From [email protected] Thu Sep 10 1992

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

R e c e i v e d : f r o m k u m . k a i s t . a c . k r b y

cosmos.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/SMI-4.1)

id AA14397; Thu, 10 Sep 92 18:01:49 KST

Errors-To: [email protected]

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(4.1/KUM-0.1)

id AA14017; Thu, 10 Sep 92 18:03:58 KST

Message-Id:

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SMTP (PP)

id <[email protected]>; Thu, 10 Sep 1992

Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 11:04:25 MET DST

From: “Prof. Dr. W. Zorn” <[email protected]>

[email protected], [email protected]

Cc: zorn@ira.uka.de, rotert@ira.uka.de,

Subject: Domain “VN”

Status: OR

Kilnam,

Enclosed you get the replies from Steve and Larry.

What is Apccirn going to do on behalf of the “vn”

registration? Do we have to coordinate something

between you and Steve?

Waiting for your message with best Regards

Werner

----- Forwarded message # 1:

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id aa18484; 9 Sep 92 13:07 MET DST

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with SMTP (PP)

id <[email protected]>; Wed, 9 Sep 1992

Received: by cise.cise.nsf.gov

id <[email protected]ov>; Wed, 9 Sep 92

Message-Id:

<[email protected]ov>

To: Scott Williamson <[email protected]>

Cc: zorn@ira.uka.de, nipper@ira.uka.de,

Subject: Pls send domain registration forms

Date: Wed, 09 Sep 92 07:07:02 EDT

From: Steve Goldstein--Ph +1-202-357-9717

<[email protected]ov>

Page 30

Dear Scott,

Please send Domain Registration Templates to Prof.

Zorn to enable him to assist in setting up a connection

from Hanoi to Karlsruhe.

It should be noted that the United States prohibits our

trading with Viet Nam. Therefore, no Internet connec-

tions to the United States from Viet Nam will be

permitted. However, this does not prohibit the regis-

tering of an Internet domain for Viet Nam.

Thanks, Steve G.

------- Forwarded Message

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 6:53:59 MET DST

From: “Prof. Dr. W. Zorn” <[email protected]>

To: [email protected]ov

Cc: zorn@ira.uka.de, nipper@ira.uka.de,

Subject: Domain “vn” ?

Steve,

Hello from Hanoi! I am in the institute of Prof Khang

for 2 weeks and we just now set up a connection from

Hanoi to Karlsruhe that allows us to establish an e-

mail service. In order to administrate that properly

we should define the domain “vn” officially.

Could/would you help us?

Many Regards, Werner

------- End of Forwarded Message

----- Forwarded message # 2:

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id ab28940; 9 Sep 92 18:31 MET DST

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iraun1.ira.uka.de with SMTP (PP)

id <[email protected]>; Wed, 9 Sep 1992

Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 11:28:27 -0500

From: “L.H. Landweber” <[email protected]>

Message-Id:

Received: by parmesan.cs.wisc.edu; Wed, 9 Sep 92

Subject: Re: Hello from Hanoi!

Werner the link to Viet Nam sounds great. My under-

standing is that nobody objects these days to links

involving just e-mail. Even Cuba now has a regis-

tered domain.

Steve is the person to help with this. Please keep me

informed. I will check with him separately to see if

there are any problems.

regards, Larry

----- End of forwarded messages

------------------------------------------------------------

From [email protected] Thu Sep 10 19:59:48 1992

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

R e c e i v e d : f r o m k u m . k a i s t . a c . k r b y

cosmos.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/SMI-4.1)

id AA14657; Thu, 10 Sep 92 19:59:46 KST

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(4.1/KUM-0.1)

id AA14661; Thu, 10 Sep 92 20:01:53 KST

Message-Id:

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SMTP (PP)

id <[email protected]>; Thu, 10 Sep 1992

Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 13:02:27 MET DST

From: Institute of Informatics Viet Nam

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Message from Prof. Khang-Hanoi

Status: OR

Dear Professor Kilnam Chon,

this is the first message being sent to you from

ioi-Hanoi through our just newly established network

connection to Karlsruhe. We would be very happy

and thankful to you, if you could support us for the

further developement of our network here in Viet-

nam. We would especially interested in setting up a

direct link between Hanoi and Seoul as well as with

other locations in the Asian Pacific Rim. We would

be very happy getting a reply message from you!

Kindest Regards, Bach Hung Khang

Page 31

[Editor’s note: A Korean friend sent us the result of a

little research she did looking for when the word

“netizen”, pronounced the same in English and in

Korean, first appeared in the South Korean media.]

Netizens in Korea

by U. Nahm