(graphic from Com-

municating in the World

of Humans and ICTs by

Boldur E. Barbat)

The Amateur

Computerist

Spring 2005 Netizenship Around the World Volume 13 No. 1

Table of Contents

Netizens and the News. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Korean Netizens Change Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3

Crisis in U.S. Media & the 2004 Election. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 11

Netizen and Professional Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 15

Effect of Net on Professional News Media.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 17

International Origin of the Internet/WSIS.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 38

WSIS Post.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 50

First Korean Post to International Usenet.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 51

China-Germany E-mail Connection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 53

Domain Name for Viet Nam.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 63

Netizens in Korea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 68

XXII International Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 71

Homo Sociologicus Netizenship

Netizens and the News: Editorial

In this issue of the Amateur Computerist we include the text of a

talk by Oh Yeon Ho describing how he started the OhMyNews on-line

newspaper in Korea five years ago. He explains how Korean netizens

were welcomed by the new on-line newspaper under the slogan “Every

citizen is a reporter.” The newspaper began with 727 citizen reporters

contributing to it in 2000 and by 2005 35,000 citizen reporters were part

Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Page 1

of those submitting articles. Mr. Oh describes how this grassroots

contribution strengthened both the Korean Netizens Movement and the

OhmyNews newspaper. While there are such netizen journalistic

endeavors in Korean (OhmyNews) and in Germany (Telepolis), there is

none currently functioning in the U.S. The article “The Crisis in the U.S.

Media and the 2004 Election,” considers how the 2004 election in the

U.S. exposed the political weakness of the U.S. which doesn’t have such

a citizen press. Also in this issue is a response to the Crisis article which

explores the importance of the professional journalist and the role of the

professional journalist in creating a media that serves the public.

To provide some perspective to this discussion about the type of on-

line press the Internet makes possible, we’ve included in this issue, the

article “The Effect of the Net on the Professional News media” written

in 1994-5 by Michael Hauben. This article considers the future and

proposes that the press will change its content in order to accommodate

the form of media that will be brought about by the Internet. It is helpful

to see the view of the future of the press that Michael proposed 10 years

ago and to consider how much of the view he presents of the impact the

Net will have on the media has come to pass. Also in this issue we

include an article on the World Summit on the Information Society

(WSIS). This is a U.N. initiative which has been going on for the past

several years in which countries from around the world, and corporate

and civil society entities explore what will be the future governing

structure for the infrastructure of the Internet and how will access to the

Internet be extended to people around the world. WSIS will culminate

in a meeting in Tunis in November 2005. (See articles in this issue pp.

18-24)

Also in this issue we include some e-mail exchanges and on-line

posts which consider how the on-line user, the netizen could be included

(but isn’t currently) in the process of drafting WSIS proposals. The

WSIS meetings present a contest with the continuing role of ICANN in

the governance and management of the Internet’s infrastructure. (For

earlier articles on ICANN and the issues involved in WSIS, see Amateur

Computerist Newsletter issues Vol 8 no 2, Vol 9 nos 1 and 2, 1998 and

1999 at

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/).

To give a flavor of the early spread of computer network connectiv-

Page 2

ity around the world, this issue includes the first post from Korea to the

international Usenet in 1984. There is a detailed article on how the first

e-mail connection between the People's Republic of China and the rest

of the e-mail world was achieved in 1987. Also included is an e-mail

exchange in 1992 that helped begin international computer communica-

tion to and from Vietnam. This issue also includes the result of a search

in Korean newspapers for early references starting in 1994 to the

concept of netizen.

The issue concludes with the proposal for a symposium about

“Computer Networks, the Internet and Netizens: Their Impact on

Science and Society” that was presented for the History of Science

Congress which will take place in Beijing, China this summer. Sadly, it

was not possible to find funding for several of the participants, so only

a shortened version of the proposed symposium will take place.

However, it is hoped that it will be possible to find funding so the whole

symposium will take place somewhere sometime soon.

We expect that netizenship will continue to spread and we hope to

have future issues which follow and document this development as it

spreads around the world.

[Editor’s note: The following is the text of an address by Oh Yeon Ho

founder of Ohmynews given at the Harvard Internet and Society

Conference on Dec. 11, 2004.]

Korean Netizens Change Journalism

and Politics – The Marriage of

Democracy and Technology

By Oh Yeon Ho

Last summer, I published a book about the OhmyNews story. The

book is titled OhmyNews: A Special Product of Korea.

In the book, I look back at the last four years of our experiment to

Page 3

change traditional journalism. At one point I wrote: “Who could have

imagined that the Internet, which was first developed in America for

military purposes, crossed the Pacific Ocean to Korea, and bloomed

flowers of citizen participatory journalism.”

Yes, the Internet originated in America. But citizen participatory

Internet journalism started first in Korea, with the slogan “Every citizen

is a reporter.” The slogan is not only about changing journalism, but

about changing all of society. That’s why, I believe, the Berkman Center

invited me to share the experiences of OhmyNews and Korean netizens

with you.

Questions from Americans

Before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, I met some

famous Americans who were interested in OhmyNews. These included

Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post, former Vice President Al

Gore, and a liberal Non Governmental Organization (NGO) leader.

The meetings were respectively arranged at the request of the

Americans. When I met Donald Graham last summer in his Washington

Post office, his main question dealt with whether the Ohmynews model

is the future of 21

century journalism.

I met Mr. Gore last month when he visited Seoul. He asked me

many detailed questions off-the-record, so I cannot reveal what was said.

But I got the sense that he is really interested in how the Internet can

change politics.

And a NGO leader, in a San Francisco meeting last summer, asked

me “How should we use the Internet to see Mr. Bush go home?”

The three Americans all have different backgrounds and different

purposes in meeting me. But they asked the same questions: “Does the

political change that OhmyNews started only work in Korea? Can it

work elsewhere? How about in America?”

Right after I learned that Mr. Bush was reelected, my Korean

friends asked me “Korean netizens changed the face of politics, but

American netizens couldn’t. Why is that?” I believe that many American

netizens who are disappointed with Mr. Bush’s reelection may have

asked themselves the same question.

Page 4

I cannot answer that question directly because I am not an expert in

American politics. You, as Americans, may have the answers. Instead,

I’ll go into what OhmyNews has done in terms of “new journalism” in

the serial drama of political change in Korea in recent years.

Confrontation of Old and New media:

The last day of Korea’s 2002 presidential election

Let’s look back to the last day of the 2002 Korean Presidential

election campaign. Just eight hours before the start of voting, at around

10:30 p.m. on December 18

, Mr. Chung Mong Joon, Roh Moo Hyun’s

campaign partner suddenly withdrew his support. This astonished the

whole nation.

Because the competition between the reform candidate Roh Moo

Hyun, and conservative candidate Lee Hae Chang was too close to call,

Mr Chung’s withdrawal was a kind of atomic bomb.

Interestingly enough, the news provoked a last minute confrontation

between Old media and New media. The conservative mainstream

newspaper Chosun Daily changed its editorial and posed a question to

voters along the lines of ‘Mr. Chung withdrew his support for Roh, will

you?’

But reform-minded netizens including OhmyNews readers quickly

mobilized overnight to fight Mr. Chung’s atomic bomb. They visited

many Internet bulletin boards and posted urgent messages like “Mr.

Chung betrayed his party, Roh Moo Hyun is in danger. Save the country,

please vote for Roh.” They even called their conservative parents to

persuade them, crying “If Roh Moo Hyun fails, I will die.”

OhmyNews reported Mr. Chung’s withdrawal and updated the story

of netizens’ reactions every 30 minutes, all night long. The number of

hits for that main breaking story was 720,000 in just 10 hours. Thanks

to the nonstop reporting through the night, OhmyNews was the epicenter

of reform-minded netizens.

On the night of December 19

, when Mr. Roh’s victory was

confirmed, I wrote on OhmyNews: “As of today, the long-lasting media

power in Korea has changed. The power of media has shifted from

conservative mainstream newspapers to netizens and Internet media.”

Page 5

Some critics said I exaggerated. Maybe that’s the case. My

declaration was made not by evaluating the last day’s combat and the

final results, but by two years of watching the Roh Moo Hyun campaign

for the presidency.

When Roh Moo Hyun began his bid for the presidency only one

congressman supported him. And almost all conservative newspapers

ignored or undervalued his campaign.

But netizens were different. They strongly supported Roh because

the young netizens, in their 20s to early 40s, wanted to reform Korean

politics. Whereas conservative media ignored Roh’s campaign, netizens

set their own agenda and succeeded. The two-year process was a very

significant example of the shift of media power.

Here is another dramatic example. In March this year, president Roh

was impeached by the conservative party controlled congress. The

conservative press were waiting for the Constitutional Court’s final

decision, hoping to see President Roh resign. But netizens saved him.

Let’s see a video clip of how OhmyNews reported their on-line and off-

line demonstrations.

Power shifts: standards are challenged

Each political scholar has his own definition of power. I would say

power comes from established standards. Those who have power set the

standards, and in this way are able to maintain their power.

In the media market, too, they say “this is the standard, follow me.”

The standards of 20

century journalism have been created and

controlled by professional newspaper journalists.

But these standards are challenged by new Internet journalists: the

netizens or citizen reporters.

They challenge the traditional media logic of who is a reporter, what

is news, what is the best news style, and what is newsworthy.

An American journalist, Creed Black, defined news like this: News

is anything that happens to or near publishers and their friends. But in

this internet age, we can say “News is anything that happens to or near

netizens and their friends.”

Page 6

The true internet media: two levels of interactivity

When we opened OhmyNews in 2000, we promised our readers that

we would make OhmyNews the first true internet newspaper in the

world. What does it mean when we say “true internet newspaper”? For

me it is about making true interactivity work.

There are two levels of interactivity in news production and

consumption. The low and the high. Low level interactivity is when

professional reporters write, and readers send e-mail or post comments

on bulletin boards.

Then what is high level interactivity? In this process, reporters and

readers are equal. Readers can change themselves into reporters any time

he or she wants.

So, our main concept, every citizen is a reporter, is not about tactics,

it is about philosophy.

By the way, I didn’t invent the concept “every citizen is a reporter.”

I just restored a long-forgotten concept. Just think back to the time when

face-to-face communication was the only way to deliver news. Before

newspapers and professional journalists, every citizen was a reporter.

There was true interactivity. OhmyNews restored that.

We started OhmyNews with 727 citizen reporters, now we have

about 35,000.

Our citizen reporters come from all walks of life. From elementary

school students to professors. Citizen reporters submit between 150 and

200 posts a day, over 70 percent of the news content for OhmyNews.

We do pay our citizen reporters, but the fee is small. It is not in the

same league as mainstream media. If the article goes up to Top News,

we pay 20,000 won, about 20 dollars.

Many foreign correspondents who visited OhmyNews have said to

me, “It is difficult to understand why citizen reporters enjoy writing

articles for such small money.”

I answered, “They are writing articles to change the world, not to

earn money.”

We give them something that money cannot. We make OhmyNews

a public square and a playground for the citizen reporter and readers.

The traditional paper says “I produce, you read” but we say “we produce

and we read and we change the world together.”

Page 7

So our main concept “every citizen is a reporter” is not only in the

slogan. It is real. It is to change the world. That’s the power of

OhmyNews.

The most profitable article in the world

Netizens can participate not only by sending articles but also writing

readers’ comments and paying a voluntary subscription fee.

At the very bottom of every article, we provide a bulletin board for

reader’s comments. When the issue of the article is hot, the number of

readers’ comments can easily exceed 100. Sometimes there are as many

as 3,000.

We started the reader’s comment system for the first time in Korean

media market in 2000 when we opened OhmyNews. Now nearly all news

sites – including newspapers’ web sites and portal sites – follow us.

Readers can read every OhmyNews article for free. But netizens can

also contribute to OhmyNews by paying a voluntary subscription fee

using their mobile phone or credit card.

Several weeks ago, a famous philosophy professor named Kim

Young Ok wrote an article for OhmyNews about the Constitutional

Court’s decision on South Korea’s capital relocation. Kim argued that

the unelected court’s decision was undemocratic.

The article struck netizens. About 6,000 netizens contributed

between one dollar and 10 dollars (the maximum). In the end, professor

Kim earned over 24,000 dollars, roughly the average annual wage of

South Korea. Kim’s article may be the most profitable in the world.

Netizens set that fantastic record.

Here is another example. A woman citizen reporter, whose small

business was having financial troubles, wrote an article about her

situation. Our readers were moved by her story. In just two days, 650

OhmyNews readers contributed about 3,000 dollars.

Why in Korea? The People prepared

Two years ago, a team of Japanese journalists visited our office and

learned about OhmyNews. After they returned to Japan, they started an

Internet newspaper like OhmyNews, but so far it is not successful.

Page 8

Several journalists from other countries informed me that they are

preparing OhmyNews style Internet newspapers, but I have not yet heard

any success stories.

So, your question might be “Why in Korea?”

Our nation, our society, and our readers were prepared to welcome and

boost OhmyNews.

First, Korean readers were disappointed by the mainstream

conservative media for a long time and yearned for alternative media.

Second, Korea’s Internet infrastructure is superior to most other

countries. We enjoy over 75% broadband penetration. It makes multi-

media, always-on service and interactive news service possible.

Third, South Korea is small enough that our staff reporters can

reach the news scene in a few hours to check whether a citizen reporter’s

article is correct or not.

Fourth, Korea is a uni-polar society. The entire country can be

quickly engulfed by a couple of issues.

But the most important reason is that Korean citizens were ready to

participate. Korea has a young, active and reform-minded generation,

those in their 20s, 30s and early 40s.

A Japanese columnist at the Yomiuri Daily once told me “In Japan,

OhmyNews’ model cannot be successful, because Japanese youth are not

as active as Korea’s.”

Here, let me point out this question: How did Korea get such active

netizens? It didn’t come easily. We Koreans have been paying dearly,

since modern Korean history itself is the cost.

Struggling against military dictatorship to achieve democracy was

the cost. Living in a divided nation is the cost. The Korean War in 1950,

and The Kwangju Massacre in 1980 were the two representative events

that Koreans paid in blood.

The Korean War taught people to keep silent in order to survive.

The Kwangju Massacre too. But there has been an endless struggle for

democracy and liberating from keeping silent.

The children of Kwangju and 20s

Specially during 1980s, university students stood on the street

yelling “perish military dictatorship, unveil the truth about the Kwangju

Page 9

Massacre.” Some, including me, served in jail or made the uneasy

decision to sacrifice future job prospects by demonstrating. We can call

them the children of the Kwangju Massacre.

These historical experiences are the deep-rooted background of

today’s active Korean netizens.

Now the children of Kwangju are making their voices heard in

cyberspace instead of on the street. Married, with children, they still

have their enthusiasm: “If we participate, we can make a difference.”

They are teaching the next generation to remember modern history,

and to struggle for a more vibrant democracy.

The positive effects are incalculable. Participatory democracy is

flourishing.

The marriage of democracy and technology

Here, I would stress this: technology itself cannot change society,

only prepared people who can use technology positively can make

society more democratic.

Almost two years ago The Christian Science Monitor (31, Jan.

2003) covered OhmyNews. The first sentence was “The marriage of a

fledgling democracy and broadband technology has spawned a preco-

cious new media child in South Korea that would have been unimagin-

able 15 years ago.”

The Christian Science Monitor was spot on. OhmyNews is a child

of the marriage of democracy and technology. We have changed Korean

media and Korean politics. And how might it affect others? How about

America? That’s the question for you.

12/14/2004

Page 10

The Crisis in the U.S.

Media and the 2004 Election

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

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 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 commen-

tator in the current issue of Foreign Affairs notes:

The recent American presidential campaign has had the

perverse effect of postponing 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

Page 11

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

officials say, but function instead as the people’s ‘watchdog’

over the government, subjecting its words and deeds to

independent 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. govern-

ment 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 intelligence 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 government 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

Page 12

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 re-

form-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 OhmyNews.

Instead the mass media was filled with negative 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 conservative powers in the Democratic Party.

OhmyNews is an on-line newspaper that has a 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 reporter 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

Page 13

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 conservative 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 contributions? The answer to this question may well determine

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.

Page 14

“‘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 . [ h t t p : / / e n g l i s h . o h m yn e ws . c o m / a r t i c l e v i e w/ a r t i c l e _ v i e w . a s p ?

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

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

7. Berkman Center for Internet and Society Conference, Harvard University,

conference schedule 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 . [ h t t p : / / e n g l i s h . o h m y n e w s . c o m / a r t i c l e v i e w / a r t i c l e _ v i e w . a s p

?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

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 democ-

racy 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 supposed to be a person

whose writing is moral and socially/politically focused. Few American

Page 15

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 “temperature,”

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 writing. 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 cooperation 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

Page 16

would compare the role of those factors to DNA testing in forensic

science today. :) 2/2/05

The Effect of the Net on the Profes-

sional News Media: The Usenet News

Collective – The Man-Computer News

Symbiosis

by Michael Hauben

[email protected]

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

sional 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 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

Page 17

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 currently discussing this question.

The role of modern journalism is being reconsidered in a variety of

ways. There are journalists and media critics like the late Professor

Christopher Lasch, who have challenged the fundamental premises 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 established a theoretical

foundation which makes it possible to critique the news media and

challenge the current practice of this media. In “Journalism, Publicity,

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

nobody 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 interested 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

Page 18

news organizations 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 television, 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, “Encounters 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 observes 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.

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

Page 19

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 community 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 newspa-

pers, 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

Page 20

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 mainstream 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 dissatisfaction writes:

“The net is a special problem for reporters, because 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 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

Page 21

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 community 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 com-

puter infrastructure 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 commentary 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

Page 22

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 connected to the global computer communi-

cations network (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 informa-

tion 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 challenge to the profes-

sional creation and dissemination of news. The on-line discussion

forums allow open and free discourse. Individuals outside of the

traditional power structures are finding a forum in which to contribute,

where those contributions are welcomed. 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

published 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, in-

Page 23

stead of held in the tight fists of the clergy and ruling classes.”

This change in who makes the news is also 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 interesting.”

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 convictions. 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 refutations 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 drastically 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 individualism 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, manufacturers, 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.”

Page 24

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 conglomer-

ates:

“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 de-

scribing 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 providers will be directly confronted with

and by their audience. The prevailing info-structure privileges certain

individuals by virtue of institutional affiliation. 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 increas-

Page 25

ingly lagging cyberspace in breaking news.”

An example of news being made on-line occurred 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 becoming active

and getting the manufacturers of their 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

reporting about the problem was done in the Usenet newsgroup

comp.sys.intel and further on-line discussion 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 com-

puter 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

computers 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, newspapers 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

Page 26

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 authenticity of information

available on-line:

“However the risk is you can easily be spooked by stuff on the Net.

Things have to be shaped, confirmed and tested off-line as well. One of

the interesting 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

information. 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

Page 27

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 popula-

tion 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

connecting to each other on-line. The fast rate of growth also makes one

take note of the trends and developments. 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 computer 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 helping 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 communally

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 accumulate and

Page 28

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* condensations 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. Experi-

enced users also contribute back to Usenet, primarily in the forms of

conveying knowledge (answering questions, 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 inva-

sions’, 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 individual 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.

Page 29

VI. Journalists and the Internet

Professional journalists are beginning to understand 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 information 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

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 impressions.

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 Magazine 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 journalist, 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.

Page 30

When asked about the best forms of reader feedback, 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 traditional

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 entering 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

Page 31

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 journalists.

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 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 discussion

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

ubiquitous 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 entertainment in the form of

cross-word puzzles, comics, classified ads, and entertainment sections

(e.g., entertainment, 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

Page 32

that more people are gaining a voice on the open public electronic

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 television and conglom-

erate-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 secondary 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 disseminating 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 relevant articles to other places, maintaining FTP archives

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 medieval times: to provide an information service

when there is insufficient technology or insufficient general 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:

Page 33

“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.

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 Fomenting 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

Page 34

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-20079413[email protected]mo.wis.net>

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]et>

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]m>

Newsgroups: alt.journalism.criticism

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

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

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

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

Page 35

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

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

Newsgroups: alt.journalism

Subject: Make journalists get an email address!

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

Message-ID:

<ABBDBF94966820B78D@ppp017.st.rim.or.jp>

22. Message-Id: <elknox.35.00091823@bsu.idbsu.edu>

23. Ibid.

24. Delores Dege, “Re: Impact of the Net on Society,” e-mail message, February 21,

1995.

25. From: Keith L. Cowing <kcowing@aibs.org>

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-17049512332300[email protected]43.0.239>

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

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

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

Message-ID: <1993Apr6.121613.1[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]et>

Subject: Content Providers -- Professionals versus Amateurs on Usenet, Date: 17

Apr 1995 12:21:49 GMT

Message-ID: <3mtmg[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.

Page 36

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.107.2F82[email protected]>

37. Ibid.

38. From: Tom Kimball <[email protected]>

Subject: Usenet impact upon reading habits and skills

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

Message-ID:

<1993Aug26.022528.6376@europa.lonestar.org>

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

Subject: Re: Cliff Stoll

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

Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage

Message-ID: <3mufmt$47[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]ons-rock.edu>

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: [email protected]

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

Journalism 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.

Page 37

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

[email protected]

[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 knowing something of the nature of the Internet, of its international

origins and early vision and development can provide a useful perspec-

tive 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”,

Page 38

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 planned 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 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 previously overseen the

Internet’s infrastructure managed as a non commercial, scientific and

educational medium, made a decision to begin to transition it to a private

sector entity which is called the Internet Corporation 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

Page 39

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 J. C. R. Licklider, a psychologist, who was

invited to begin a research office within the U.S. Department of Defense

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 pioneering work mapping where sound

is perceived in the brain of the cat. Licklider was also excited about the

Page 40

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 researchers 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 researchers 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 develop-

ment. To Licklider, it was critical that the evolving network be built

interactively.

Also Licklider believed that there would be a need for the public to

be involved in the considerations 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.”

Page 41

Licklider believed that those interested in the development of the

global network he was proposing, would have to be active in considering

and determining its future. He also advocated that the future of politics

would require that people have access to computers 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

developments 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 technology 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 recognized 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 participation was recognized as critical to the

development of networking technology. “International participation is

no mere adornment to the Conference,” the organizers wrote. “It is a

primary means towards achieving 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).

Page 42

The great interest worldwide in computer networking was stimulat-

ing, but also it presented a problem. To understand the nature of this

problem, it is helpful to consider the fact that there were packet switch-

ing 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 interconnect, 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 boundaries 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 communication 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 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 interna-

tional network research community for their contributions and discus-

Page 43

sion.

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 re-

searcher at the University College London (UCL) presented a paper in

Sept 1975 at a workshop in Laxenburg, Austria, describing the interna-

tional 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

This diagram is from a memo by Vint Cerf, but it is not an

actual plan for the Internet

Page 44

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

Page 45

In 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.

Netizens: On the

History and Impact

of Usenet and the

Internet, published

by the IEEE

Computer Society

Press, 1997,

ISBN 0-8186-7706-6

networks around the world.

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

communication 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

Page 46

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. government decided it needed to privatize the

Internet’s infrastructure. It created ICANN, the Internet Corporation 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 Govern-

ments 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, recommend-

ing that netizen involvement would make it possible to counter the self

interest of corporations who were part of the Internet governance

Page 47

process. The following 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 with WSIS seem to pay attention to it.

However, a comment on the forum seemed quite relevant to the prob-

lems 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 contribu-

tions 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 gover-

nance 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

Page 48

Internet governance...creating a favorable environment boosting Internet

growth while protecting the public interests.”

I want to propose that this activity as part of the WSIS process

demonstrates the importance of understanding 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 under-

stand 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 participants 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 international

essence of the Internet as envisioned by J. C. R. 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 conver-

gence 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 49

[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 dimensions and wide-ranging

issues, hence daunting challenges in implementation. I would like to

underline, in this respect, the issue of public access and widening the

scope of public engagement in decision-making processes.”

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

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 importance of on-line

discussions and inputs to be taken into consideration as part of the decision-making

Page 50

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 provides.

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 (yoonkim@kaist.UUCP)

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 mainly 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

Page 51

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 exchanged. 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

net.lannet.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.

Page 52

[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

[email protected]

In 1987 an e-mail connection was established between the People’s

Republic of China and the Federal Republic of Germany. Many factors

contributed 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 manufactured 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 University, 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.

Page 53

Computer Science Network (CSNET).

Also, in 1983, he began a friend-

ly and collaborative relation with Professor Wang Yuen Fung (Yunfeng

Wang), Senior Advisor of the Chinese Institute of Computer Applica-

tions (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-Germany 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 challenged

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 established. The Siemens BS2000 was to be the computer 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 functionality 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

Page 54

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 Germany. 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 dialogue 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 connec-

tivity 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

Page 55

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 Director of the ICA Computing Center. Successful

connectivity 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 sent to the VAX 11/750 computer at Karlsruhe.

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

Page 56

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.

The First e-mail Message to Leave China

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

With this e-mail connection, the first step was taken for the people of

China to begin online communication with people around the world.

E-mail connectivity between China and Germany was only the

necessary technical precondition for an e-mail service. Worldwide

Page 57

Letter from Stephen Wolff, November 8, 1987

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

umbrella 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 Research and

I n f r a s t r u c t u r e

welcomed the CSNET

e-mail connectivity

with China. This letter

was the official political

approval, of what tech-

nically was already im-

plemented.

Without Wolff's

letter, the China-Ger-

many e-mail connection

would have been vul-

nerable 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 con-

nected with the rest of

the world via the

CSNET e-mail system.

E-mail received from

Page 58

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

international computer science community and Chinese students abroad

who learned of this connectivity answered with their warm congratula-

tions.

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 interna-

tional 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 government, knowledge and

understanding of international computer networking was spreading in

China, especially in the scientific and computer communities. The

Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) belonging to the Chinese

Academy of Science opened an e-mail connection in 1989 with its

Page 59

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.)

Page 60

Notes

1. COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, was

established during the Cold War to put an 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, pp. 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 installations.

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 con-

nections 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.

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.

Page 61

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.

1 2 . ht t p : / / w w w . n s r c . o r g / d b / l o o k u p / o p e r a t i o n = l o o k u p - r e p o r t / I D

=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/Fall20

03/pdf_files/Internet%20and%20democracy(xiguang).pdf

Page 62

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: from cosmos.kaist.ac.kr by 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)

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:

<[email protected]>

Errors-To: [email protected]

To: [email protected], [email protected]

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

Errors-To: [email protected]

Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by kum.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/KUM-0.1)

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

Message-Id:

<[email protected]>

Received: from ira.uka.de by iraun1.ira.uka.de with 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]>

To: [email protected]

Page 63

Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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 contacted 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]>

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

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

Errors-To: [email protected]

Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by kum.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/KUM-0.1)

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

Message-Id:

<[email protected]>

Received: from ira.uka.de by iraun1.ira.uka.de with 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]>

To: [email protected]

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

[email protected]

Subject: Domain “VN”

Page 64

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:

Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by i32fs2.ira.uka.de id aa18484; 9 Sep

92 13:07 MET DST

Received: from cise.cise.nsf.gov by iraun1.ira.uka.de 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: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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>

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 connections to the United States from

Viet Nam will be permitted. However, this does not prohibit the

registering of an Internet domain for Viet Nam.

Thanks, Steve G.

Page 65

------- Forwarded Message

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

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

To: [email protected]ov

Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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:

Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by i32fs2.ira.uka.de id ab28940; 9 Sep

92 18:31 MET DST

Received: from parmesan.cs.wisc.edu by 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: <[email protected]>

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

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Hello from Hanoi!

Werner the link to Viet Nam sounds great. My understanding is that

nobody objects these days to links involving just e-mail. Even Cuba now

has a registered 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

Page 66

----- End of forwarded messages

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

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

Return-Path: <[email protected]>

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

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

Errors-To: [email protected]

Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by kum.kaist.ac.kr (4.1/KUM-0.1)

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

Message-Id: <[email protected]>

Received: from ira.uka.de by iraun1.ira.uka.de with 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 <[email protected]>

To: [email protected]

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 development of our network here in Vietnam. 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 67

[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

[email protected]

I did some search for you about the first usage of “netizen” in the

media. There is a search engine for newspapers:

http://www.kinds.or.kr/ (Korean)

This search engine covers 8 major newspapers and that’s almost of all

since local newspapers are not that popular in Korea. Here’s the first 10

results.

(Date - Newspaper - Section - Title - Description) I specified if they

have English homepage in case you want to glance the newspaper even

though they don’t have full DBs for old articles yet.

1. 1994-12-20

Donga ( http://english.donga.com/ )

IT/Science

E-Vote for Presidential Election? – E-Democracy is coming

Mentioning a touch screen-based e-voting system adopted in Michigan’s

local election. Emphasizing “netizens” or their matured culture are

prerequisite for introducing such system

2. 1995-01-10

Donga

IT/Science

Internet and IT Revolution

Introducing IBM’s internet site and net-marketing. Mentions that 20,000

companies are using internet world-wide, and 80 of of them are in

Korea.

Page 68

3. 1995-02-13

Seoul

IT/Science

Cyberspace, Internet and Net-marketing

Introducing basic concepts about internet, hacking, cyberspace,

net-marketing, and netizen

4. 1995-03-30

Kukmin

Columns

Computer-illiterate and Netizen

The author is a poet who doesn’t have much knowledge in computer.

He’s concerned on being a neo-don-quixote as he has hard time in

keeping things up like young netizens.

5. 1995-04-09

Donga

Foreign relationships

Korea-Japan Academic Symposium for Detente

Korea hasn’t been in good terms with her neighbor, Japan, even 50 years

after her liberation from Japanese colon. Someone in this symposium

maintained that “netizen” or internet could have a role of a bridge

between two nations.

6. 1995-04-12

Segye

IT/Science

Companies are hungering for Virtual Market Information about the

Spring COMDEX in Atlanta can be accessible through internet. This

article introduces mosaic and says someone who uses mosaic for

business information can be viewed as a typical “netizen”.

7. 1995-04-15

Hankyore

Column

Page 69

Playboy in the Internet

The author mentions his experience with accessing Playboy and

Penthouse through Internet, and maintains his opinion against

censorship.

8. 1995-04-19

Chosun ( http://english.chosun.com/ )

N/A

Public Database Not being Used Sufficiently Introducing public

database/service projects by local governments. Emphasizing they are

Virtual spaces for e-democracy by the netizens. Also mentioned

Information Superhighway in the U.S. The author is a professor teaching

instructional technology in Hanyang University, Seoul.

9. 1995-05-02

Hankook

IT/Science

Digital Advertisement

Mentioning that internet advertisements targeting netizens are intro-

duced for the first time in Korea.

10. 1995-05-17

Segye

IT/Science

Mr. Netizen, Dr. Taeha Park

Dr. Park is the first PhD in Korea who did research on internet commu-

nity & search. He recently got his degree in KAIST (

http://www.kaist.edu/ ) receiving comments from a U.S. professor in

Colorado through internet, married with a girl he met in the cyberspace,

has his own homepage in the internet, and works for the first

internet-oriented company in Korea.

Almost every article mentions that “netizen” is a recently-coined word

with “network + citizen”. Hope this helps you in understanding from

when they started to use the word “netizen”. Thanks.

Page 70

XXII International Congress of History

of Science SYMPOSIUM SC9 ICOHTEC

Technology

Computer Networks, the Internet and the Netizens:

Their Impact on Science and Society

Introduction:

The development of computer networks, the Internet and the

emergence of the netizens are topics particularly relevant to the 22

International Congress of History of Science, and the topic of the

Congress: “Diversity and globalization: diffusion of science and

technology throughout history.”

This symposium will focus on the history of the development of

computer networks, the linking of these networks via the creation of the

Internet, and the emergence of the active participants in these networks,

the netizens (i.e., net.citizens). Our symposium will include papers about

the scientific development of networking technology, as well as the

impact of the Internet on science and on society.

The Internet will continue to develop and impact society, but

already the Internet has a history, the as yet untold history of its

development as a science and a technology. Also, emerging with the

Internet has been the netizen. The symposium will consider the historical

organizations and threads which brought forth the Internet and the

netizen, especially international and cross-ideological efforts. Included

will be Eastern European computer networking developments.

The Internet has made it possible to link diverse networks around

the world, and the citizens of these networks, into a global public sphere

populated by citizens of the world, by netizens. This development is a

product of scientific/technical research, of research in resource sharing

and in interactive communication on both technical and social levels. It

is also a product of the activity of the users and of the netizens. The

emergence of netizens is one of the spectacular achievements of the

Page 71

creation and development of the Internet, an achievement that as yet has

received little attention. The netizens movement in China is an important

component of the international development of netizens, and it is

especially fitting to devote a symposium to our topic as part of the ICHS

in Beijing in July 2005.

Organizers: Frank Dittmann (Germany)and Ronda Hauben (USA)

First Session:

Chair: Jay Hauben

Introduction and Welcome to the Symposium: Frank Dittmann

1. Ronda Hauben (USA)

The International and Scientific Origins of the Internet and the

Emergence of the Netizen

2. Leszek Jesien (Poland) along with Krzysztof Gurba (Poland)

Netizens and the Internet Against the Politics and Policies of

Integrating and Expanding Europe

3. Li Xiguang (China) along with Guo Xiaoke (China) and Xu Yong

(China)

The Impact of New Communication Technologies on Chinese Press

Politics

4. Louis Pouzin (France)

Netizens in the Cogwheels of WSIS: Open and Hidden Strategies

for Progress

Second Session

Chair: Ronda Hauben

1. Frank Dittmann (Germany)

The Beginning of Network Technology in COMECOM

2. Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski (Germany)

The Impact of Computer Networks on the Culture of Knowledge

Work and Scientific Work

3. Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Austria)

Sustainable Information Society

Page 72

4. Jay Hauben (USA)

Across an Ideological Divide: IIASA and IIASA Net

Third Session

Chair: Frank Dittmann

1. Myung Shin Kim (Korea)

The Korean Netizens Movement

2. Boldur E. Barbat (Romania)

The Netizens, the Internet and Stigmergy: From Metaphor to Impact

3. Viviane Serfaty (France)

Activism and On-line Networking in the USA

4. Karsten Weber (Germany)

Open Source and Free Software: Historical and Sociological

Aspects of Non-Proprietary Software

Summing up of Symposium: Ronda Hauben

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their authors and not

necessarily the opinions of the Amateur Computerist newsletter. We

welcome submissions from a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

ACN Webpage:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ All issues of the Amateur

Computerist are on-line. Back issues of the Amateur Computerist are available at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/

All issues can be accessed from the Index at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/NewIndex.pdf

Page 73

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions. Articles can be

submitted via e-mail:

[email protected] Permission is given to reprint articles from

this issue in a non profit publication provided credit is given, with name of

author and source of article cited.

Page 74