Spring 2007 On the Origin of the Net and the Netizen Volume 15 No. 2

Netizens and WSIS:

Celebrating the Demand for

Universal Access

In the early 1990s, Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben began to document the history and social

impact of Usenet and the Internet. In 1994, they put

their research online as the netizens netbook. Its title

was “Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net.”

Then, in May 1997 there appeared a print edition,

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet,

which is celebrating its tenth anniver-

sary in 2007.

Michael Hauben opens Chapter One of the book

Netizens with the greeting:

Welcome to the 21

Century. You are a Netizen

(a Net Citizen), and you exist as a citizen of the

world thanks to the global connectivity that the

Net makes possible. You consider everyone as

your compatriot. You physically live in one

country but you are in contact with much of the

world via the global computer network. Virtu-

ally you live next door to every other single

Netizen in the world. Geographical separation is

replaced by existence in the same virtual space.

True to this prediction, as the 21

Century

began, the Internet spread far and wide. Its promise

Table Of Contents

Netizens and WSIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Origins of the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 4

Bush, Licklider: Libraries of the Future .. . Page 18

Brief History of the Internet in Korea. . . . Page 25

How China was Connected to Int’l Net. . . Page 35

Public Interest in Management of Internet . Page 47

attracted attention. People on every continent wanted

access. In 1998, at the International Telecommunica-

tions Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference,

Tunisia suggested the idea of a World Summit on the

Information Society (WSIS). In 2002, recognizing

the challenge to make access to the information

society and the Internet universal, the United Nations

General Assembly endorsed a proposal to hold such

a summit. There were to be two phases, the first in

Geneva in 2003 and the second in Tunis in 2005. The

papers gathered in this issue of the Amateur

Computerist were presented as a panel in the scien-

tific side event conference, the Past, Present, and

Future of Research in the Information Society

(PPF),

held in conjunction with the Tunis phase of

the WSIS.

The WSIS events with their culminating meet-

ing in Tunis in Nov 2005 demonstrated the grass-

roots desire for the promise of the Internet and of the

netizen to be realized around the globe.

In Geneva in Dec 2003, the gathered attendees

from 175 countries heard a cry from the people of

the world delivered especially by representatives

from Africa, Asia and Latin America for inclusion in

the Internet age. That was the message from the

many heads of state who asked for help to include

their people and economies and who feared the result

if large numbers of people were left out. The session

concluded with a “Declaration of Principles.”

Besides a call for the governments of the devel-

oped countries and the corporations to help the

developing world meet this goal, there was also the

recognition that the Internet was an international,

public resource that needed proper protection and

governance. In a section with a different purpose, the

Geneva Declaration addressed who should partici-

pate in the governance of the Internet.

In Nov 2005, the second phase of the WSIS was

held. Almost 20,000 participants from more than 175

countries gathered in Tunis. Strong statements of the

Page 1

public nature and need for universal access were

heard from many of the heads of state who addressed

the Summit. They demanded universal inclusion of

all people.

The debate over how the Internet would be

managed continued as part of these UN sponsored

events. The U.S. maintained its position that gover-

nance over domain names, domain name servers and

protocol numbers should remain with the so called

private sector organization, the Internet Corporation

for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under

U.S. government control. Also, there was a debate

whether there should be a continuation of the work

of the Summit after the Tunis phase came to a close.

The forces for multinational or international gover-

nance were not able to overcome the U.S. domi-

nance, but they did achieve the plan for an interna-

tional Internet Governance Forum which met for the

first time in Athens in fall 2006 and is planning a

second meeting in Rio de Janeiro for fall 2007.

The panel of one of the official side conferences

in Tunis whose papers are in this issue provided a

glimpse of the pioneering spirit and actions which

gave birth to the Internet. Ronda Hauben gave the

first presentation, “The International and Scientific

Origins of the Internet and the Emergence of the

Netizens”.

In her presentation, Hauben documented that

Internet technology originated from scientific and

academic work not from a military oriented project

even though its funding came through the U.S.

Department of Defense. She argued that the origin of

the Internet was in the international collaboration

which developed the TCP/IP protocol suite.

Hauben described the vision inspiring the

creation and development of the Internet to support

collaborative scientific modeling, as a medium that

“can be contributed to and experimented with by

all.” In the longer paper in this issue, she describes

some of the controversies in Internet history, ex-

plains the nature of the scientific research, and doc-

uments the online research by Michael Hauben

which led him to discover the emergence of the

netizen (net.citizen) with the development of the

Internet.

The second presentation, “Vannevar Bush and J.

C. R. Licklider: Libraries of the Future 1945-1965”

by Jay Hauben countered the myth that the Internet

today is different from how it was originally envi-

sioned by the pioneers. The vision is traced partially

to the work of Vannevar Bush after WWII but

mostly to the thinking and writing and experimenting

of J. C. R. Licklider in the 1960s. Bush and Licklider

both asked the same question, how could the vast

accumulation of knowledge be made useful and be

contributed to by all? They both looked to the human

brain as a model and to technology for the means to

achieve this. The early vision is in many ways being

realized. Still to be answered is the question “Will

‘to be online’ be a privilege or a right?”

And there is

still the challenge to make the whole corpus of

human knowledge available for use by all with

semantic in addition to syntactic searching.

Kilnam Chon, in “A Brief History of the Internet

in Korea” documented TCP/IP networking develop-

ments in South Korea as early as 1982. His story,

little told until now, of the development of

internetworking in Asia helps dispel the myth that

the Internet is an unintended by-product of U.S.

military research. In 1985, Korean academic re-

searchers sponsored one of the first international

Internet conferences. This was the Pacific Computer

Communications Symposium (PCCS) held in Seoul

with over 300 attendees from Asia, Europe and

North America. The current deep penetration of the

Internet into Korean society and the role played there

by netizens was put, by Chon, into this long histori-

cal context.

Werner Zorn told the story of the coming to the

Peoples Republic of China of international email

connectivity (“How China was Connected to the

International Computer Networks”). German-Chi-

nese friendship formed when the World Bank spon-

sored the import of West German made Siemens

computers for use by Chinese students and academ-

ics. This led to collaborative work from 1983 to 1987

which made possible the sending of the first email

message from China into the international CSNET

email system on September 20, 1987. Zorn docu-

mented this story with original email messages and

photos. The story contradicted how this history had

been told on many websites in China like that of the

China Internet Network Information Center

(CNNIC)

where the role of German scientists and of

Professor Wang Yuen Fung was down played in

favor of a Chinese engineer who was not involved

this early work.

Attending the panel in Tunis was Qiheng Hu,

chairperson of the Internet Society in China. After

hearing the presentation and seeing some of the

Page 2

documents she said she would have the question

investigated. As of May 2007, a corrected version

began to appear on the CNNIC website of this

history agreeing with what Zorn had presented.

At the Tunis summit, the effort to change from

a U.S. government controlled ICANN to an interna-

tional governance structure for the Internet did not

succeed in its main goal. But reasons for that goal

were presented on the panel by Anders Ekeland in

his presentation, “Netizens and Protecting the Public

Interest in the Development and Management of the

Internet: An Economist’s Perspective.” Based on the

Internet’s most important aspect, which Ekeland

argued is the free exchange of information and

opinion, the Internet is a common good and a public

good. That understanding is often hidden because the

prevailing economic theory, free market economics,

only recognizes private goods. Free market econom-

ics is also inappropriate for the analysis of the

Internet argued Ekeland because that theory assumes

a “general equilibrium” while the Internet is dynamic

and ever changing and growing.

Ekeland explained why in market economics

there is no role for government or institutions. In

such a theory, regulation stems only in cases of

“market failure”. In the case of the Internet, which is

certainly not a failure, international regulation is

necessary because there are people in many countries

who legitimately need the Internet but have little or

no money. Ekeland concluded that a world wide

democratic process is better suited than markets to

create a rational system for domain name decisions.

The panel was well received, leading to a lively

discussion. In summing up the whole PPF confer-

ence, one of its organizers, Wiebe Bijker stressed

that “science, technology and research played a

crucial role in the origin of the Internet.” The myth

of development for military purposes was dispelled

by historical research which showed the many

research actors designed it for sophisticated users.

Free markets were not the “save-all recipe.” These

were main themes of the panel whose papers follow

and also of the book Netizens. In honor of the tenth

anniversary of the appearance of the print edition of

Netizens, it is appropriate that the papers from the

panel at the PPF conference be collected and made

available in this special issue of the Amateur

Computerist.

Notes

1. Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE Computer Society Press,

1997 now distributed by John Wiley and Sons. (Online version

at:

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

2. See the conference website online at:

http://www.worldsci.net/tunis/. All the abstracts from the PPF

conference have been gathered in a book, Past, Present, and

Future of Research in the Information Society, edited by

Wesley Shrum, Keith Benson, Wiebe Bijker and Klaus

Brunnstein, Springer, New York, 2007.

3. Online at:

http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html. One

principle set as the goal “to build a people-centred, inclusive

and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone

can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge,

enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their

full potential in promoting their sustainable development and

improving their quality of life….”

4. One of the principles to guide decision making is: “Govern-

ments, as well as private sector, civil society and the United

Nations and other international organizations have an important

role and responsibility in the development of the Information

Society and, as appropriate, in decision-making processes.

Building a people-centred Information Society is a joint effort

which requires cooperation and partnership among all stake-

holders.”

5. J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, “The Computer as a

Commucation Device” on 1968, online at:

http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/publications/taylor/

licklider-taylor.pdf

6. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/

7. See for example:

http://cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2003/12/12/2000.htm, where it now

reads: “1. In September 1987, with the support from a scientific

research group led by Professor Werner Zorn of Karlsruhe

University in Germany, a working group led by Professor Wang

Yunfeng and Doctor Li Chengjiong built up an Email node in

ICA, and successfully sent out an Email to Germany on Sep

. The E-mail title was ‘Across the Great Wall we can reach

every corner in the world.’”

Page 3

The International and Scien-

tific Origins of the Internet

and the Emergence of the

Netizens

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

Netizens are Net Citizens …. These people …

makes [the Net] a resource of human beings.

These Netizens participate to help make the Net

both an intellectual and a social resource.

Michael Hauben,

“Further Thoughts about Netizens”

Forms grow out of principles and operate to

continue the principles they grow from.

Thomas Paine, “The Rights of Man”

I. Controversies over the Origins of

the Internet

There is a controversy about the Internet and its

origins that is widespread. This is connected to the

misconception that the Internet is the result of the

desire of the U.S. department of defense to create a

network that would survive a nuclear war.

A signifi-

cant aspect of the controversy is over the origin of

the idea of packet switching for the building of the

ARPANET. Many credit Paul Baran, a researcher at

Rand Corporation.

Larry Roberts, who headed the research project

to create the ARPANET as the head of the Informa-

tion Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) in 1967-

1972, explains that Donald Davies, a researcher at

the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK,

did significant work in the early development of

packet switching, while Paul Baran’s work came to

be known as the project developed. Describing some

of the relevant events, Roberts writes:

(I)n 1965, a … meeting took place at MIT.

Donald Davies, from the National Physical

Laboratory in the UK was at MIT to give a

seminar on time-sharing. Licklider, Davies and

I discussed networking and the inadequacy of

data communication facilities for both time-

sharing and networking. Davies reports that

shortly after this meeting he was struck with the

concept that a store and forward system for very

short messages (now called packet switching)

was the ideal communication system for interac-

tive systems.

Davies subsequently invited IPTO researchers to

come to Great Britain to present the research they

were doing on time-sharing. In November 1965, ten

U.S. researchers gave a set of presentations in Great

Britain at a meeting sponsored by the British Com-

puter Society. Describing these presentations, Davies

“reports that though most of the discussions were

about operating systems aspects of time-sharing, the

research done to show the mismatch between time-

sharing and the telephone network was described.”

Davies writes:

It was that which sort of triggered off my

thoughts and it was in the evenings during that

meeting that I first began to think about packet

switching.

“The basic ideas,” Davies continues, “were

produced really just in a few evenings of thought,

during or after the seminar.” Roberts describes how

Davies “wrote about his ideas in a document entitled

‘Proposal for Development of a National Communi-

cation Service for On-Line Data processing’ which

envisioned a communication network using trunk

lines from 100K bits/sec in speed to 1.5 megabits/sec

(T1), message sizes of 128 bytes and a switch which

could handle up to 10,000 messages/sec.” (Historical

note by Roberts: this took 20 years to accomplish).

Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal

paper, ‘Proposal for a Digital Communication Net-

work’ in which he coined the word “packet,” – a

small sub-part of the message the user wants to send,

and also introduced the concept of an ‘interface

computer’ to sit between the user’s equipment and

the packet network. His design also included the

concept of a Packet Assembler and Disassembler

(PAD) to interface character terminals, today a

common element of most packet networks.

It was only after Davies did this pioneering

work developing the concept of packet switching

that he learned of related work previously done by

Baran. “As a result of distributing his 1965 paper,”

Roberts reports, “Donald Davies was given a copy of

an internal Rand report ‘On Distributed Communica-

tions,’ by Baran, which had been written in August

1964. Baran’s historical paper also described a short

message switching network using T1 trunks and a

128-byte message size ….” Roberts states the influ-

Page 4

ence of Baran’s work was “mainly supportive, not

sparking its development.”

Along with the controversy over the invention of

packet switching, there is a related controversy, as to

what is the defining nature of the Internet.

Is the

creation of packet switching and the development of

the ARPANET the actual beginning of the Internet,

or is the defining characteristic of the Internet some-

thing different? I want to propose that the defining

characteristic of the Internet is not packet switching,

but the design and development of the protocol that

makes it possible to interconnect dissimilar computer

networks. A protocol in computer networking vocab-

ulary is a set of agreements to make communication

possible among entities that are different, as, for

example, entities who speak different languages.

TCP/IP is a protocol that makes it possible to inter-

connect dissimilar computer networks.

Robert Kahn, one of the co-inventors of the

TCP/IP protocol, explains that the ARPANET was

“a single network that linked heterogeneous com-

puter systems into a resource sharing network, first

within the U.S., and eventually it had tentacles to

computer systems in other countries. What the

ARPANET didn’t address,” Kahn clarifies, “was the

issue of interconnecting multiple networks and all

the attendant issues that raised.” (Kahn, E-mail,

September 15, 2002)

To understand the nature of the Internet, it is

necessary to understand what could be called the

Multiple Network Problem and how it was solved.

The difficulties were not only technical.

II. The Internet as the Network of Net-

works

By 1973 there were various packet switching

computer networks either being developed or in the

planning stages in countries around the world. To

illustrate, there is a memo which shows three of the

early packet switching research networks. The memo

is from a U.S. researcher. It is dated 1973. It shows

three different packet switching networks being

developed in 1973.

They were:

ARPANET - USA

NPL - UK

CYCLADES - France

Each of these networks was under the ownership

and control of different political and administrative

entities.

(Host)

( ) ( ) ( )

( CYCLADES )-(gateway)-( ARPA )-(gateway)-( NPL )

( ) ( ) ( )

/ \

(Host) (H ost)

Consequently, each of these networks would

differ technically in order to meet the needs of the

organization or administration that controlled it. The

question being raised in this period of the early

1970s is how to interconnect dissimilar packet

switching networks.

Considering how to solve the Multiple Network

Problem, Davies presented a paper in 1974 on “The

Future of Computer Networks.” In the paper, he

writes:

To achieve…the interconnection of packet

switching systems…a group including ARPA,

NPL, and CYCLADES is trying out a scheme of

interconnection based on a packet transport

network with an agreed protocol for message

transport…. (Davies, “The Future of Computer

Networks,” IIASA Conference on Computer

Communications Networks, October 21-25,

1974, page 36)

Davies was explaining the research effort to

make communication possible among these diverse

networks. The conference where Davies presented

this paper was held at a detente era research institu-

tion. It was called the International Institute for

Applied Systems Analysis or IIASA. IIASA was

situated in Laxenburg, Austria.

In October 2001, I attended a conference in

Berlin where I was fortunate to meet Klaus Fuchs-

Kittowski. He was one of the researchers who

participated in IIASA in the early 1970s. Fuchs-

Kittowski was then a Professor at Humboldt Univer-

sity in the then German Democratic Republic

(G.D.R.). When I met Fuchs-Kittowski in 2001, he

brought me a copy of a publication put out by the

Page 5

IIASA. It is the proceedings of a workshop held in

1975. He had presented one of the papers at the

“Workshop on Data Communications,” held on

September 15-19, 1975. Others at the workshop

included researchers from Austria, Belgium, France,

the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German

Democratic Republic.

In this 1975 workshop proceedings, was an

article by British researchers describing the early

development of a British, Norwegian, U.S. research

collaboration to make it possible to have the Internet.

A diagram, created just one year after the Davies

paper considering how to interconnect CYCLADES,

NPL, and the ARPANET, shows something quite

differently.

The graphic shows international collaboration to

create an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol.

Involved in this research, however, were Norwegian

researchers at NORSAR in Norway, British re-

searchers at the University College of London, in the

U.K., and American researchers developing the

ARPANET.

UCL

NORSAR

ARPANET

The collaborative research on the development

of the TCP/IP protocol done by researchers from the

UK, U.S. and Norway later included research devel-

oping a satellite packet switching network called

SATNET. Also, involved in this networking research

for shorter periods of time were German and Italian

researchers.

There is an interesting graphic of SATNET.

it you can see the German, Italian, U.S., U.,K., and

Norwegian sites. There was also collaborative

research creating a packet radio network.

The reason I refer to this history is that it was an

international collaboration of researchers working on

developing network technology and more particu-

larly in developing the protocol that would make the

Internet a reality.

A key to understanding the Internet and its

origins, however, is that there is a vision that in-

spired and provided the glue for such international

collaborative research efforts. To explore the nature

and origin of this vision helps to understand the re-

search processes creating the TCP/IP protocol and

the Internet’s subsequent development.

Through studies of the history of the Internet,

there is much evidence that the vision for its devel-

opment had been pioneered by J. C. R. Licklider, an

experimental psychologist interested in human com-

munication. Licklider introduced this vision when he

gave talks for the ARPA program inspiring people

with the idea of the importance of a new form of

computing and of the potential for a network that

would make it possible to communicate utilizing

computers.

III. The Historical Origins of the Vision

for the Net and of the Science Guiding

the Development

Describing the dynamic nature of communica-

tion, Licklider in a paper written with Robert Taylor

explains:

We believe that communicators have to do

something nontrivial with the information they

send and receive. And…to interact with the

richness of living information – not merely in

the passive way that we have become accus-

tomed to using books and libraries, but as active

participants in an ongoing process, bringing

something to it through our interaction with it,

and not simply receiving from it by our connec-

tion to it…. We want to emphasize something

beyond its one-way transfer: the increasing

significance of the part that transcends ‘now we

both know a fact that only one of us knew be-

fore.’ When minds interact, new ideas emerge.

We want to talk about the creative aspect of

communication. (Quoted from The Computer as

a Communication Device, in Netizens, page 5.)

To understand the influences on Licklider and

his insight into the dynamic nature of communica-

tion, it is helpful to look at the scientific research

community he was part of in the late 1940s and early

1950s.

In the early post World War II period, there was

much interest in the research and advances in the

science of communication and in what was referred

to as self-organizing systems. Among those with

such interest were Julian Bigelow, an engineer

interested in communication technologies, Norbert

Wiener, a mathematician interested in the develop-

ment of automatic systems and about how learning

about the functions of the nervous system would

provide insight into the creation of such machine

systems, Arturo Rosenblueth a researcher and medi-

cal doctor who worked with Wiener on similar

Page 6

developments, anthropologists Margaret Mead and

Gregory Bateson who studied the social systems of

primitive people, and Karl Deutsch who was inter-

ested in how looking at political systems through a

communication framework would help to understand

the nature of such systems.

When considering questions related to com-

munication, the idea of an interdisciplinary research

group was considered to be desirable. That is why in

the late 1940s and early 1950s there were a number

of meetings of an interdisciplinary research group

sponsored by a medical foundation, the Josiah Macy

Jr. Foundation. This foundation was headed by Frank

Fremont-Smith. This group, one of the interdisciplin-

ary research groups established by the Macy Founda-

tion, was to study feedback systems, systems which

modified their behavior based on the information

gained from previous behavior.

Among the names for such systems were ‘self-

organizing systems’, ‘cybernetic systems’, ‘feedback

systems,’ ‘purposive systems.’ A group of 20 re-

searchers from different fields formed the core of the

set of scholars who would meet two times a year and

discuss their research, hoping that the content and

process of their interdisciplinary work would provide

stimulating ideas to each other.

J. C. R. Licklider was invited to attend one

session of this interdisciplinary research group, in

1950, and to present a paper on his research. (See

“The manner in which and extent to which speech

can be distorted and remain intelligible.” In H. Von

Foerster, (Ed), Cybernetics - circular, causal and

feedback mechanisms in biological and social

systems. Transactions of the seventh conference.

New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.)

Thus Licklider had first hand knowledge of the

methodology and practice of the Macy Foundation

group, which was to prove helpful to him in a meet-

ing he set up in 1954 and subsequently in his role as

the head of the computer research organization he

created in 1962 at ARPA, the Information Processing

Techniques Office. The processes of the Macy-spon-

sored meetings were unusual, at least by the stan-

dards of present conferences 50 years later, so I want

to briefly explain the process and rationale of the

conferences.

The conference meeting would take place over

a weekend, and there would be two or three papers

presented. Participants in the conference were urged

to ask questions of the researchers presenting papers,

if there were points they didn’t understand, during

the course of the presentations. Afterwards there

would be a more general discussion, and a tape

recording would be made of the discussion which

would be published as the proceedings of the meet-

ing.

The goal of this process was to encourage the

participants to think and explore areas that were new

to them, to think over what was being presented and

to have a discussion on the presentation. The discus-

sion process was considered as important as the

paper presentation. The process of the meetings was

intended to help to do research in how to encourage

communication across the boundaries of the different

disciplines and different methodologies used by

these different disciplines.

The last of the ten Macy Foundation Confer-

ences was held in 1953. Licklider and others re-

ceived support from the National Science Foundation

(NSF) in the U.S. to fund a similar interdisciplinary

conference at MIT in November 1954.

Licklider and the others who organized the 1954

conference invited researchers in various scientific

and technical fields. The topics for the conference

were information theory, control theory and commu-

nication theory. Several of the researchers made

presentations on their recent research, rather than

limiting the discussion to only two papers. But

discussion among the participants was encouraged.

The proceedings were tape recorded and a transcript

published in a bound volume by the NSF. (Problems

in Human Communication and Control; MIT Press,

Cambridge, MA, 1954)

IV. The Science of Information

Processing

Licklider had begun his scientific career not as

a computer scientist but as a psychologist. He fin-

ished his PhD thesis in 1942 before the working

computer was a reality. The subject of his thesis was

path-breaking in its time as he devised and carried

out an experiment to “place” the “frequency of

neural impulse theories” so as “to understand the

perception of pitch and loudness.” His particular

experiment was to measure the loci of cortical

electro-neural activity in the brain of cats to under-

stand their response to hearing different tones of

sound.

Page 7

After receiving his PhD from the University of

Rochester, Licklider got an appointment at Harvard

University as a research associate and an appoint-

ment in the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory there. This

was during WWII and one of the projects the labora-

tory was investigating was how to enhance radio

communication for aircraft to overcome the influ-

ence from signal distortion and other noise.

Other research work Licklider did include his

creation of clipped speech. He explained how one

could alter speech using electronic equipment. He

discovered that the information necessary to under-

stand speech could be obtained from focusing on the

zero crossings of the speech wave form (where it

switches from negative to positive or positive to

negative values). This made it possible to create

equipment alterations to improve the audibility of

speech for pilots.

When the war ended, Licklider became inter-

ested in weekly gatherings held by Norbert Wiener

to discuss Wiener’s concept of cybernetics, of

control and communication in biological and ma-

chine systems. An interdisciplinary community of re-

searchers developed of which Licklider became part.

The notion that one could learn about information

processing by studying how it would be carried out

in living or machine systems was a source of inspira-

tion to researchers like Licklider and others in this

interdisciplinary community.

In the process of his studies of the brain and the

nervous system, Licklider became eager to realize

the promise of the significant tools that the develop-

ment of the computer was bringing into existence.

An example of such a tool was Sketchpad created by

Ivan Sutherland for the TX-2 at Lincoln Labs. In a

demonstration that Sutherland gave of Sketchpad, a

Project MAC graduate student, Warren Teitelman

reports:

In one impressive demonstration, Dr. Sutherland

sketched the girder of a bridge, and indicated the

points at which members were connected to-

gether by rivets. He then drew a support at each

end of the girder and a load at its center. The

sketch of the girder then sagged under the load,

and a number appeared on each member indicat-

ing the amount of tension or compression to

which the member was being subjected.

Sutherland was able to use the modeling pro-

gram he had created to add to the support the com-

puter simulation showed was needed. Then the

bridge was, according to the computer program, able

to maintain its shape. This is the kind of potential

that Licklider envisioned for the research community

if they could acquire adequate modeling programs.

They would be able to rely on the computer to

process data and to demonstrate how the change in

one parameter would affect changes in others. But to

make such a potential advance possible, a new form

of computing would first be necessary. This would

be interactive online computing. Licklider not only

had a vision for how scientists might find significant

support for their research in partnership with com-

puters, he also had an understanding of the kinds of

research that would be needed to achieve the techni-

cal goals he had identified as desirable.

Along with Licklider’s interest to create a com-

puter modeling tool for researchers, he had another

objective which was to prove even more inspiring.

He recognized the need for a community of research-

ers to work together if they were to make progress in

the hard challenges they faced. He also envisioned

how the computer would help to facilitate such

collaborative activity. Licklider describes this goal in

a memo written in 1963 encouraging the researchers

being supported by the Information Processing

Techniques Office (IPTO) at centers of excellence

around the U.S. to collaborate with each other. He

describes how he hopes the researchers working on

diverse research will benefit from determining how

they can work together. This early support for

“Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Com-

puter Network” demonstrates the inspiration and

conceptual foundation for creating first the

ARPANET and then the Internet.

In the memo, Licklider wrote:

But I do think that we should see the main parts

of several projected efforts, all on one black-

board, so that it will be more evident than it

would otherwise be, where network-wide con-

vention would be helpful and where individual

concessions to group advantage would be most

important.

Licklider’s interest in explaining how computer

modeling would serve researchers helped in another

important way. It helped to set the foundation for the

ARPANET. A graduate student at one of the centers

of excellence that Licklider set up, at Project MAC

at MIT, Warren Teitelman, wrote his thesis on

creating a computer programming language that

would encourage interactivity between the scientist

Page 8

and the programmer. His thesis was titled “Pilot: A

Step Toward Man-Computer Symbiosis.” In his

thesis Teitelman set out to contribute to solving the

problem of using computers more effectively for

solving very hard problems. The kinds of problems

he was concerned with were those which “are ex-

tremely difficult to think through in advance, that is,

away from the computer. In some cases, the pro-

grammer cannot foresee the implications of certain

decisions he must make in the design of the pro-

gram.”

He wrote:

In such a situation the means of making pro-

grams often involved a trial and error process

‘write some code, run the program, make some

changes, write some more code, run program

again’.

Thus there was a need to be able to have the person

designing the program continually interact with the

computer to make the needed changes.

Licklider believed that thinking is intimately

bound up with modeling, and that the human mind is

an unmatched and superb environment for demon-

strating the power and dynamism of modeling.

Licklider and Taylor write:

By far the most numerous, most sophisticated

and most important models are those that reside

in men’s minds. In richness, plasticity, facility

and economy, the mental model has no peer, but

in other respects it has shortcomings. It will not

stand still for careful study. It cannot be made to

repeat a run. No one knows just how it works. It

serves its owner’s hopes more faithfully than it

serves reason. It has access only to the informa-

tion stored in one man’s head. It can be ob-

served and manipulated only by one person.

As Licklider and Taylor note, however, “society

rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single

mind.” Thus, there is a need to transform the individ-

ual modeling process into a collaborative modeling

process. Licklider and Taylor explain, “society

demands … [what] amounts to the requirement that

individual models be compared and brought into

some degree of accord. The requirement for commu-

nicating which we now define concisely ‘coopera-

tive’ modeling – cooperation in the construction,

maintenance and use of a model.”

To make cooperative modeling possible,

Licklider and Taylor propose that there is the need

for “a plastic or moldable medium that can be

modeled, a dynamic medium in which processes will

flow into consequences ….” But most important,

they emphasize the need for a common medium “that

can be contributed to and experimented with by all.”

The prospect is that, when several or many

people work together within the context of an

on-line interactive, community computer net-

work, the superior facilities of the network for

expressing ideas, preserving facts, modeling

processes, and bringing two or more people

together in close interaction with the same

information and the same behavior – those

superior facilities will so foster the growth and

integration of knowledge that the incidence of

major achievements will be markedly in-

creased.

At the foundation of this relationship between

the human and the computer that Licklider recog-

nized as so important is his understanding of the

importance of combining the heuristic capability of

the human with the algorithmic capability of the

computer. Heuristic activity, according to Licklider,

is “that which tends toward or facilitates invention or

discoveries, that charts courses, formulates prob-

lems, guides solutions. The heuristic part is the

creative part of information power.”

For Licklider, the goal of the research he was

doing was to help catalyze the development of a new

science, a science of information processing in

biological and machine systems. A helpful definition

of information science was created by the Committee

on Information Sciences for the University of Chi-

cago program established in 1965.

They explained:

The information sciences deal with the body of

knowledge that relates to the structure, origina-

tion, transmission and transformation of infor-

mation in both naturally existing and artificial

systems. This includes the investigation of

information representation, as in the genetic

code or in codes for efficient message transmis-

sion, and the study of information processing

devices and techniques, such as computers and

their programming systems.

This new science included biological and ma-

chine systems as part of its scientific study. Licklider

was hopeful that the computer would “help us

understand the structure of ideas, the nature of

intellectual processes.”

“Although one cannot see clearly and deeply

into this region of the future from the present point

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of view,” Licklider believed, “he can be convinced

that information processing,” which now connotes to

many “a technology devoted to reducing data and

increasing costs,” will one day be the field of a basic

and important science, which will be an in interdisci-

plinary science.

This new interdisciplinary science, would

include, “Planning, management communication,

mathematics and logic, and perhaps even psychology

and philosophy will draw heavily from and contrib-

ute to that science.”

“One of the most important present functions,”

Licklider writes for the “the digital computer in the

university should be to catalyze the development of

that science.” A first step for this new science was to

determine what was the most appropriate role of the

computer and the human in the relationship between

them, and what was the desirable interaction leading

to the most advanced mutually beneficial develop-

ment of each.

Licklider’s research into what would be the role

of the human and the role of the computer, i.e., a

symbiotic relationship, helped to set a foundation for

the research program he instituted when he was

chosen by ARPA to head the IPTO in 1962.

As computer networking developed and spread,

Licklider observed that creative users emerged.

Licklider recognized that the creative users devel-

oped uses of the network which became catalysts for

the development of new and desirable forms and

processes that other users would benefit from.

Licklider called these creative users ‘socio-technical

pioneers’ and he encouraged the support of their

explorations and online activity. Licklider recom-

mended putting off as long as possible the general

use of the developing network by other users who

would not be exploring its potential. He felt that it

was important not to kill the goose who laid the

golden eggs of the network and that it was crucial to

protect the access of creative users to an exploratory

and creative online environment. Licklider defined

these ‘socio-technical pioneers’ as not only the

creative users who explored how new online forms

and processes could be developed and utilized, but

he also recognized the importance of the program-

mers who were creating the software and the forms

of making the software public and something to

which many could contribute.

V. The Role of Scientists and

Decision Makers in New Technology

Decisions

After the Macy conferences and the NSF confer-

ence modeled on it, Licklider participated in other

similar experiences. Another conference Licklider

participated in which has been transcribed into a

book version was held at MIT on the occasion of the

100th anniversary of MIT. A series of talks was held

and the talks, along with the discussion, were tran-

scribed and published in an edited volume by Martin

Greenberger, then a young faculty member at MIT.

While there were a number of talks included in

this volume about the vision for the future develop-

ment of the computer and for the science that would

develop alongside the computer development and the

science of information processing, the keynote talk

was particularly significant. This keynote was by Sir

Charles Percy Snow ( C. P. Snow), a scientist and

civil servant from Great Britain. The topic of Snow’s

talk was “Scientists and Decision Making.”

Snow spoke about the important public policy

issues that would accompany the development of

new computer technology, and about the difficulty

government officials would have determining how to

make decisions about the technology which took into

account the public interest. In his talk, Snow de-

scribed why there would be a need for many people

to be involved in the decision making process. He

proposed the need for broad based public discussion

on the issues relating to new computer development.

Snow explains:

I believe that the healthiest decisions of society

occur by something more like a Brownian

movement. All kinds of people all over the place

suddenly get smitten with the same sort of

desire, with the same sort of interest, at the same

time. This forms concentrations of pressure and

of direction. These concentrations of pressure

gradually filter their way through to the people

whose nominal responsibility it is to put the

legislation into a written form.

“I am pretty sure,” Snow continues, “that this

Brownian movement is probably the most important

way in which ordinary social imperatives of society

get initiated.” (Greenberger, pages 6-7) Snow re-

ferred to this broad based public discussion as a

political form of the physical phenomenon known as

Brownian motion. He proposes that, based on such

Page 10

discussion, better decision making processes would

result than if the issues were restricted to secret

behind-the-scenes government processes. In his talk,

Snow characterizes the limited process of decision-

making of government in the U.S.:

We all know that even in non secret decisions,

there is a great deal of intimate closed politics

…. In (the U.S.) you elect a President; he initi-

ates legislation (that is, he takes a decision as to

which legislation to produce), and then the

Congress takes the decision as to whether this

legislation is to go into action. (Greenberger,

page 6)

Snow explained how government decisions were

made in Great Britain, involving a similarly limited

number of people as in the U.S. Such a narrow set of

people being involved in making decisions was for

Snow a sign of a serious problem.

If we follow the explosive development in com-

puter technology that followed C. P. Snow’s talk in

1960, we will see that not only was there foresight

about the magnitude of change in computer develop-

ment that would occur in the next 40 years, but also

about the technical changes that would result in

significant changes in society in general and in the

economy in particular. Similarly, the nature of the

new technical and scientific developments would

require greater social understanding. The social

ferment that comes from involving some broader

strata of the people in the discussion about the policy

issues that are needed to encourage technical devel-

opment was identified as the process to develop this

social understanding.

Shortly after the MIT anniversary programs on

the “Future of the Computer,” Licklider was invited

to create an office for research in computer science

and another office for research in behavioral science,

within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). He

formed the Information Processing Techniques

Office in ARPA which was under the U.S. Depart-

ment of Defense. Licklider was not a computer

scientist. He was invited to ARPA to focus on the

needs of the user and to create a computer that would

serve the user.

At ARPA Licklider began a research program

that would fundamentally change not only the

architecture of computers but the architecture of how

computers were used. Not only did the research done

under his leadership make a great impact on the type

of computing available in the world, but also he

identified the need for computer networking and put

forward the vision that would inspire computer

scientists to develop time-sharing, packet switching

and the ARPANET.

Licklider’s first term as director of IPTO put the

office on a firm foundation that served to fundamen-

tally influence the nature and direction of computer

science. He created an intergalactic network of

researchers who were supported in their work.

VI. The Politics of Science and

Technology

Licklider returned to IPTO in 1974-1975. He

found, however, that a significant change had oc-

curred. The kind of basic research he had pioneered

was no longer welcome. Instead there was pressure

to do research that would meet prescribed outcomes

and would be oriented to produce defense specific

products.

Licklider challenged these changes both in his

second term at IPTO and in talks and articles pub-

lished after he left. These articles help to provide a

guidepost for how the computer and networking

development that Licklider envisioned can be practi-

cally achieved.

The problem Licklider discovered was the same

problem that C. P. Snow had anticipated. The prob-

lem was that there were government officials who

needed to make decisions about the new technology,

but were not able to understand the depth of the

issues involved. The difficulty of this problem led

Licklider to propose the need to have citizens partici-

pate in the process of determining how government

would support new technology.

Licklider advocated that the networks them-

selves be used by those online to influence govern-

ment policy regarding the continuing development of

the networks. Licklider was not proposing that

citizens rely on voting as the way to influence

government. To the contrary, Licklider writes:

That does not mean simply that everyone must

vote on every question for voting in the absence

of understanding defines only the public atti-

tude, not the public interest. It means that many

public-spirited individuals must study, model,

discuss, analyze, argue, write, criticize, and

work out each issue and each problem until they

reach a consensus or determine that none can be

Page 11

reached – at which point there may be occasion

for voting. (Licklider, 1979, page 126)

Licklider also felt that “many public-spirited

individuals must serve government – indeed must be

the government.” (Licklider, 1979, page 126) This is

because, whether or not all citizens would have

networking access, was a problem which would

require government initiatives to solve. And the

active involvement of public-spirited individuals was

needed. Licklider saw that people in the U.S. were

frustrated with the government. To change this

situation, Licklider advocated making it possible for

citizens to participate in government decision-mak-

ing via the developing computer networks. 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, 1979,

page 124)

Licklider saw the problem that the current

“decision makers and opinion leaders see computers

in terms of conventional data processing and are not

able to envision or assess their many capabilities and

applications.”

He maintained that not only must the decisions

about the development and exploitation of computer

networks be made “in the public interest,” but also in

“the interest of giving the public itself the means to

enter into the decision-making processes that will

shape their future.” (Licklider, 1979, page 126) Here

Licklider expresses the goal that citizens communi-

cate with each other and with the officials and

designers of a social policy or plan. The importance

of such online developments identified in the 1960s

and 1970s by Licklider and others, was demonstrated

in the 1990s.

VII. The Emergence of the Netizen

In 1992-1993, Michael Hauben, was in his

second year as a college student at Columbia Univer-

sity in New York City. Describing the research that

he did which revealed the emergence of Netizens, of

the online net.citizens that Licklider identified as

needed for the continuing development of computer

technology, Hauben relates how he first got online in

1985 using what were known as local hobbyist

computer bulletin board systems. At the time he was

living in Michigan, where research for the develop-

ment of the Internet was being carried out.

Describing the experience he had online,

Hauben writes:

I started using local bulletin board systems

(called BBS’s) in Michigan in 1985. After sev-

eral years of participation on both local

hobbyist-run computer bulletin board systems

and the global Usenet, I began to research

Usenet and the Internet.

This was a new environment for me. Little

thoughtful conversation was encouraged in my

high school. Since my daily life did not provide

places and people to talk with about real issues

and real world topics, I wondered why the

online experience encouraged such discussion

and consideration of others. Where did such a

culture spring from? And how did it arise?

During my sophomore year of college in 1992,

I was curious to explore and better understand

this new online world. (Netizens, “Preface,”

page ix

)

Hauben explains how, “As part of course-work

at Columbia University I explored these questions.

One professor encouraged me to use Usenet and the

Internet as places to conduct research. My research

was real participation in the online community,

exploring how and why these communication forums

functioned.” He continues, “I posted questions on

Usenet, mailing lists and Freenets.

Along with my

questions I would attach some worthwhile prelimi-

nary research. People respected my questions and

found the preliminary research helpful. The entire

process was one of mutual respect and sharing of

research and ideas, fostering a sense of community

and participation.” (Netizens, page ix)

Through this research process, he “found that on

the Net people willingly help each other and work

together to define and address issues important to

them.” This was the experience people had on

Internet mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups in the

early 1990s, before the web culture had developed

and spread. What one found was a great deal of

discussion and interactive communication online.

This was like the computer bulletin board culture

that flourished in the 1980s and early 1990s. While

the computer bulletin boards put users in contact

with local computer users, Usenet newsgroups and

Internet mailing lists put users in contact with other

computer users from around the world. When

Hauben posted his early research questions on

Usenet and the Internet, he received about 60 re-

Page 12

sponses from around the globe. A number of these

responses were detailed descriptions of how people

online had found the Net an exciting and important

contribution to their lives. Not only did the Internet

make a difference in the range of experiences and in

contacts people could reach, but also, and sometimes

more important, it made possible a more satisfying,

broader experience of communication.

Elaborating on the progression of his research,

Hauben writes:

My initial research concerned the origins and

development of the global discussion forum

Usenet. For my second paper, I wanted to

explore the larger Net, what it was, and its

significance. This is when my research uncov-

ered the remaining details that helped me recog-

nize the emergence of Netizens. (Netizens, page

While people answering his questions were

describing how the Internet and Usenet were helpful

in their lives, many wrote about their efforts to

contribute to the Net, and to help spread access to

those not yet online. It is this second aspect of the

responses that Hauben received which he recognized

as an especially significant aspect of his research.

Describing the characteristics of those he came

to call Netizens, Hauben writes:

The world of the Netizen was envisioned more

than twenty-five years ago by J. C. R. Licklider.

Licklider brought to his leadership of the U.S.

Department of Defense’s ARPA program a

vision of the ‘intergalactic computer network’.

There are people online who actively con-

tribute to the development of the Net. These are

people who understand the value of collective

work and the communal aspects of public com-

munications. These are the people who discuss

and debate topics in a constructive manner, who

e-mail answers to people and provide help to

newcomers, who maintain FAQ’s, files and

other public information repositories. These are

the people who discuss the nature and role of

this new communications medium. These are

the people who as citizens of the Net I realized

were Netizens. (Netizens, pages ix-x)

Later Hauben elaborates:

Net.citizen was used in Usenet…and this really

represented what people were telling me – they

were really net citizens – which Netizen

captures. To be a ‘Netizen’ is different from

being a ‘citizen’. This is because to be on the

Net is to be part of a global community. To be a

citizen restricts someone to a more local or

geographical orientation. (From “Webchat with

Michael Hauben,” Jan. 25, 1996)

Hauben was not referring to all users who get

online. He differentiates between Netizens and

others online:

Netizens are not just anyone who comes online.

Netizens are especially not people who come

online for individual gain or profit. They are not

people who come to the Net thinking it is a

service. Rather, they are people who understand

that it takes effort and action on each and every-

one’s part to make the Net a regenerative and

vibrant community and resource. (Netizens,

page x)

Several of the articles Hauben wrote about the

history and impact of the Net were posted online and

then collected into a book. In January 1994 the book

was put online at an FTP site documenting the

origins of the online network and culture it gave

birth to. In his preface to the book Hauben wrote:

As more and more people join the online com-

munity and contribute toward the nurturing of

the Net and toward the development of a great

shared social wealth, the ideas and values of

netizenship spread.

By 1995, Hauben’s research was recognized

internationally, and he was invited to Japan to speak

at a conference about the subject of Netizens. In his

talk, he describes his early investigation of Usenet

and the Internet and what he learned from his re-

search and experience online. He writes:

The virtual space created on noncommercial

computer networks is accessible universally.

This space is accessible from the connections

that exist; whereas social networks in the phys-

ical world generally are connected only by

limited gateways. So the capability of network-

ing on computer nets overcomes limitations

inherent in non computer social networks.

Access to the Net, however, needs to be univer-

sal for the Net to fully utilize the contribution

each person can represent. Once access is lim-

ited, the Net and those on the Net lose the full

advantage the Net can offer. Lastly the people

on the Net need to be active in order to bring

about the best possible use of the Network.

Page 13

VIII. The Online Community

It is interesting to see how closely the concep-

tual vision Hauben developed matched that of the

vision of J. C. R. Licklider. Hauben’s views were

influenced by his experience online, his study and

the comments he received in response to his research

questions from people around the world.

Licklider

had recognized the need for an online community

that would encourage users to contribute to be able

to develop computer and network science and tech-

nology. This collaborative environment is what

people found online on Usenet and the Internet even

into the early 1990s.

Licklider and later Hauben advocated support

and protection of the creative users online who were

eager to explore how to utilize the Internet in inter-

esting and novel new ways. Both staunchly main-

tained that users had to be participants in making the

decisions that would develop and spread the Internet

to all. Both warned that commercial entities could

not develop a network that would spread access to all

or that would encourage user participation in its

development.

The conscious netizen, the net.citizen that

Hauben identified online in the 1992-1993 period

when he was doing his initial research about the

history and social impact of the Internet coincided

with Licklider’s ideas that there was a need to have

creative users online to help the Internet to develop

and to care for its continuing development.

The concept and consciousness of oneself as a

netizen has since spread around the world. By the

mid 1990s, people online had begun to refer to them-

selves as netizen, in the fashion of how ‘citizen’ was

used during the French Revolution.

There have been significant achievements of

netizens in countries around the world. The netizens

of South Korea, however, deserve particular men-

tion. They are helping to shape the democratic

practices that extend what is understood as democ-

racy and citizenship. Their experience provides an

important body of practice to consider when trying

to understand what will be the future form of politi-

cal participation.

IX. Methodology

What are the implications of Licklider’s ideas

about models and about the brain and modeling, for

the study of the Internet and the creation of a re-

search agenda for this study? Recent articles in the

“Annals of the History of Computing” and other

engineering publications provide a perspective

toward what methodology and framework are needed

for such study.

One article is an editorial by Hunter Crowther-

Heyck titled “Mind and Network.”

The author

proposes that the Internet is attractive as a ‘new

model.’ He recognizes that this is not an accident,

but the result of the interest in models and modeling

by those in the cybernetic community that Licklider

was a member of in the 1940s and 1950s. This

community was also interested in how the human

mind worked. They wondered what they could learn

about the human brain from learning about the

computer, and what they could learn about the

computer, from learning about the brain.

Licklider and Taylor’s article “The Computer as

a Communication Device,” however, takes this

relationship one step further. By focusing on the

human-computer system as a network, they are able

to consider the implications for the augmentation of

the human capability that being part of a collabora-

tive communication network would make possible.

The article, “Engineering Disclosing Models,”

by the British historian of science, Michael Duffy

makes the argument why a new methodology is

needed for the history of engineering to support the

new advances made possible by information technol-

ogy.

Duffy maintains that modern engineering

developments are a change in a conceptual paradigm

as fundamental as the change described in the Eliza-

bethan World Picture.

In his book, Tillyard de-

scribes a paradigm change that took place in science

in the 16th and 17th centuries. This was a change

from the metaphysics that took as its fundamental

basis the four elements of fire, air, earth and water,

to a science that would focus on the nature of the

phenomenon being observed in order to determine

the scientific laws and underlying principles.

The changed paradigm led to the discovery of

thermodynamics and mechanics and other scientific

explanations that made possible the industrial revo-

lution. Duffy proposes that there is a need to create

a new conceptual framework by which to understand

the history of engineering and by which to help

inspire support for its future development.

He explains how the new technologies of our

time “are very different from the machines and

systems which built and powered the former phases

Page 14

of industrialization, and their raw material is more

likely to be a living organization, the nervous system

or information ….” Because new kinds of industry

are being created as consequences of this develop-

ment, he argues, the new technologies require a

conceptual apparatus adequate for interpreting the

physical and biological phenomenon.

Duffy is calling for a change from looking at

engineering as artifacts as has been common in the

past. The “history of technology is too often focused

on industrial [artifacts],” he writes. He points out

that there is a need for a new history of engineering

and a new methodology to develop that history. The

history he is proposing is one that will focus on the

concepts and models of engineering activities. Duffy

defines engineering as, “The science which includes

technology.” (page 22) He is proposing the need to

identify the model that engineers use, the ‘conceptual

apparatus,’ (page 29) that helps to understand a

technological process and to explore how to develop

it. Duffy argues that there is a need to create “imagi-

nary models or analogies of the phenomenon” being

developed. Then “these models can be abstracted,

generalized and idealized.” (page 27)

“All design,” he writes, “must of course be

subjected to practical tests.” Duffy identifies what he

calls “disclosing models,” as a means to provide this

new conceptual framework to reinterpret and deepen

understanding of engineering in the past and to

provide a new conceptual apparatus for the future.

(pages 22-23, see page 29) “Even the simplest model

can effect a revolution,” he observes. An example he

offers is the advance that came from borrowing the

model of the “semipermeable membrane” from

chemistry to describe “the actions of the model of

the heart by the ‘diastolic and systolic action’.” (page

28)

X. Research Questions

In his article, “How Did Computing Go Global:

the Need for an Answer and a Research Agenda,”

James W. Cortada raises a series of questions about

how computer developments have occurred and

spread so rapidly in just the past 50 years. “How this

class of technology dispersed so quickly…remains

little understood,” he observes.

Considering “why

this is a useful question,” he concludes that, “In short

this story is too big and too important to ignore.”

Cortada then asks “what is it critical to examine” and

“how to do so.” (page 53)

While Cordata is making a set of observations

about the rapid spread of computer technology,

similar observations about the rapid spread of the

Internet could be made which would be even more

striking. Cortada proposes that the question of “what

to examine” is a question to ask about how to study

the rapid development and spread of computer

technology, “what to examine” is similarly an

important question to help to formulate a research

agenda on the history and development of the

Internet.

XI Conclusion

This paper began with a reference to the mythol-

ogy that surrounds the origins and development of

the Internet. A problem that results from the wide-

spread dissemination of this mythology is that it

stands in the way of the researchers and the public

recognizing the significant scientific and social

advance represented by the creation and the develop-

ment of the Internet.

It is not that the Internet has grown and spread

as an accidental side effect of some obscure U.S.

military project, as the mythology would lead one to

believe. To the contrary, the Internet is the result of

a significant scientific collaboration among an

international group of researchers to solve the prob-

lems, technical and political, of making communica-

tion possible across technical and political bound-

aries.

Not only was there international collaboration to

create the TCP/IP protocol, but this technical re-

search had a scientific foundation in the ferment

among an interdisciplinary community of researchers

in the 1940s and 1950s who were interested in the

science of information processing, of communica-

tion, and of control systems.

Along with the scientific interactions of these

researchers, there was a concern about the social

problem that the new technology would encounter.

A primary concern was how to deal with the problem

of government officials who would not understand

the depths of the issues involved, but who would

have to make decisions about the future of the new

technology.

To help solve this problem, Licklider recognized

that there was a need for increased citizen participa-

tion in the decisions that would be made with respect

to the new technology. He also recognized that the

new computer networking technology would help to

Page 15

make a new form of participatory citizenship possi-

ble.

The creation of mailing lists and online discus-

sion groups like Usenet newsgroups have provided

support for grassroots participation in networking

development. This in turn has helped to create and

define the broad ranging social and technical vision

that has helped the online community create and

develop a significant new social institution, often

referred to as ‘the Net’.

Even more profoundly, in the early 1990s, just

when a number of networks around the world were

becoming part of the Internet, research revealed that

a new form of social identity and consciousness had

emerged within the online community. The identity

of oneself as a ‘netizen’, i.e., a net.citizen, was

embraced as a way to refer to the new social con-

sciousness that participation online made possible.

Reviewing Licklider’s interest in the brain and

the modeling feature of the brain and his understand-

ing that the individual nature of this modeling was a

limitation that needed to be overcome, one is struck

by how precious and important is the online collabo-

rative and interactive activity that the Internet makes

possible.

While there has been much political and finan-

cial attention given to the creation of so called new

models for Internet governance, there has been little

attention or institutional interest in trying to learn the

lessons of how the Internet grew and spread and how

the netizen emerged. As Thomas Paine observed,

almost three centuries ago, “Forms grow out of

principles and operate to continue the principles they

grow from.” (The Rights of Man)

By understanding the principles that made it

possible to develop the Internet, it will be possible to

understand how to create the forms needed to

nourish its continuing development. The Internet and

the netizen provide a means to carry on this process.

That is why there is a serious need for the formula-

tion of a research agenda to support this much

needed study.

Notes:

1. “Packet Switching,” Wikipedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching

2. Baran wrote a 11-volume set of booklets “On Distributed

Communication” in 1964. Baran’s research was sponsored by

the U.S. Air Force and proposed a military communication

system for voice and data.

3. Lawrence G. Roberts, “The Evolution of Packet Switching”

http://www.packet.cc/files/ev-packet-sw.html

4. Ronda Hauben, “The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural

Conception for Solving the Multiple Network Problem”

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/birth_internet.txt

5. “An Interview with Donald W. Davies,” conducted by Martin

Campbell-Kelly, on 17 March 1986 National Physical Labora-

tory, “Actually, most of the discussions tended to be about the

operating system aspects, but certainly the mismatch between

time-sharing and the telephone network was mentioned. It was

that which sort of triggered off my thoughts, and it was in the

evenings during that meeting that I first began to think about

packet-switching.” (page 6) See also Thomas Marill and

Lawrence G. Roberts, “Toward a Cooperative Network of

Time-Shared Computers,” Proceedings-Fall Joint Computer

Conference, AFIPS 29, 425-431, Washington, D.C., Spartan

Books, 1966, and Interview with Davies.

6. Ronda Hauben, “A Closer Look at the Controversy Over the

Internet’s Birthday!,” CircleID, January 15, 2003.

http://www.CircleID.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_contro-

versy_over_the_internets_birthday_you_decide

7. These networks can differ significantly. To transport packets

among dissimilar networks meant a whole set of issues had to

be understood and resolved, according to Robert Kahn, one of

the co-inventors of the TCP/IP protocol. Among the issues

listed are: packets on different networks would be of different

sizes, there would be different decisions made regarding timing,

flow control, error checking and so forth. There would need to

be a means of having all the different networks recognize how

to route packets to their destination address. A form of address-

ing was needed which would be recognized by all the networks

of the Internet.

8. See Ronda Hauben, “The Internet: On its International

Origins and Collaborative Vision (A Work in Progress)”

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/birth_tcp.txt

9. Vinton Cerf. See:

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/1.pdf

10. Sylvia B. Kenney and Peter Kirstein, “The Uses of the

ARPA Network via the University College London Node,”

Workshop on Data Communications Sep 15-19, 1975, CP-76-9,

IIASA Laxenburg, Austria, 1975, page 54,

http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/2.pdf

11. See graphic of SATNET at:

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/4.pdf from an E-mail

between the author and Horst Claussen and Hans Dodel.

12. Warren Teitelman, “Pilot: A Step Toward Man-Computer

Symbiosis,” September 1966, Project MAC, MIT, MAC-TR-32

(Thesis), page 11.

13. J. C. R. Licklider, “MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and

Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network, Subject:

Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming Meeting, April 23,

1963,” ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY

Washington 25, D.C.

http://www.olografix.org/gubi/estate/libri/wizards/memo.html

14. Ibid., Teitelman, abstract, p. I.

15. J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, “The Computer As a

Communication Device,” In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider,

1915-1990, Digital Systems Research Center Palo Alto, CA,

1957, page 21

http://memex.org/licklider.pdf

16. Ibid.

Page 16

17. Ibid.

18. “The On-Line Intellectual Transfer System at MIT in 1975.”

Carl F. J. Overhage and R. Joyce Harman, The On-Line

Intellectual Community and the Information Transfer System at

MIT in 1975, page 25

19. See for example Licklider, J. C. R. “Computers: Thinking

Machines or Thinking Aids?” Mgmt. Rev. 54 (July 1965) 40-

43.

20. “In order to understand the wonder that the Internet and

various other components of the Net represent, we need to

understand why the ARPANET Completion Report ends with

the suggestion that the ARPANET is fundamentally connected

to and born of computer science rather than of the military.”

Chapter 7, Behind the Net: The Untold Story of the ARPANET

and Computer Science, by Michael Hauben, in Netizens, page

96. See also “The developers of the ARPANET viewed the

computer as a communication device rather than only as an

arithmetic device. Such a shift in understanding the role of the

computer was fundamental in advancing computer science.”

Ibid., page 109.

21. Ronda Hauben, “Computer Science and the Role of Gov-

ernment in Creating the Internet: ARPA/IPTO (1962-1986)

Creating the Needed Interface,”

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt

22. Greenberger, Martin ed, Computers and the World of the

Future, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1962.

23. Ibid., C. P. Snow, “Scientists and Decision Making,” pages

3-13 (Talk given at MIT, March 1961)

24. Ronda Hauben, “Computer Science and the Role of Gov-

ernment in Creating the Internet,”

http://ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/arpa_ipto.txt

25. J. C. R. Licklider, “Computers in Government,” in Michael

Dertouzos and Joel Moses, The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year

View, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1979, pages 87 - 126.

26. This was under a contract between ANS, the Univ of

Michigan and IBM

27. Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer

Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997.

(28) In the 1990s, community networks called Freenets were

just springing up which provided local users with free access to

the Internet.

29. From “The Netizens and Community Networks,” presented

at the Hypernetwork ‘95 Beppu Bay Conference on November

24, 1995

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/text/bbc95spch.txt

30. It is remarkable how the ideas about democracy and com-

munication that Hauben recognized from his research and the

ideas that Licklider had about citizens being involved in the

decisions that would influence the future of the net coincide

with the ideas that Jurgen Habermas had conceptually described

as a public sphere. In an article describing Habermas’s theory,

Mark Warren explains the aspects of discursive democracy that

Habermas has identified. The importance of Habermas’s work

is that he focus on communication and the procreative quality

of communication (the transformative quality), in a way that is

similar to that of Licklider and Hauben. On the other hand, the

difference is that Hauben and Licklider consider the importance

of an actual technological support for this human communica-

tive activity, while Habermas speaks more abstractly and

focuses on the human activity in a more philosophical (or

normative) framework.

31. Ronda Hauben, “The Information Processing Techniques

Office and the Birth of the Internet: A Study in Governance,”

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/lick101.doc

32. Ronda Hauben, “The Rise of Netizen Democracy: A case

study of the impact of netizens on democracy in South Korea,”

in manuscript.

33. Hunter Crowther-Heyck, “Mind and Network,” Vol. 27,

Issue: 3 IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, July-Sept.

2005, page 104.

34. Michael C. Duffy, “Engineering Disclosing Models,”

Helvelius Book 2, edited by Oktawian Nawrot, University of

Gdansk, 2004, pages 22-64.

35. Ibid., page 56.

36. James W. Cortada, “How Did Computing Go Global? The

Need for an Answer and a Research Agenda,” IEEE Annals of

the History of Computing, January 2004, pages 53-58.

37. In this context I want to point to the Asian networking

association online Internet history museum as one project with

has been created to document how networking has developed in

the countries in Asia.

http://www.internethistory.or.kr/

38. This reflects the fact that the pre-Internet forms like Usenet,

BITNet, mailing lists, and a number of other networking

developments in the 1970s and 1980s prepared the ground for

the Internet which enveloped all these other networks by the

mid 1990s.

Appendix

Examples included Steve Alexander who compiled and

distributed a list of gas prices at particular gas stations in

California to which many people contributed and kept up to

date. (He started this in a newsgroup ca.driving). His effort was

to work with others to counteract the collusive price-gouging

behavior of the oil companies. (page 11 Netizens)

Another response was from Declan Mc Creesh who wrote

about how the most up-to-date sports information was available

online. It had been contributed to by different people about the

Grand Prix.

Godfrey Nolan wrote about how a newspaper about

Ireland distributed online by Lian Ferrie who worked in Galway

helped Godfrey to keep up with what was happening in his

home country.

Malcolm Humes wrote how the kind of conversation

online was about substantial issues rather than “how’s the

weather” type of small talk.

There are numerous other descriptions in the paper

Hauben wrote which he titled, “The Net and Netizens: the

Impact the Net is having on People’s Lives.”

Hauben’s paper is online as chapter 1 of Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet The URL is:

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

Specific examples of netizen activity to help spread the

consciousness of the netizen:

A netizen from Ireland, Cal Woods put the online book

into html to help it to spread more widely.

A review of the book was done by a Rumanian researcher,

Boldur Barbat. He recognized that netizenship is an important

Page 17

new democratic development and acts as a catalyst for the

development of ever more advanced Information Technology.

In his review of Netizens, the Rumanian researcher

summed up Chapter 13, the chapter about the effect of the Net

on the news media. He wrote: “Chapter 13 investigates the

effect of the Net on the professional news media, under the

metaphor of ‘Will this kill that?’; its conclusion is rather

optimistic: the user masses becoming ‘netizen reporters’ will

force the acknowledged news media – to avoid being increas-

ingly marginalized – to evolve a new role, challenging the

premise that authoritative professional reporters (almost always

biased, consciously or not) are the only possible ones.” From

Boldur Barbat, “Book Review: Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet,” Studies in Informatics and

Control, Vol. 7, No 4 (December 1998).

www.ici.ro/ici/revista/sic1998_4/art06.html

A Japanese sociologist, Shumpei Kumon, gathered a series

of articles into a book in Japanese titled ‘The Age of Netizens’.

The book begins with a chapter on the birth of the netizen.

Also in the mid 1990s, a Polish researcher, Leszek Jesien,

was doing research about what form of citizenship would be

appropriate for the European Union (EU). Looking for a model

that might be helpful to understand how to develop a European-

wide form of citizenship, he found the work about netizens

online. He recommended that EU officials would do well to

view the phenomenon of netizenship with sympathy and

attention as a model of a broader than national, but also a

participatory form of citizenship.

The Polish researcher’s paper: “The 1996 IGC: European

Citizenship Reconsidered,” by Leszek Jesien, Instituets fur den

Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, March 1997.

h t t p : / / www. c o l u mb i a . e d u / ~ h a ub e n / n e ti z e n s / l i s t -

archive/Related-Articles/Jesien.rtf See also:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/citizenpap.html

Notable events showing the impact of netizens around the

world include:

A Netizen art contest seeking online art that helps to build

the online community was sponsored by a gallery in Rome.

A Netizens Association to keep the price of the Net

affordable was organized in Iceland.

A lexicographer in Israel composing a dictionary defini-

tion for a Hebrew dictionary wanted to be certain that she de-

scribed a netizen as one who contributes to the Net, not only as

anyone online.

A Congressman in the U.S. introduced a bill into the U.S.

House of Representatives called the Netizen Protection Act to

penalize anyone who sent spam on the Internet.

Along with individual efforts to develop and spread the

consciousness of netizenship, there have been online discus-

sions which have demonstrated the power of the Net and

Netizen to impact society. One such example is a discussion

about an editorial in an Indian newspaper about whether or not

India should help the U.S. to invade Iraq. The discussion had

more than a thousand entries.

Vannevar Bush and J. C. R.

Licklider: Libraries of the

Future 1945-1965

by Jay Hauben

[email protected]

I. Introduction

The whole human species is engaged in adding

experience and knowledge for itself and future gen-

erations. A vision of gathering the knowledge al-

ready created to make it accessible and useful to all

was put forward by J. C. R. Licklider and his Librar-

ies of the Future project in 1961-1963. Licklider and

his team built on thinking begun before the Second

World War that machines would help with this work.

Much of the earlier thinking is associated with

Vannevar Bush.

Throughout history, thinkers and scholars have

lamented that there is not enough time to read

everything of value. The real problem is not the

volume of valuable scholarship and recorded thought

and reasoning. The historic problem for scientists

and scholars has been selecting and gathering the

relevant material and processing it in their own

brains to yield new knowledge. The goal is to con-

tribute new insights to the body of knowledge, to

enhance what we have to draw on and what gets

passed on.

A grand vision emerged in the U.S. after the

Second World War. New human-machine knowl-

edge systems could be developed to help researchers

consult more of the corpus of all recorded

knowledge. Such systems would increase the useful-

ness of the corpus and accelerate the making of new

contributions to it.

II. Vannevar Bush and the Memex

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974), an American

inventor, engineer and science administrator is

popularly considered to have initiated this vision in

July 1945 with his article “As We May Think.”

the 1920s and 1930s, Bush had designed and built

the first large scale analog computers. These were

used to solve differential equations, being an ad-

vanced use of machines to do mental work. During

the Second World War, Bush had directed the U.S.

Office of Science Research and Development which

managed and coordinated the war-related activities

Page 18

of some six thousand U.S. scientists. As the end of

the war was coming into sight, Bush saw two prob-

lems emerging: 1) how to make the huge volume of

war time reports and research findings public and

accessible and 2) what new challenge to set for the

scientists who would be finishing their war related

work. His article “As We May Think” proposed one

solution for both problems. Bush proposed the

development of mechanical systems to manage and

process the growing body of scientific, technical and

scholarly information and knowledge.

Bush had great faith in the lasting benefit to

human society of scientific and technical develop-

ment. He welcomed the growing mountain of re-

search. The record must continue to be extended, it

must be stored and above all it must be consulted and

built upon. To Bush the difficulty was that “pub-

lication has been extended far beyond our present

ability to make real use of the record.” He worried,

with so much research and the necessary specializa-

tion, that “significant attainments become lost in the

mass of the inconsequential.”

But there were signs of hope. Bush was at heart

a great inventor. He offered as a solution a desk-like

device he called “memex,” (perhaps for memory

extension). It would be a mechanized file and per-

sonal library system. Using improved microfilm, it

would have the capacity to store all the books,

documents, pictures, correspondence, notes, etc. that

a scholar or scientist might need. The microfilm texts

would be created by the scholar or received in the

mail from colleagues or purchased from publishers

or other information providers. The cost would be

minimal because the microfilm and mail would be

inexpensive. Since the memex would have the

capacity to dry photograph whatever the user wrote

or placed on its transparent writing surface there was

practically no limit to what the scholar could have

available. There would be no problem storing even

a million books on microfilm in a small space inside

the memex. A mechanized rapid selector based on a

single frame as an item would allow the call up of

any frames or items desired in a very short time. The

scholar’s work would be facilitated by his or her own

personal complete and frequently updated memex

library.

But what good is all this personal accumulation

of the record? The real heart of the matter for the

scholar is to find in the corpus what is relevant and

intellectually stimulating. The problem Bush saw

that needed to be solved was the method of selection.

So far, indexing and cataloguing were done alphabet-

ically or numerically and searching or selecting was

by tracing down from subclass to subclass. For

example in consulting a dictionary or an index, the

first letter is found, then the second, and so on. Such

a method Bush wrote was artificial. The human brain

does not work that way.

The essence of the memex would be to store,

organize and retrieve in a way analogous to the

working of the brain. How does the human brain

work? It operates, according to Bush’s understand-

ing, by association. Describing the working of the

human brain, Bush observed, “With one item in its

grasp, [the brain] snaps instantly to the next that is

suggested by the association of thoughts.” This is “in

accordance with some intricate web of trails carried

by the cells of the brain.”

Recall is sometimes vague

and trails not frequently followed are prone to fade

with time. Yet the brain is awe-inspiring with its

speed of action, intricacy of details and recall of

mental pictures.

How could the memex act like the brain? Every

time the scholar or scientist puts the microfilm of a

book or document into the memex he or she assigns

to it a code in the code-book section of the memex.

That is the same as before. But, in imitation of the

brain, every time the scholar consults a document or

item in the memex, the scholar has a mechanism to

associate it with other items which come to mind.

From then on, the associated items will be able to

select each other automatically. The memex puts

codes in the margin of the microfilm to insure this

action. As the user consults an item in the memex or

does his or her scholarly work, trails of association

are thus created and recorded for later use. The

contents of the memex are in this way organized and

coded for retrieval or further research. Every item

consulted is associated with other items that are

intellectually connected with it. Selection by associa-

tion replaces indexing. The scholar can annotate the

trails, draw conclusions from them and, when satis-

fied that something worthwhile has been discovered,

have the memex make copies of the trail and the

documents associated with it. The memex makes the

copies photographically on microfilm, in the process

a new document is made of the associated frames.

The scholar can send the associative trail to his col-

leagues for insertion of it into their own memexes to

Page 19

be combined with their own trails or the scholar can

send it to a publisher for publication.

Bush expected in this way to increase the acces-

sibility and utility of the store of knowledge custom-

ized by each user and to facilitate collaboration and

dissemination of new knowledge. He also expected,

in time, ways would be found so that each memex

would learn from the usage of each scholar how to

increase the usefulness of its operation. Eventually

advanced memexes could be instructed to search for

new trails that would be useful to the scholar but

which he or she had not yet discovered. In essence,

Bush’s associative trails were a new knowledge

structure and a memex memory coded with associa-

tive indexing a new memory structure. Bush ex-

pected wholly new forms of encyclopedias would be

made, with a mesh of associative trails running

through them. A new profession of trailblazers

would appear for those who took pleasure in finding

useful trails through the enormous mass of the

common record. By the easy exchange of micro-

filmed trails, Bush was hopeful scholarly collabora-

tion and co-work would be facilitated and become

common.

Bush expected, having modeled the memex on

the working of the brain, the memex would facilitate

and accelerate scholarly and scientific work. The

users of the memex also might improve their own

mental processes via its use. The benefit from use of

the memex would be achieved without unduly

adding to the cost of storage or dissemination be-

cause the memex would cause scholarly and scien-

tific publishing to change to microfilm as well. Bush

was hopeful in 1945 that the improved knowledge

management introduced by memex might yet allow

everyone to “encompass the great record and to grow

in the wisdom” of human experience.

There is little evidence a memex was ever built.

Digitalization replaced microfilm and all-purpose

electronic computers became available so that

microfilm and photographic methods were no longer

considered as the basis for a scholarly workstation.

But the idea of associative trails or associative

indexing is often sited as the inspiration for

hypermedia knowledge structures that have prolifer-

ated since the early 1990s. Whether the memex

would have ever lived up to Bush’s expectations,

Bush used it to raise important questions for

knowledge management for the sciences: How can

the whole corpus of knowledge in a scientist’s field

be made available to him or her and be kept current?

How should it be organized? What method of search

and retrieval? And how can knowledge be shared

and collaboratively generated? Bush also pointed in

the intriguing direction. Look to the master of

knowledge management, the human brain for help

with knowledge management.

III. Licklider and the Procognitive Sys-

tem

Around 1960, J. C. R. Licklider was recruited to

lead a project to inquire into the application of com-

puter technologies to information handling. J. C. R.

Licklider (1915-1990) was a physio-psychologist by

training. For his PhD in 1942 he had mapped for the

first time the different sites in the brains of cats

where stimuli from sounds of different frequencies

are received. Licklider had also been part of the

Wiener cybernetics circle around MIT and had been

one of the first people to sit at the console of a mini

computer, the PDP-1 and operate it in an interactive

mode. The Council on Library Resources which

recruited Licklider had been founded and funded by

the Ford Foundation in 1956 to address the question

how could technology help libraries gather, index,

organize, store and make accessible the growing

body of recorded information despite the intellectual

explosion of the Twentieth Century.

Licklider’s project was undertaken at Bolt

Beranek and Newman (BBN), the science and

technology firm. BBN later became famous for its

role in designing and implementing the subnetwork

of the U.S. government’s ARPANET experiment.

Licklider gathered at BBN a small team of engineers

and psychologists supplemented by some of his

colleagues at MIT.

For two years, 1961-1963, they

explored “concepts and problems of libraries of the

future.” Licklider wrote a summary report of the

project which appeared as the book, Libraries of the

Future, in 1965.

Licklider and his team foresaw that the whole

corpus of recorded thought, at least in the sciences,

law, medicine, technology and the records of busi-

ness and government could sooner or later be gath-

ered into a single central or distributed computer

processable memory system. The BBN study he

directed was undertaken to answer the question how

might this whole corpus of recorded solid thought be

organized and made accessible so that it would be

Page 20

attractive to use and a powerful lever for human

progress.

Licklider began his report with an estimate of

the size that the corpus of scientific and scholarly

knowledge would be in the year 2000. His estimate

was of the order of 10

bytes. There seemed in 1965,

and there seems today, no technical obstacle to

gathering a memory system of this size or even today

one or two or three orders of magnitude higher. In

terms of recent hardware, 500 memory systems each

capable of storing 20TB of data would suffice to

hold the whole body of recorded solid thought

including digitized audio and video. And there seems

no obstacle yet to being able to process in a time of

the order of weeks this corpus in any way chosen.

Licklider projected that if it were found possible

to process the body of recorded thought so as to have

more direct access to its knowledge content, then

there would be the basis of a new library system.

Such a system would consist of terminals and com-

puters and networks that would make the body of

human knowledge available for all possible human

needs and for automatic feedback machine control

purposes. Licklider chose the name ‘procognitive’

for the system he was envisioning. Procognitive

because it would be a system for the advancement

and application of knowledge. Rather than being

based on collections of documents and tags and

retrieval methods, the Procognitive system would be

based on the three elements, the corpus of

knowledge, the question, and the answer. There

would be no transportation of matter, no books, just

(1) processing of information into knowledge and (2)

processing of questions into answers, all done

digitally. From this point of view, authors and

scientists are not seen as contributing documents to

science or the Procognitive system. They contribute

information or their thoughts which get processed for

their knowledge content, augmenting the already

existing corpus of knowledge.

How could information be processed into

knowledge? How should the corpus of knowledge be

organized? Like Bush, Licklider looked to the brain.

He recognized that the human brain is a complex

arrangement of neuronal elements and processes.

These elements and processes “accept diverse

stimuli, including spoken and printed sentences and

somehow process and store them in ways that sup-

port the drawing of inferences and the answering of

questions.”

The human brain (1) processes stimuli

at the time of input and (2) stores, not the stimuli but

a representation of them. The inferences and answers

arrived at by the brain are not mere restatements of

past inputs drawn from memory but are tailored to be

appropriate to the actual or current need. Licklider

also believed, in part, that humans think by “manip-

ulating, modifying, and combining ‘schemata,’”

schemes and models of how things work or relate to

each other. New knowledge he believed is achieved

by adapting one or more old schemata to fit new

situations.

Could the body of thought be processed into a

new body of knowledge schemata or other knowl-

edge structures? If so, then queries of it could be

answered with knowledge structures as answers

rather than with already existing documents or parts

of documents.

Licklider saw as the aim of the Procognitive

system to enable a researcher or scholar, or eventu-

ally anyone, to present to the system a search pre-

scription or query or question in more or less natural

language and get in return “suggestions, answers to

questions, and made-to-order summaries” gathered

from the knowledge structures in the corpus of

knowledge. The outputs would not be reproductions

or mere translations of previous inputs. Licklider

expected the outputs to be “of the kind that a good

human [research] assistant might prepare if he [or

she] had a larger and more accurate memory and

could process information faster.”

Licklider’s BBN project considered or

experimented with relational nets, syntactic analyses,

the possibility of semantic nets, knowledge “repre-

sentation languages” and other structures. Based on

his sense of how the brain worked, Licklider in the

early 1960s considered finding a representation

language the most promising way forward. Research

was needed to discover the form of the language

representation that would be the foundation of a

question answering system. Then computer programs

and human-computer systems could be worked out

that could process the whole corpus of thought and

information into the representation or representations

that would best capture the knowledge content of the

corpus. Licklider expected such a representation

language would be more rule-bound than natural

language, less ambiguous and would require a larger

memory than the natural language text and images-

based corpus require.

Page 21

After the whole corpus of text and images was

processed into the chosen knowledge representation

form, any new contribution would be similarly pro-

cessed before it would be added to the processed

corpus. This processing even with the most advanced

programming would require human-computer

interaction. The processing would have to be orga-

nized, controlled, monitored and corrected by work-

ers in a new profession, the procognitive “system

specialists.” For example, the system would issue

alert messages when there were ambiguities it could

not resolve. The system specialists would then

consult the author or editor or subject specialist to

find a less ambiguous or clearer representation of the

thoughts or information. The system specialists

would also undertake to maintain and upgrade the

knowledge corpus. They would probe it for statisti-

cally unexpected clustering or basic abstract correla-

tions that had not yet been detected. These might

imply possible new knowledge structures and would

be called to the attention of researchers in the sub-

stantive fields but also researchers in the field of

knowledge structures. System specialists would also

make contribution to the teams of information

scientists continually seeking to improve the repre-

sentation language and processing of information

into knowledge.

The substantive users would also contribute to

the evolution of the Procognitive system both implic-

itly and explicitly. Users would be expected to

examine the results they receive to their queries or

questions and refine their search prescriptions or

questions. They would indicate which results they

find most insightful by choosing to use some over

others. The system’s programming code would be

open and users would be encouraged, if they wanted,

to make suggestions of improvements to the repre-

sentation language. Licklider expected that substan-

tive users would contribute significantly to the

development and improvement of the procognitive

system. The system would encourage human-human

interaction, group use and easy methods as part of

the system to get to other users, to system specialists

or to librarians when human help is needed. The

Procognitive system would be programmed to utilize

such user action as feedback and adapt itself toward

the goal of improving future results. Licklider

conceived of the Procognitive system as a self-

organizing and adaptive 3-way partnership or symbi-

osis of humans, computer systems and the corpus of

knowledge. Each was expected via feedback and

adaptation to change and grow. The fundamental

purpose of the Procognitive system would be to

improve the usefulness and promote the use of the

body of knowledge so that human purposes were

rewarded with greater success.

Licklider’s Procognitive system would process

the whole corpus of recorded thought and informa-

tion in order to capture the semantic relations and

content within the data across all discipline lines.

Licklider expected that the system could then be

addressed and replied to in natural language format.

The scholars and other users would receive natural

language knowledge responses to their queries and

searches. They would still however have to read and

think and generate insights and make discoveries

beyond what the system provides. The system would

provide semantic-like concepts and answers but the

humans would make the final and meaningful inter-

pretation. Thus, they could contribute back into the

system in an ever-expanding symbiosis. Licklider

projected that eventually humans would interact with

the growing corpus of knowledge by controlling and

monitoring the processing of information and re-

quests into knowledge rather than by handling the

details and all of the processing in their own brains.

The processing in their own brains would then be

doing the most advanced and creative knowledge

work.

The success of the Procognitive system

Licklider envisioned depends upon one major expec-

tation, the expectation that human-computer systems

would be developed that could do highly automated

and increasingly sophisticated semantic-like process-

ing. This expectation includes the implication that

significant natural language question and answer

systems would also be possible. Licklider was

writing in the mid 1960s when the field of Artificial

Intelligence (AI) was in its promising infancy. Was

Licklider like many of the people with whom he was

working too optimistic about AI? Licklider explicitly

explains that the success of the future procognitive

systems would not depend upon breakthroughs in AI.

He did not expect that the procognitive system

needed “intelligent” contributions from computers.

He wrote, “… useful information-processing services

can be made available … without programming

computers to ‘think’ on their own.”

Licklider had

the intuition that semantic analysis and processing

would be much more important then the syntactical

Page 22

research that was current in the 1960s. But he also

felt that the line dividing syntactics from semantics

might not be a sharp line. He suggested that as more

subtle syntactical analyses were attempted and

computers became more powerful, syntactic analyses

might begin to show semantic aspects. Licklider had

“no thought that syntactic analysis alone – whether

by man or machine – is sufficient to provide a useful

approximation to understanding.”

On the other

hand, he wondered, “… as subtler and subtler dis-

tinctions are made in the process now called syntac-

tic analysis, [whether] that process will start to

become semantic as well as syntactic.”

Licklider’s intuition and vision was that syntac-

tic processing would continue to increase in sophisti-

cation while hardware and network developments

would likely make semantic-like knowledge process-

ing possible. The research question Licklider left to

be answered was what knowledge structures or

forms or correlations or representations would prove

most fruitful for the organization of the corpus of

knowledge. For Licklider the library of the future

was even more of a human-machine-knowledge

symbiosis than Vannevar Bush had envisioned.

Licklider also raised the social/political questions,

would society set itself the goal of developing a

procognitive system, would all the holders of digi-

tized information share their holdings without

restriction, would society resist the commercial

pressure to keep knowledge proprietary?

V. The Google System, Syntactics and

Semantics

The visions of libraries of the future examined

above were articulated from 1945 to 1965 and

projected ahead to the year 2000. If we jump ahead

to the beginning of the twenty-first Century, the

body of knowledge is being put more and more into

digital form. That body is divided into at least two

forms. There is the web page record accessible via

browser and search engine of some billions of web

pages of information. There is also a growing body

of scholarly information processed into digital form

by digital library projects or produced in digital form

by publishers. Some of this body is in web form but

much of it is in databases that are not reached by

search engines. This divide will close as more digital

library resources become available to search engine

indexing systems.

The most popular method in

2004 for scholarly interaction with the corpus of

knowledge available on the web is the Google, Inc.

system. Even some scientists report more relevant

and useful hits using the Google search engine than

they find in specialized scientific search programs.

An article in Science traces the technology that is the

foundation for such search engines as Google di-

rectly to the work of Licklider in the 1960s.

The Google search engine was developed by

graduate students as an open system.

The U.S.

National Science Foundation encouraged the gradu-

ate students to make their work proprietary, violating

the original public essence of the Google project.

The current secret nature of the Goggle system and

its for-profit purpose bring Google, Inc. into conflict

with the open essence of the Internet, Usenet and the

procognitive system envisioned by Licklider. Still,

the success of this search engine raises a question

related to Licklider’s intuition about syntactic and

semantic processing.

The Google “web crawlers” are data analysis

programs that download into a database and process

upwards of a billion or more web pages every few

weeks. They gather the words on each page (except

for junk words) and make inverse indexes attaching

to each word the URL of the web pages where it

appears. They keep track of the position in the text

where each word appears. They also index the URLs

according to how frequently they are linked to and

from other pages, giving greater weight to links from

higher-ranking pages. This indexing of the URLs

requires processing matrices of the order of a billion

times a billion. But Google’s algorithms and comput-

ers perform these calculations routinely. The Google

system also gives weight to font size and other

formatting details. None of Google’s processing is

semantic. There is no intelligence in Google’s

indexes. Yet most users find the Google system

powerful in quickly finding for them and ordering

with a fair degree of relevancy web page sources that

meet their search criteria.

Now envision as Licklider did if thesauri were

generated which linked to each word in a search

engine index other words related to it as synonyms

or as equivalents from other fields of study and other

relations. Envision if the words were linked to noun

phrase and term switching databases, if statistics of

term co-occurrence and density and clustering were

added for each page. Then the word and phrase and

natural language queries and searches could draw all

Page 23

at once on these factors. Might we then be getting

closer to matching concepts in the users brain with

concepts in the web page record? And envision what

would result if we added to the web page record all

possible databases and processed images and sound

tracks. Would that not be closer to the semantic-like

interaction with the whole corpus of knowledge at

the heart of the Procognitive system?

VI. Conclusion

The visions from 1945 to 1965 suggested above

resulted from the question of how to collect and

organize and process the scholarly record so that it

would be more accessible and attractive for the

accomplishment of scientific and scholarly work.

Bush and Licklider were technology enthusiasts who

foresaw that the essence of a library, its organized

knowledge content, need not be located in books or

buildings. They shared a sense of the value of access

to the whole corpus. They set the high goal for

library and computer and knowledge scientists of

developing a single human-machine-knowledge

system that would make the body of knowledge

more useful and accessible. There has been in the

last 15 years a vast effort at digital libraries research.

Some of this research has adopted this goal. Perhaps

a human-machine-knowledge system like Licklider’s

Procognitive system will serve as a grand vision that

will inform more digital libraries research and

eventually lead to the enhancement of human life by

giving all people a chance to benefit from intimate

contact with the whole body of knowledge.

The author thanks Prof. Dr. Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski for encour-

aging the preparation of the original presentation and Prof. Dr.

Walter Umstätter and PD Dr. Heinrich Parthey for inviting him

to the Wissensmanagement in der Wissenshaft conference

where it was first presented. The author also thanks Marcello

Farabegoli of Universität Potsdam and Ronda Hauben of

Columbia University for conversations which helped him work

out his understandings. Also many thanks to the staff of the

Inter Library Loan Department of Columbia University Library.

Notes

1. The following is a revised version of a paper presented on

March 27, 2004 at the “Wissensmanagement in der

Wissenschaft” conference in the Institute for Library Science of

Humboldt University in Berlin, co-sponsored by the Institute

for Library Science and the Society for Science Research. The

original version can be seen at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/lof-final04.doc. The URL

for this version is:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/lof-

final05.doc

2. Bush, V., As We May Think. – In: The Atlantic Monthly

(Boston). 176 (1945), 1. 101-108. Online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bush

f.htm. Reprinted including illustrations from Life Magazine in

Nyce, J. M. and Kahn, P., (ed), From Memex to Hypertext:

Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine. Boston: Academic

Press 1991. 85-110.

3. Ibid., Nyce and Kahn. 101.

4. Ibid., Nyce and Kahn. 107.

5. At BBN: Fisher S. Black, Richard H. Bolt, Lewis C. Clapp,

Jerome I. Elkind, Mario Grignetti, Thomas M. Marill, John W.

Senders, and John A. Swets. From MIT: John McCarthy,

Marvin Minsky, Bert Bloom, Daniel G. Bobrow, Richard Y.

Kain, David Park, and Bert Raphael.

6. Licklider, J. C. R., Libraries of the Future. Cambridge, MA.:

The MIT Press 1965. Available online at:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/dlp/licklider/project.html

7. Ibid., 24-25.

8. Ibid., 3.

9. Ibid., 25.

10. Licklider scaled his vision of the procognitve system from

his experience in the early 1960s. His experimental system was

only big enough to hold three documents. In the 70s and 80s

other researchers made progress dealing with databases of

abstracts and later of “paragraphs and chapters, tables and

pictures, abstracts…references, reviews and notes, catalogs and

thesauri.” Small scale prototypes of procognitive processing

appeared in the 1980s. By the mid 1990s it was possible to use

supercomputers to test prototype semantic-like representation

language processing of large databases. In one such experiment,

the Medline medical abstracts database was processed. The

Medline database consisted then of about 9.3 million medical

text abstracts. This corpus was processed using a generic noun

phrase extractor set of programs. The process yielded over 270

million noun phrases correlated with term co-occurrence

frequencies. The 45 million unique phrases where indexed to

the abstracts that contained them. A concept space was created

as the knowledge corpus testbed for medical queries and

searches. Physician collaborators were given access via a web

interface to the research prototype system. Their reaction was

reported as “highly positive/” Anecdotal evidence was given

that searching in the concept space was far more useful and

much quicker than searching in human coded indexes. The

researches who were doing this work saw it as a beginning

prototype implementation “far more semantic than syntactic” of

the kind Licklider envisioned. See, Schatz, B. “Information

Retrieval in Digital Libraries: Bringing Search to the Net.” – In:

Science (Washington, DC). 275 (1997) 17. 327-334. Online at:

http://www.canis.uiuc.edu/archive/papers/science-irdl-

journal.pdf

11. Ibid., Libraries of the Future, 58-59.

12. Ibid., 131.

13. Ibid., 141.

14. Young, J. “Libraries Try to Widen Google’s Eyes.” — In:

The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, DC). L

(2004) 37. A1, A31-A32. Online with restricted access at:

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i37/37a00101.htm

Page 24

15. Arms, W. “Automated Digital Libraries: How Effectively

Can Computers Be Used for the Skilled Tasks of Professional

Librarianship?” — In: D-Lib Magazine (Reston, Va ). 6 (2000)

7/8. Online at

http://www.dlib.org/july00/arms/07arms.html

16. Schatz, Ibid note 10.

(

http://www.canis.uiuc.edu/archive/papers/science-irdl-

journal.pdf)

17. Brin, S. and Page, L. “The Anatomy of a Large Scale

Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” – In: Proc. The 7

Interna-

tional WWW Conference (Brisbane, Australia). 1998. Online at:

http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

18. Schatz wrote in 1997, “By 2010, the vision will be realized

with concept search enabling semantic retrieval across large

collections … Information retrieval in the next century will be

far more semantic than syntactic, searching concepts rather than

words.” Ibid., Note 10. 327.

http://www.canis .uiuc.edu/archive/papers/science-irdl-

journal.pdf

A Brief History of the

Internet in Korea

by Kilnam Chon

, Hyunje Park

Kyungran Kang

, and Youngeum Lee

Abstract

The TCP/IP network in South Korea started in

May 1982, one of the earliest Internet deployments

in the world. The initial TCP/IP network, called

SDN, consisted of two nodes with 1200 bps band-

width.

SDN served the research and education com-

munity with a primary focus on network research,

and had international links with UUCP initially. The

international links cover several countries in Asia,

which are together called AsiaNet, as well as Europe

and North America.

In parallel to TCP/IP development, communica-

tions on personal computers using bulletin boards

and others also proliferated. These two network

developments along with availability of WWW made

for explosive Internet growth in the 1990s. These

developments resulted in the leading broadband

country with various applications. The Internet is

becoming the social infrastructure in Korea lately

with many aspects of daily life are done through the

Internet including social and political activities. Con-

vergence of the Internet with telecommunications

and broadcasting is taking place now.

1. The Pre-Internet Period

Basic Internet Technologies and Concepts

Proposed

The 1960s was the period that saw the birth of

technologies and concepts that were to become the

foundation of the Internet. In 1965, the concept of

“packet switching,” which was to become the funda-

mental technology of the Internet, was proposed.

Domestic Network Developments

During the period between the late 1960s and

1970s, efforts to construct domestic computer

networks were launched in countries such as France,

UK, and USA. The most notable one is ARPANET

(Advanced Research Project Agency Network) in

USA in 1969.

2. Birth of the Korean Internet, SDN

SDN Begins Operation

Korea’s first Internet system, SDN (System

Development Network) began its operations on 15

May 1982. A computer at the Department of Com-

puter Science at Seoul National University was con-

nected to another computer at Korea Institute of

Electronics Technology (KIET) in Gumi (presently

ETRI, Electronics and Telecommunications Re-

search Institute) via a 1200 bps leased line, and in

January 1983, a third computer at KAIST (Korea

Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) was

connected to the SDN, which resulted in a system

that could be described as a network of computers.

Since TCP/IP is one of the communications proto-

cols used among the computers connected to the

SDN, this can be noted as Korea’s first Internet.

UUCP and USENET

SDN was connected to the mcvax in the Nether-

lands in August 1983 by using UUCP (Unix-to-

Unix-Copy), and in October of the same year, it was

connected to the hplabs in the United States. Since

UUCP was a protocol that was already installed in

UNIX computers, there was the advantage of not

having to install additional protocols, and thus SDN

Connectivity could be expanded not only to overseas

computers but also to domestic computer nodes with

relative ease.

Page 25

In the U. S., CSNET (Computer Science Net-

work), a network that connected universities and

research institutions that had not participated in

ARPANET, had been constructed. SDN was con-

nected to CSNET in December 1984, and this con-

nection was utilized as a forum for exchange of tech-

nology until SDN was formally connected to the

U.S. Internet in 1990. However, services such as the

FTP could not be used because of the U.S. govern-

ment restrictions on connections to the ARPANET.

Thus, only e-mail and news (USENET) services

were available with USA. Moreover, because of the

extreme high cost of international phone lines, a

large portion of the USENET data had to be received

in magnetic tape format by regular postal mail rather

than via online connections.

Hangeul e-mail

In 1983, a Masters thesis on the development of

a mail system using the Korean character set was

reported in KAIST, and experiments on e-mail using

the Korean character set was initiated. In 1985 a

Korean e-mail program and a Korean editor pro-

gram, called hvi were developed, enabling people to

send and receive e-mail using Korean characters

through SDN. In addition, in May 1984, Dacom

began its commercial e-mail service through

DACOM-net.

AsiaNet

From 1983, SDN was connected to various sites

in Asia in addition to North America (hplabs and

seismo in USA, CDNNET in Canada), and Europe

(mcvax in the Netherlands). The network linking

Asian countries was called AsiaNet, and included

Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.

3. Global Internet Connection, early

1980s

Use of the .kr Domain and IP Address

In the mid-80s, the progression of a series of

critical events enabled the Internet in Korea to mean-

ingfully participate in the global Internet. In July

1986, the first IP address (128.134.0.0) for Korea

was assigned. In 1986, rules for second and third

level domains under the .kr domain were established

and the country code top level domain to represent

Korea, .kr, was formally in operation. Also, comput-

ers in KAIST and others were registered as the

domain name server for the .kr domain (for example,

sorak.kaist.ac.kr) establishing the infrastructure for

allowing not only domestic but also international

open access to the computers using .kr as its domain

name.

Establishment of Internet Policy Centers

As the use of the Internet expanded to domestic

and then to the international networks, there was a

need to establish a mechanism to systematically and

efficiently manage Korea’s domestic Internet use.

Thus the ANC (Academic Network Committee) was

formed in 1988 as the association that would perform

this function. The ANC was composed of the ANC

Steering Committee, consisting of representatives of

ANC and other necessary committee members, and

its technical subcommittee, the SG-INET, consisting

of members involved in the everyday operations of

networks. The ANC assumed the role of representing

the Korean Internet society, and was involved in

managing the use and assignment of domestic

domain names and IP addresses as well as connec-

tions with overseas networks, and represented Korea

in international network associations. The ANC

changed its name to KNC (Korea Network Commit-

tee) in 1994 and then to NNC (Number and Name

Committee) in 1998, and continued to operate as a

civil organization establishing and recommending

domestic Internet policies.

PC Communications

In addition to efforts to provide network services

centered on the Internet, another type of network

service was developed in the 1980s. This was PC

communications, which began in 1984 as Dacoms

Hangeul Mail, and then was consolidated in 1986 as

Chollian. The KETEL (Korea Economic Daily

Telepress) service that began in 1988 was reorga-

nized as Hitel and became the most prominent PC

communications service. This type of online commu-

nication using PC communications operated as a

separate service independent from the Internet until

1995 when regular PC network users were able to

connect to the Internet using commercial networks.

The most notable significance of the

PC communications is that it contributed to the

development of the concept of online communities.

Page 26

The PACCOM Project

In 1989, the University of Hawaii was the focal

point of the plan for PACCOM (Pacific Communica-

tions Networking Project), connecting Australia,

Hawaii, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. In Korea,

many member institutions of SDN agreed to jointly

fund the 56 Kbps leased line to Hawaii, and estab-

lished an organization named HANA for this pur-

pose. In March 1990, a computer at KAIST was

connected to the University of Hawaii via a satellite

at 56 Kbps, and the HANAnet was constructed. Until

then, charges for international connections to UUCP,

and CSNET were based on the number of data

packets. Thus, international Internet connections

were highly limited. But after the establishment of

connections with PACCOM people could use it with

relatively few limitations. Data traffic figures for

Internet applications during this time show the

highest usage in FTP, followed by Mail, Telnet,

Archie, and DNS. In August 1992, The main gate-

way equipment and the operation of the HANAnet

and SDN were transferred from KAIST to KT

(Korea Telecom). Thenceforth, HANAnet of the KT

research center gave birth to KORNET, KTs com-

mercial Internet services. After the construction of

HANAnet, SDN was used to designate domestic net-

works and HANAnet was used to designate networks

connected to the global Internet. The name SDN

slowly lost recognition, resulting in the decision by

ANC in 1993 to no longer use the SDN name.

PCCS (Pacific Computer Communications

Symposium 1985)

In 1985, a conference focusing on computer

networks, PCCS (Pacific Computer Communications

Symposium), which was one of the world’s first

conferences on the Internet, was held in Seoul, with

approximately 300 Internet experts participating

from Asia, Europe and North America.

Considering that the next global conference on

the Internet was held in the early 1990s, this confer-

ence was a highly advanced conference. This also

displays the active and leading role played by Korea

in the global Internet field. In addition, the PCCS

provided the impetus for the annual meeting of

JWCC (Joint Workshop on Computer Communica-

tions), a meeting of Asian computer network experts

which was held annually with the meeting venue

alternating between Japan and Korea initially. The

number of participants of the JWCC expanded grad-

ually, resulting in its development into ICOIN

(International Conference on Information Networks).

4. Proliferation of the Internet among

Research & Education Community,

early 1990s

National Infrastructure Project

In July 1983, the plan for Five National Infor-

mation Network Project which included National

Administrative Information Network, and Education

and Research Network Infrastructure among others

was established, and the legal basis for pursuing the

plan was put in place by legislation of Legislature

#3848, “Law on Expansion of Network Infrastruc-

ture and Use” on 12 May 1986. Based on this law,

the government of Korea established a Committee on

Management of Networks to evaluate and manage

policies related to the construction of the national

information networks and began a government-led

construction of the national information network.

In June 1988, it was decided that construction of

the Research and Education Network, one of the

national information networks would be divided into

the Research Network and the Education Network.

The Research Network was operated by the System

Engineering Center (presently KISTI) which belongs

to the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the

Education Network was operated by Seoul National

University which belongs to the Ministry of Educa-

tion, and the construction of each network was

launched. Both networks, the Research Network,

KREONet (Korea Research Environment Open

Network) and the Educational Network, KREN

(Korea Research and Education Network), are still

currently being used to connect many research

centers and universities, respectively.

Voluntary Research on Network

Technology by Experts

SG-INET was established in 1991 to perform

the role of developing, implementing, and operating

technologies by establishing subcommittees of work-

ing groups on naming, routing, Hangeul, and secu-

rity. The activities of these working groups resulted

in many achievements such as: the naming working

group providing the fundamental infrastructure for

the establishment of KRNIC, the Hangeul working

group developing the IETF standard for Hangeul

Page 27

mail, and the security working group establishing

CERT Korea. Many experts in network operation

organizations such as KREN, KREONET, KAIST,

ETRI, SNU, NCA, Dacom, KT, Samsung and

Goldstar participated in SG-INET.

KRNIC

In 1992, the Korea Network Information Center

was established in order to provide a network infor-

mation management function for all Internet services

that had been under the supervision of ANC. Up to

that point, the registration of domain names on the

Internet and administration of network information

had been performed on an individual network basis.

However, because the magnitude of domestic

Internet was growing and because there was a global

trend for establishing network information centers

within continents as well as individual nations, the

Korea Network Information Center was founded.

KAIST had been consigned to run the Korea Net-

work Information Center since January 1993, In

September 1994, its central functions were trans-

ferred to the National Computerization Agency, and

in June 1999, an independent corporation named

KRNIC was created to take complete charge of

domestic network information administration func-

tions. In 2004, based on the Internet Address Re-

sources Law, the National Internet Development

Agency of Korea was founded in order to perform

the administrative function of Korea’s domestic

Internet address resources.

Standardization of Hangeul Encoding

Existing e-mail programs were able to deliver

mail without error only when Roman characters and

numbers were used, and mail sent in Korean charac-

ters was damaged, making it impossible for the

receiver to read mail sent in Korean characters. In

December 1991, a Korean mail program, Hangeul

elm, was developed according to the Hangeul Encod-

ing Standards (ISO2022-KR) which designated

principles for encoding Korean Hangeul characters

into Roman characters and numbers without corrupt-

ing the content. The encoding method used for this

program was then further developed and recorded as

an RFC document of the IETF (The Internet Engi-

neering Task Force) in 1993 under the title, Korean

Character Encoding for Internet Messages, which

was the first RFC document by a Korean submitted

to IETF.

World Wide Web Begins

In the 1990s the global Internet experienced a

revolutionary transformation in the Internet tech-

nology called the World Wide Web, and in Korea the

first web site, cair.kaist.ac.kr, was set up and oper-

ated at the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research

(CAIR) at KAIST in 1993.

KRNET

1990s was a period when Internet technology

made a dramatic development globally as well as

domestically. One reflection of this could be found

in the first KRNET (Korea Network Workshop) held

in Seoul in 1993. This workshop continues to be held

annually, providing a forum for introducing new

trends in Internet related technology, facilitating ex-

change of technology, and promoting cooperation

among technical experts.

5. Commercial Internet

Commercial Internet Service Begins

In the mid 1990s the Internet, which had been

restricted for use in universities and research institu-

tions only up to that point, became available to busi-

nesses and individuals. Several commercial Internet

services were initiated in 1994, beginning with

KORNET by Korea Telecom in June, ‘DACOM

InterNet’ by Dacom in October, and nuri.net by Inet

Technologies in conjunction with Nowcom in

November. Commercial Internet services have since

developed into a major industry in Korea, with

approximately 30 Internet service providers in

operation in 2004.

KIX - Commercial Internet eXchange

In order to have the commercial Internet service

providers operate with other Internet service provid-

ers, the National Computerization Agency estab-

lished an exchange, called KIX (Korea Internet

eXchange). The first step was to connect the Educa-

tional Network and the Research Network in Febru-

ary 1995, and after March, eleven commercial

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Inet and

Nowcom were connected. In November that year, an

agreement was made for an IX (Internet Exchanger)

system that would have the National Computeriza-

tion Agency (NCA), Korea Telecom, and Dacom be

the hub (i.e., IX) for connecting and managing

domestic Internet, and commercial ISPs were trans-

Page 28

ferred to the commercial Ixs (Korea Telecom,

Dacom) by December 1996. Also, in June 1999, the

Korea Internet eXchange Association, composed of

many ISPs, set up a neutral Internet exchange named

KINX (Korea Internet Neutral eXchange).

Internet and the Mass Media

In March 1995, the Joongang Daily News began

its first Internet news service and in October that

year the Chosun Daily News launched its Digital

Chosun Daily News. Moreover, webzines (short for

web magazines), news sites that exist independently,

not in conjunction with printed newspapers, were

introduced in September 1996 with the launching of

im@ge by Inet and rapidly began to proliferate. In

addition, in 1996, the era of e-commerce, where

things could be searched and purchased from the

web sites instead of at the stores, began with the

opening of Interpark and Internet Lotte Department

Store.

Internet Expo

The 1990s was a period when the Internet was

rapidly becoming popularized. In 1996, an interna-

tional Internet Expo was held on the Internet, a

global event held with the purpose of encouraging

the expansion of Internet use and to utilize the

Internet that had been constructed. This event pro-

vided a range of opportunities for experimenting

with the rapidly developing WWW technology and

other Internet technologies by using a web site on the

Internet as the gallery in place of a physical one. In

Korea, this was an opportunity for the venture

businesses to introduce their technologies domesti-

cally as well as internationally and further develop

them, as well as an occasion for encouraging the

news media to be involved in online operations. In

addition, this provided the momentum for encourag-

ing public organizations in Korea to establish web

sites.

Internet Ventures

Many ventures on the Internet started their

operations in 1990s as the commercial Internet

service was deployed. Some of them led the Internet

industry, and they include: Ahn Chul Soo Laboratory

virus protection; Daum, a portal site with E-mail

service; NCsoft and Nexon, online games, and

Naver/NHN, search engine.

6. Broadband Internet

Widespread Availability of Broadband

Internet

Until the late 1990s, individual home users of

the Internet had a maximum connection speed of

only 64 Kbps with dial-up service. However, this

changed when Thrunet began to provide broadband

Internet services in July 1998 with approximately

1Mbps connection speed using cable TV networks,

and Hanaro Telecom and KT joined in the broadband

Internet provider race through the use of ADSL

(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) technology. In

2004 the number of home users with broadband

Internet access exceeded 11 million, which covers

more than 70% of the households in Korea. The

widespread availability of broadband Internet ser-

vices provided the impetus for Korea to become the

leading Internet stronghold nation of the world. Such

a leap in the development of broadband Internet

stimulated the expansion of various multimedia

services and provided the foundation for an evolu-

tion into a ubiquitous networking made possible by

a convergence of broadcasting and telecommunica-

tion and wireless Internet services provided by

mobile phones as well as broadband Internet.

Factors in the Expansion of Broadband

Internet

In the late 1990s when demand for services

provided by the Internet was increasing but Internet

access from individual homes was not common,

Internet cafés, or ‘PC bangs’ that provide the general

public with Internet access began to appear. The first

domestic Internet café, NET began operating in

Seoul on 15 September 1995. The number of Internet

cafes gradually increased, reaching 15,150 by the

end of 1999. In addition, the number of online

gamers increased, and PC bangs were at the core of

such a phenomenon. In 1998, an online war simula-

tion game called Starcraft was widely played by the

general public, and PC bangs were the centers for

such games. Youth in their teens and 20s provided

the impetus for the increase in demand for online

games, and it could be said that such a demand

contributed greatly to the distribution of Internet

access to individual homes.

Online stock-trading based on the Internet

enabled easy stock trading without having to physi-

cally visit the stock brokerage. Internet banking

Page 29

services enabled withdrawal or transfer of funds

without visiting the bank. Because it was so conve-

nient, approximately 11,310,000 users, which are

about 30% of the total population as of November

2001, were found to be registered users of Internet

banking.

7. Social Impact of the Internet

Negative Impact of the Internet

Although the Internet is making lives more con-

venient, it also has negative impacts on Korean

society. There is an increase in the number of people

who are addicted to specific services on the Internet,

most notably online games and indecent information,

and are unable to lead normal everyday lives. There

are web sites that plan suicides and actually carry

them out. Criminal acts of obtaining and using other

people’s personal information by means such as

hacking has occurred. In addition, there are other

negative incidents on the Internet such as the bom-

bardment of unrestricted spam mail that unnecessar-

ily consumes people’s time and the spreading of

computer viruses through e-mails, obstructing

business operations.

Governmental Efforts

In 1995, the Ministry of Information and Com-

munication (MIC) established the Information Com-

munication Ethics Committee in order to prevent and

evaluate the negative effects of network communica-

tion. In addition, institutions such as the Internet

Crime Investigation Center, Center for Internet

Addiction, and Korea Spam Response Center were

established by cooperative efforts between the

government and civil societies and are involved in

activities aimed at circumventing the negative

effects.

Balance between Individual Freedom and

Regulation of Negative Impacts

Efforts to address the negative impact of the

Internet have the danger of infringing on an individ-

ual’s freedom, and additional efforts to thwart such

dangers have been concurrently pursued. In 2000,

the Ministry of Information and Communication

(MIC) attempted to legislate the Internet Content

Rating System when it was revising the Act on

Promotion of Information and Communication Net-

work Utilization and Information Protection. But this

effort was annulled due to citizen opposition. Article

53 of the aforementioned act that allowed an order of

the Minister of Information and Communication to

place certain restrictions on electronic and tele-

communication businesses in dealing with certain

types of information was ruled partially unconstitu-

tional in 2002.

8. Netizens

It was in the early 1990s that individuals of the

general public were able to express their political and

social opinions through the Internet. As part of its

support program for developing countries, ‘Sustain-

able Development Network Program (SDNP),’ the

UN established SDNPs in many countries including

the one in Korea, which was hosted by YMCA. The

anonymity and easy access afforded by the Internet

prompted various people to set up and operate web

sites and express more diverse views. In August

1997, the supporter club for the national soccer team

selected the Red Devils as its official name, and in

November 2000, the Red Devils opened its home

page and provided the major impetus for the massive

cheering crowds in the 2002 FIFA World Cup

Games in Korea-Japan. When two middle school

girls were killed by a U.S. armored tank in June

2002, on-the-street candle light vigils by netizens

and online memorials spread throughout the country.

In addition, during the December 2002 presidential

election, there were many active online and offline

campaigns organized and played out by many

netizen groups such as a support club for Mr. No

Moo Hyun, People Who Love No Moo Hyun

(Nosamo). These netizen groups did not spring up

suddenly with the introduction of the Internet.

Rather, they are extensions of online communities

that were formed through the PC communications in

the early 1990s, using the Internet as their newer

communication medium.

Notes

1. Department of Computer Science, KAIST, Daejeon 305-701,

South Korea

2. ZooinNet Co., Seoul 137-867, South Korea

3. College of Information Technology, Ajou University, Suwon

443-749, South Korea

4. Department of Media Art & Science, KNOU, Seoul 110-791,

South Korea

Page 30

References

[1] Paul Baran, “The Beginnings of Packet Switching: Some

Underlying Concepts,” IEEE Communications Magazine, July

2002, 42-48.

[2] Barry M. Leiner, et al., “A Brief History of the Internet,”

Internet Society, 2003.

http://www.isoc.org/

[3] K. Chon, H. Park, and H. Cho, “SDN: A Computer Network

for Korean Research Community,” Proceeding of PCCS

(Pacific Computer Communications Symposium),

Seoul, Korea, 1985, 567-570.

[4] K. Chon, “National and Regional Computer Networks for

Academic and Research Communities in the Pacific Region,”

Proceeding of PCCS, Seoul, Korea, 1985, 560-566.

[5] GC Son, A study on the development of Hangul mail system,

MS Thesis, KAIST, 1984.

[6] K. Chon, AsiaNet Map, Proceeding of PCCS (Pacific Com-

puter Communications Symposium), Seoul, Korea, 1985.

[7] H. J. Park, Korean Internet in the world; Korean Internet

History, 1995, (in Korean)

[8] Ministry of Information and Communication, 20

Century

Information Communication Cyber History Museum. (in

Korean)

http://20citfind.or.kr/

[9] U. Choi, K. Chon and H. Park, “Korean Character Encoding

for Internet Messages,” RFC1557, December 1993. Online at :

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1557.txt

[10] Korea Internet Association, Internet History, 2005.

http://www.internethistory.or.kr/

[11] Wired Magazine, “10 Years that changed the world,”

August 2005.

[12] MK Kang, MS Baek, et al, “Study on Korea Internet

History Museum,” IAK, August 2005.

Abbreviations

ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

ANC Academic Network Committee

CAIR Center for Artificial Intelligence Research

DNS Domain Name Service

ETRI Electronics and Telecommunication

Research Institute

FTP File Transfer Protocol

ICOIN International Conference on Information

Network

IETF Internet Engineering Task Force

IX Internet Exchange

ISP Internet Service Provider

JWCC Joint Workshop on Computer Communi-

cations

KAIST Korea Advanced Institute of Science and

Technology

KINX Korea Internet Neutral eXchange

KIX Korea Internet eXchange

KNC Korea Network Committee

KRNIC Korea Network Information Center

KREONET Korea Research Environment Open Net-

work

KREN Korea Research and Education Network

KRNET Korea Network Workshop

NNC Number and Name Committee

PACCOM Pacific Communications Networking Pro-

ject

PCCS Pacific Computer Communications Sym-

posium

RFC Request For Comment

SDN System Development Network

SDNP Sustainable Development Network Pro-

gram

UUCP Unix-to-Unix Copy

WWW World Wide Web

Appendix

Appendix 1: SDN Network Configuration (as of May 1985)

Page 31

Appendix 2: AsiaNet Map

Appendix 3: Internet History Yearly Table (1969~2004)

Year Infra/Business Media/Community

Society/Law/

Organization

1982 SDN(TCP/IP)

1983

UUCP/USENET

Hangeul E-mail

1984 CSNET(X.25)

1985

Commercial

Hangeul E-mail

1986 .kr domain

PC Communica-

tions

Law on Information

Network

Promotion

1987 NCA

1988 Brain Virus ANC(KNC)

1989

1990

Global IP

Connection

1991

1992 KRNIC

1993 First RFC First Website KRNET

1994 Commercial ISP First Online Game

Websites for Public

Organization

1995

Internet Exchange

(KIX)

Internet Mass

Media

ICEC

1996

Electronic

Commerce

Internet Expo 96

1997

Online Stock

Trade

hanmail

Internet Association

of Korea

1998 Starcraft

1999

Internet Café

(~10,000)

Daum Café

2000

Internet Suicide

Websites

2001

Internet Banking

(~11 million users)

Internet Crime Inves-

tigation Center

2002

Broadband Internet

(~11 million users)

Netizens

Center for Internet

Addiction

2003

1.25 Internet Slam-

mer Worm Virus

Korea Spam

Response Center

Appendix 4: Genealogy of the Internet Organizations in Asia

Appendix 5: A Brief History of the Internet in Asia

1. The Pre-Internet Period

The 1960s was the period that saw the birth of tech-

nologies and concepts that were to become the foundation of the

Internet. In the 1960s, the concept of packet switching, which

was to become the fundamental technology of the Internet, was

proposed.

During the period between the late 1960s and early 1970s,

efforts to construct domestic computer networks were launched

in countries such as France, U.K., and USA. The most notable

one is ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency

Network) in USA in 1969.

In Asia, similar efforts to develop computer networks

were launched in the 1970s and 1980s. They include

CSIRONET and N-1 Network in Australia, and Japan, re-

spectively.

Page 32

2. Initial Regional Coordination

ANW-AP (Academic Networkshop - Asia Pacific)

The (International) Academic Networkshop was one of the

early coordination meetings on the internet globally, and had

the first meeting in 1982. Asia started participation in the meet-

ing from 1983. The first Asian coordination meeting, ANW-AP

was held during the 1984 ANW, and Australia, Japan and

Korea participated at the meeting.

AsiaNet

In the 1980s, there was much development of UUCP-

based computer networks in Asia as well as in other continents.

These domestic UUCP networks in Asia were linked interna-

tionally including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and

Singapore in 1983, and the international UUCP-based network

in Asia was called AsiaNet. It was used for E-mail and news.

AsiaNet was also linked to North America (seismo and hplabs)

and Europe (mcvax).

PCCS (Pacific Computer Communications Symposium 1985)

In 1985, a conference focusing on computer networks,

PCCS (Pacific Computer Communications Symposium), which

was one of the world’s first conferences to address the Internet,

was held in Seoul, with approximately 300 Internet experts

participating from Asia, Europe and North America. Joint

Network Meeting was held during the Symposium with

presentations of research and education networks in Australia,

Japan, and Korea as well as European networks. Other countries

and economies such as China, Indonesia, Singapore, and

Taiwan participated at the meeting, too.

In addition, the PCCS provided the impetus for the annual

meeting of JWCC (Joint Workshop on Computer Communica-

tions), a meeting of Asian computer network experts which was

held annually with the meeting venue alternating between Japan

and Korea initially. The number of participants of the JWCC

expanded gradually, resulting in its development into ICOIN

(International Conference on Information Networks).

3. Prolification of the Internet for Research and Education

Community

The first Internet in Asia

Korea’s first Internet with IPv4, SDN (System Develop-

ment Network), began its operation in 1982 with two nodes.

The international link to USA was done with UUCP since the

direct international link with IP was not permitted in USA.

Other countries followed the development of IPv4-based com-

puter networks in 1980s and beyond.

Campus Network

With prolification of Unix machines (minicomputers,

workstations, PCs) and local area networks, the Internet became

common among universities in mid to late 1980s. The BSD

(Berkeley Software Distribution) version of UNIX, which

includes TCP/IP protocols played a major role in the prolificat-

ion of the IP-based campus network then. Networking between

universities were normally handled by UUCP protocol, which

was also readily available by mid-80s.

PACCOM (Pacific Communications Networking Project)

The direct international link with IP to USA was permitted

later in the decade. With PACCOM (Pacific Communications

Networking) Project in 1989, several countries connected to

USA through Hawaii. They include Australia, Japan, Korea,

and New Zealand. Many other countries connected to the U.S.

Internet in 1990s with their domestic Internet development.

BITNet Asia

BITNet Asia, another computer network for the research

and education community was developed in 1980s with the

IBM network protocol to connect IBM mainframe computers of

central computer centers among Asian universities. The

network eventually changed its protocol to the Internet protocol

in the 1990s to fully connect to the Internet.

UUCP Network

UUCP-based networks were extensively deployed in Asia

starting from AsiaNet in early 1980s.

These networks also changed their protocols to the

Internet protocol in the 1980s and 1990s as their traffic in-

creased.

4. APNG, The First Regional Internet Group

CCIRN (Coordinating Committee for Inter-Continental

Research Networking)

CCIRN (Coordinating Committee for Inter-Continental

Research Networking) was spawned from the (International)

Academic Networkshop to coordinate international links be-

tween Europe and North America, and had its first meeting in

1987. Later, Asia was invited to participate, and APCCIRN was

created to coordinate CCIRN participation, and had its first

meeting in 1991.

APCCIRN/APNG

Since APCCIRN was the only coordinating body in Asia

on the Internet then, it ended up coordinating various matters on

the Internet. The first matter was the creation of the regional IP

registry, APNIC, which was formally started in 1993. Later,

APCCIRN was renamed to APNG (Asia Pacific Networking

Group), which spun off many organizations in the 1980s and

1990s. See Appendix: Genealogy of Internet Organizations in

Asia Pacific for detail. It is currently operating APNG Camp

among others.

INET

The (International) Academic Networkshop had its last

annual meeting in Australia in 1989. Its successor, INET had its

first annual meeting in Copenhagen in 1991, followed by Kobe

in 1992, Many Asians participated in INET Conferences, and

various coordination efforts took place during INET

Conferences.

5. APNIC, Regional IP Address Registry

Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) was

created in 1983 to handle regional coordination and IP registry

for Asia. APNIC and its counterparts, RIPE NCC in Europe,

ARIN in North America, LACNIC in Latin America, and

AfriNIC in Africa coordinate the worldwide IP registry.

6. APRICOT, Regional Internet Conference on Operational

Technologies

Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational

Technologies (APRICOT) was created by volunteers of APNIC,

APNG, and others to provide a forum for those key Internet

builders in the region to learn from their peers and other leaders

in the Internet community from around the world, and had its

first annual conference in 1996 in Singapore. APRICOT is

Page 33

managed by APIA, another spinoff from APNG as APNG

Commercial WG.

7. Regional Research and Education Networks

There were two new major initiatives in mid-1990s to

develop regional research and education networks; APAN (Asia

Pacific Network Consortium), and AI3 (Asia Internet Intercon-

nection Initiative Project).

AI3

AI3 was kicked off in 1995 by WIDE Project and JSAT in

Japan. It has been operating a satellite based testbed network in

South East Asia and producing a series of research activities

using the testbed. With its companion project called SOI-Asia

(School of Internet-Asia), which is also based on satellites,

more than 10 countries in South and Southeast Asia are linked

to provide precious communication resources for research and

education communities.

APAN

APEC Symposium was held in 1996 to discuss gigabit

networking among others. The subsequent meeting on the

gigabit networking at APII Testbed Forum in 1997 resulted in

the formation of APAN. APAN Consortium addresses a high-

performance network for research and development on

advanced next generation applications and services.

8. APTLD, Regional Domain Name Coordination

International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) was held

around the world in 1997-1998 to discuss the creation of the

international governance body for Internet domain names, IP

registry, and the root servers among others, and ICANN

(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was

created. During these meetings, the consensus was developed

to form a regional body to address country-code top-level

domain names (ccTLD). APTLD was established in 1998 to

work as the forum of information exchange regarding techno-

logical and operational issues of domain names registries in

Asia Pacific regions.

9. AP* Retreat, Common for Information Exchange and

Discussion

By late 1990s, there are many Internet-related organiza-

tions in Asia Pacific, and a common forum to exchange

information between these organizations and discuss the

relevant issues became necessary. The fist meeting was held in

1998. Since then, AP* Retreat was held during APRICOT in

winter and APAN in summer every year.

10. Internationalized Domain Names

The internationalization of the Internet became very

important as the Internet became common in the world. In order

to further the Internet internationalization, the Internationalized

domain name (IDN) project was started in Asia, and IETF

decided to standardize on IDN in late 1990s. Subsequently a set

of the standards on IDN was completed in early 2000s. During

the period of IDN development, several organizations were

created to address IDN issues including MINC (Multilingual

Internet Name Consortium), CDNC (Chinese Domain Name

Consortium), and JET (Joint Engineering Team) in addition to

INFITT, for addresses in Tamil Language and Arabic language

group.

11. Governmental Initiatives

APEC(Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation)

With creation of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation),

various activities related to the Internet were started. The most

noteworthy activities include APEC Tel WG on telecommuni-

cations and EC SG on e-commerce. These groups were created

in 1990 and 1999 respectively.

UNDP(United Nations Development Programme)

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme

(APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and

application of new information and communication technolo-

gies for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development

in the Asia-Pacific region.

IDRC (International Development Research Centre)

PAN (Pan Asia Networking) is an IDRC program to seek

to understand the positive and negative impacts of information

communication technologies (ICTs) on people, culture, the

economy, and society, so as to strengthen ICT uses that

promote sustainable development on the Asian continent. IDRC

renamed the above program as PAN (Pan Asia Networking) in

2000.

12. Central, South and West Asia

The Internet came late to Central, South, and West

(Middle East) Asia, but many interesting activities were

reported lately.

SANOG (South Asia Network Operators Group)

SANOG was started in 2003 to bring together operators

for educational as well as cooperation. SANOG provides a

regional forum to discuss operational issues and technologies of

interest to data operators in the South Asian Region, and meets

twice a year. SANOG is the first regional Internet organization

in South Asia with participants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh,

Bhutan, India, Maldive, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

SANOG has very close cooperation with the rest of Asian

Internet organizations including APNIC and APRICOT.

Silk Project

NATO’s Silk Project is designed to develop national and

regional research and education networks in Central Asia and

the Caucasus, and it is officially called the Virtual Silk High-

way. It also has satellite links to Europe. The project originated

as a NATO-funded project in 2001, and included the following

countries in Central Asia; Afghanistan, Kazakhstan,

Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It also

includes three countries of the Southern Caucasus: Armenia,

Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

http://www.silkproject.org/

EUMEDconnect

The EUMEDconnect project is an initiative to establish

and operate IP-based networks in the Mediterranean region, and

the project started in 2001. The EUMEDconnect network serves

the research and education communities of the Mediterranean

region, and is linked to the pan-European GEANT network.

Countries in West Asia (Middle East) which participate in

EUMEDconnect Project include Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon,

the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and Turkey.

Page 34

13. Security

APNG started Security WG in early 1990s to coordinate

security in the region as well as with other continents. Later,

APNG Security WG supported creation of several security-

related groups including Asia PKI Forum in 2001, and

APCERT in 2002.

14. Internet Prolification

Internet Users

The Internet became very popular in Asia lately, and the

Internet user population in Asia surpassed those of North

America and Europe in 2000s. There are many other Internet

areas where Asia is leading the world including broadband

penetration, online games, and mobile Internet.

Broadband

Broadband proliferation started in late 1990s in Korea,

first, followed by other East Asia countries and economies

including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and metropolitan areas of

China. They are leading the Broadband penetration globally

with many innovative applications. Broadband is rapidly

becoming the social infrastructure in the region.

Online Games

Online games over the Internet is one of the applications

where East Asian countries and economies are leading globally.

This is partially due to the broadband proliferation. Many

leading companies for online games reside in the region.

Mobile Internet

The mobile Internet based on cellular telephone became

very popular in Asia, starting from i-mode in Japan in 1999,

followed by countries and economies in East Asia including

Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan. The mobile Internet is used for

E-mail, web access, e-commerce and many other applications.

Many other innovative applications have been developed

in Asia.

15. Concluding Remark

It has been 23 years since the first Internet was deployed

in Asia, and 20 years since the first Internet-related conference

with the coordination meeting was held in Asia. This short

paper on the brief Internet history in Asia focused on the

Internet-related organizations, mostly technical and business

organizations. We need another paper on social, cultural, and

political aspects of the Internet history, and hope some group

will take on this challenge.

I appreciate AP* Retreat community, APNG community

and others who contributed a review of this paper.

16. Bibliography

AP* Retreat, Yearly Milestones on the Internet in Asia, 2005.

www.apstar.org

Kilnam Chon, “National and Regional Computer Networks for

Academic and Research Communities in the Pacific Region,”

Proceedings of PCCS, North-Holland, 1985.

IAK, A Brief History of the Internet in Korea, 2005.

www.iak.ne.kr

Barry Leiner, et al, A Brief History of the Internet, ISOC,

www.isoc.org

Dan Lynch and Marshall Rose, Internet System Handbook,

Addison-Wesley, 1993.

Carl Malamud, Exploring the Internet, Prentice-Hall, 1992.

How China was Connected

to the International

Computer Networks

by Werner Zorn,

Hasso-Plattner-Institute

at Potsdam University, Germany

[email protected]

“Computer interconnection between Germany

and China was realised on the basis of the following

protocol architecture: X.25 was used for the lower

three OSI layers, CSNET/PMDF protocol for the

layer four transport protocol, and application-ori-

ented protocols for the e-mail service of CSNET for

the higher layers. In the implementation use was

made of….” Though technically far more exact, of

course, the majority of specialist articles about

projects in the field of computer communications

take this form – and there is certainly some justifica-

tion for this. Nevertheless, much is missing from

such publications as regards project implementation.

Important details, basically even what is most cru-

cial: people, ideas, motivation, linkup problems,

wrong paths, chance, luck, misfortune, despondency,

tension and finally pleasure once the goal is

achieved. Perhaps the interconnection of computers

between Germany and China is, not least because of

the out-of-the-ordinary boundary constraints, a

suitable case study to give an account for once of the

other side of project reality, and this now follows.

The idea of setting up a computer link with

China basically had its origins in 1983. At that time,

the first WASCO symposium took place in Beijing

at the invitation of Chinese users of Siemens

equipment. Eighteen speakers from various German

universities, major research institutes, and industry

gave outline lectures that summarised current and

future trends in the most important areas of IT in the

“far-off countries of the west.” In parallel sessions

they then got down to details, with the speakers

answering questions even down to the bits-and-bytes

level.

With the subject of my main talk, “DFN –

German Research Network,” I had set the main focus

in the communications sphere. The accompanying

tutorial lectures were largely devoted to the OSI

Page 35

architectural model, which was still unknown in that

region at that time.

The period after returning to Germany from

China was devoted to implementing the network

projects presented. One was a milestone, the first

connection to the American computer science net-

work, CSNET, in mid 1984 from Karlsruhe. With

this connection, which for the most part was imple-

mented by Michael Rotert, we had made electronic

mail service available for the first time, and were

quickly convinced of its advantages.

With provision of the CSNET service both with-

in and outside Karlsruhe University, there began a

lively “mission activity,” whose reputation also gave

impulse to our colleagues in the direction of China.

Anyone ever making contact or working in collabo-

ration with China is aware of the long route and time

delay for replies. A turnaround time of 14 days is

even considered fast if one does not want to resort to

the extortionately expensive telephone or telex,

which are not available everywhere. When preparing

for the second WASCO/ CASCO symposium for

autumn 1985 the difficult communication often

became a test of nerves on which the enterprise

seemed to almost fail. Hence from a mixture of

frustration, belief in progress and staying power, the

obvious desire became ever stronger to have a

computer connection with China.

This idea was set forth in the form of a letter on

16 July 1985 directed to “father of the people,”

Lothar Späth, former prime minister of Baden-

Wurttemberg, whose involvements with China and

zeal for decision making in the high-tech sphere are

well known. A sum of money for a separate node

computer of our own was mentioned – so that our

link to America would not be affected – and a small

amount for running costs. As partner, we had se-

lected the Institute for Computer Applications (ICA)

at the Technical University of Peking (today, Univer-

sity of Science and Technology, Beijing,

www.ustb.edu.cn). I had in the meantime established

a personal friendship with its former head, Prof. Y.

Fung Wang (75 years old and still very active profes-

sionally). Its then current head, Director C. C. Li,

was a guarantor for proficient and committed imple-

mentation.

Despite all the hectic preparations, the second

WASCO/CASCO symposium ran according to

program, with the subject of my main lecture “Inter-

national Scientific Computer Networks” arousing

even further interest in a computer linkup on the part

of the Chinese delegates. Further lectures jointly

with Hans Lackner about “Experience gained in

building the Karlsruhe local informatics network -

LlNK,” and also LAN technologies in general,

propagated knowledge about the connection between

WAN und LAN services.

Up until then, really nothing had yet happened

except for the awakening of desires on the part of the

Chinese, when suddenly, in autumn 1985, money for

a project to link computers with China was delivered

to the University of Karlsruhe, and the suspicion fell

on me. In his farsightedness and kindness, Lothar

Späth had actually responded to my letter and grant-

ed the money. Strictly speaking, he delegated the

problem of procuring the money to the Ministry for

Science and Art, which no doubt had to take it away

from some other area. Regardless of how, the go-

ahead had been given and it was our turn once more.

To start with, reservations were voiced by

various parties as to whether we were perhaps doing

something illegal in linking-up to China, which

might damage our linkup to America. We calmed

things down with our plan for a physically separate

point-to-point connection. As a result, reservations

were initially put-aside and we were able to continue

untroubled.

What was then needed though was to resolve the

following points quite specifically:

1. Procurement of a German node computer

2. Procurement of a Chinese node computer,

suited to this

3. Implementation of a secure data transmission

link

Point one was quickly resolved: with the money

obtained through Dr. Späth we bought a µVAX II,

which was soon up and running under UNIX 4.2.

The decision in favour of UNIX was taken because

this was also available in China, and it allowed a

linkup via UUCP without otherwise needing some-

body’s approval. Point two proved to be somewhat

more difficult. Of course one also wanted to procure

a VAX at the institute (ICA) but the procedure to

apply for the necessary foreign currency (fec =

foreign exchange currency instead of Yuans) is

incredibly complicated, comparable perhaps to the

law for funding university buildings in Germany,

when circumstances are difficult. Moreover, a

Chinese clone that would also run under UNIX was

soon to be ready.

Page 36

Fig. 1. Originally envisaged data transmission link

Once we could see no possibility of influencing

point two from outside, we turned our attention to

point three, the secure data transmission link. Since

we knew of no data networks in China comparable to

those of the DBP (German PTT), we resorted to the

simplest method of implementation for us, i.e., a

telephone dial-up connection with overlying separate

X.25 PADs for security (see fig. 1).

No sooner said than done. The necessary equip-

ment:

• . X.25 PAD (for China)

• . Line monitor

• . 1200 baud modem including a telephone

was procured and tested locally, with Mr. Wenzel

providing us with friendly support on behalf of the

Karlsruhe PTT.

In the course of a combined project and lectur-

ing trip to Beijing and Shanghai from 15-27 May

1986 the connection was to be set up and tested. The

procurement including dealing with all formalities

for time-limited export (which are not without tricky

variants) was completed in the minimal time of one

week. I had barely one

hours for the trip from

Karlsruhe including check-in, and getting the equip-

ment through customs including payment of excess

baggage charges (an additional DM 2100 had to be

paid). An overview of the rest of the expedition

schedule follows:

14.-15.05.86 Outward flight

16.-19.05.86 ICA, Beijing

20.-23.05.86 Tongji-University, Shanghai

24.-27.05.86 ICA, Beijing

28.05.86 Return flight

To sum up: everything went well with the trip

except for the planned linkup. We tested the tele-

phone connection at all possible times of the day and

night, finding speech communicability to be even

entirely in order, but, on switching over to the

modem, the “carrier” was always released again

within a few seconds. The testing organisation of the

German PTT in Frankfurt was enlisted and surpris-

ingly confirmed sufficiently good quality with a bit

error probability of 10

-8

on the international pathway.

However, one should not imagine the testing to be

quite that simple because, firstly, outgoing calls from

China at that time were still connected manually with

waiting times of up to one hour and, secondly, the

time difference of seven hours meant almost no

overlap in the normal working hours of Germany and

China, not to mention the telephone charges.

We broke off the tests on 19 May, whereby,

with the support of the Chinese PTT, it was intended

to undertake further trials after my return from

Shanghai. A meeting was held on Monday 26 May

with a PTT engineer, who proved to be amazingly

knowledgeable, with the relevant CCITT standards

(V/X) at his finger tips. He indicated that the cause

of our problems was the poor line quality in the local

area with bit-error probabilities of 10

-3

. The only

option for improvement would be a permanently

connected line between ICA and the PTT’s interna-

tional exchange. This sounds much simpler than it is

in reality since lines in Beijing were so rare. One

indication of this is that usually an entire residential

area had access to only a single phone line. Despite

this, we decided to pursue this option in the weeks to

follow and then set up the X.25 tests again.

Not long before our date of departure the PTT

engineer said, “And incidentally – there is already an

X.25 connection in Beijing. Several institutes have

access to a PAD at the PTT, which is connected to

Italy via a satellite link.” I almost fell off my chair

for, of course, this was exactly what we needed. The

enquiry as to which of all the institutes in Beijing

these would be, revealed that one happened to be

right next door to the ICA. It was the NISTI (North

Institute for Scientific & Technical Information) –

100 metres away – and a fortunate owner of a PAD

access terminal, even with its own dedicated line.

NISTI and ICA were not only neighbours but even

belonged to the same department in the ministry, so

it was plain sailing from there on.

An appointment was made to visit NISTI on the

next day, Tuesday the 27 May, one day before

departure. Unfortunately, the electricity was always

turned off in this part of the city every Tuesday due

to a shortage of energy, i.e., all computers are shut

Page 37

SIST - 10 MULTIPAD

PKTELCOMB BEIJING, CHINA

* 3

* C 2222620021 ditchi0005es

com 2222620021/

network: password:

000000000000000

Please enter your ESA-QUEST password

rbc @@@@@

if you having difficulty logging on

Please contact IRS or your national centre

clr

PAD Session Log

down and even the sockets no longer have any

“juice.” Fortunately though, to counter this injustice,

the people at NISTI had constructed a small battery-

based emergency supply for their PAD terminal, to

be independent of the main supply. This then al-

lowed the demonstration to take place. It worked

trouble free as can be seen from the following

excerpt from the dialogue script.

Moreover, the entire operation ran quite fast.

The connection setup times to Italy were around

three seconds and most important of all the entire

link setup including the satellite line was within the

scope of an European Science Agency (ESA) pro-

ject, which for the time being also covered the cost.

I flew back reassured, with the remaining matters to

be taken care of from Germany. IRA computing

center business, lectures and other projects allowed

China to slip somewhat into the background again,

but after the holidays we got back down to it again.

The following needed to be done or ensured:

1. Discover the person responsible for the Italian

project or the X.25 operating company

2. Support through the German PTT

3. Support through the Chinese PTT

4. Through connection and test in ICA/NISTI

It took three telephone calls to find out who was

responsible for the Italian project. This was done via

ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, and on 20 August

1986 we were put through to the relevant specialist,

Signore Buenoventura (in English: Good Future), at

the firm of ITALCABLE. I explained what we

wanted to do and he said that, in a quiet hour, he

would like to try extending the X.25 administration

for Germany, so that one would be able to be put

through to DATEX-P via the country code 026245.

Telephone calls to the Ministry of Telecoms in Bonn

revealed that the latter were very interested in an

X.25 link to China, although letters on this subject to

the PTT in China had so far remained unanswered.

I offered to set up informal contacts via ICA and

enlisted Prof. Wang for this. Meanwhile, colleague

Signore Buenoventura had registered the extension

for DATEX-P in Italy and thought that we should try

it out.

Of course at that time communication with ICA

still went via telex and telephone, and we once again

passed on the necessary commands to China in order

to select on our PAD the local LINK network and

ultimately our VAX. Meanwhile, we had set up a

“Wang” mailbox, via which in the future all e-mail

communication with the ICA was to be routed.

Using a line monitor in front of the PAD we

traced the attempts to set up a connection from China

and gave support. After several attempts the time had

finally come on 26 August 1986; the first login on

our VAX from China had been achieved and it

wasn’t long until the first e-mail was also sent. As

chance would have it, shortly thereafter a delegation

of our university’s vice-chancellor was visiting

Beijing, to whom we were able to send the first

electronic message of greeting from Germany.

Strictly speaking, of course, the message lay in a

mailbox on our VAX computer, and was fetched

from there by remote dialogue from China and

printed out via a terminal printer at ICA.

Nevertheless, our mail arrived at the optimum

point in time and generated much pleasure at both

ends. With that, both the first X.25 link between

Germany and China and a simple e-mail communi-

cation had worked. We announced the result to the

public via a press release, which met with an ex-

tremely positive response since numerous other

institutions such as:

• Technical information centres

• DIN (German Institute for Standardization)

• Patent offices

were very interested in such access from China. By

being able to have direct dialogue with Germany, the

possibility arose for many projects, e.g., in the DIN

area, of considerably simpler alternatives for data

management and updating in China than was previ-

ously the case.

Whilst we reaped a good deal of publicity from

this first partial result, it has to be admitted in all

honesty that we alone did not do a great deal techni-

Page 38

cally, rather the helpful colleagues at ITALCABLE

set up the through connection. Our contribution

actually lay in being fortunate enough to find and

pave a way via the different entities involved, which

ultimately also then worked. The German PTT

acknowledged this in that it officially released this

route on 1 December 1986 as a new service, with

charges and all the other paraphernalia. It was even

planned to replace the ESA project link via Italy with

an official satellite link between Germany and China.

In the meantime we rested somewhat on our laurels,

had a modest e-mail communication with the ICA

and were fully occupied with other matters. Never-

theless it was clear that the true project goal of

interconnecting computers had of course not yet

been accomplished, but merely a secure means found

for data communication. Unclear, in particular, was

how the host computer required in China for the

linkup could be provided.

At this point a short report must be inserted

about a further activity, which initially had nothing

to do with the China project, namely the CSNET-

MAIL BS2000 project.

Those who are familiar with Siemens DP sys-

tems will know that integrating BS2000 systems into

national and international computer networks, and

participation through this in electronic mail services,

is not a simple matter. Siemens own X.400 develop-

ment had only just been announced. KOMEX was

partly very elaborate as a conferencing system.

Porta-COM was sometimes not supported for

BS2000 and the EARN interfaces exhibited func-

tional limitations. For these reasons we decided in

1985 to start a CSNET/ BS2000 implementation,

which shortly thereafter was elevated to a Siemens

cooperation project. For the implementation task we

had assigned a promising IT student named Michael

Finken (21 years old at the time), who was to later

play a key role in the China linkup project.

Michael did the implementation independently.

Now and again urgent status messages of the form:

“Now it has seized it!,” “They are now chatting with

one another” or “They are not checking it,” forced

their way through to me regarding the progress of the

project, which reassured me every time. After

working for about one year, the first version ran in

autumn 1986 on our Siemens central computer, and

the first versions were delivered after a further three-

month internal test phase. Karlsruhe University

administration, Univ. of Kaiserslautern and Univ. of

Saarbrücken were the first CSNET pilot customers,

together with whom various data communication

links in particular were tested: X.25, dial-up connec-

tion, LAN-link and others. From early 1987, the

node “unisb” ran stably on the Karlsruhe CSNET

node and, in addition to further distribution, Michael

devoted his time to improving the user interface as

well as the documentation.

In parallel with this, preparations were already

underway for the third CASCO symposium of 7-11

Sept. 1987 in Beijing. We were planning for the

period from 1 to 25 Sept 1987 including visits to

other universities at Chengdu and Wuhan. This time

the Chinese side had designated computer networks

as the most important topic of the conference, and I

had the honour of delivering the opening lecture on

the subject of “Computer networks – Current state

and development trends.”

As a replacement for Hans Lackner for support

on the subject of networks, this time I had recruited

Stephan Paulisch, one of the leading developers of

our local area network, LINK. With the hectic pace

of preparations for the lecture and conference, the

computer interconnection with China project almost

sank into oblivion, particularly since there was no

news from the Chinese side on the matter of procur-

ing a VAX. With the general count down though, we

once again considered what we might still possibly

do to advance the project. The idea arose of bringing

our BS2000 implementation into play on this trip.

Of course we were once again faced with the

tricky problem of deploying American technology in

China. Michael reassured me by explaining that in

the meantime he had reimplemented the major part

of the CSNET software, so that very little remained

of the original. But still on the 19 August, in the

evening I enquired with Prof. Lawrence Landweber

(network name “Larry”) at the University of Wiscon-

sin, who within CSNET was responsible for the

international partners as to what his view would be

if we were to take our BS2000 version with us to

Beijing for a test installation. I pointed out that

undoubtedly several months would pass before a

computer linkup could be expected. Larry’s view on

this was totally positive and already by early morn-

ing on 20 August I had his OK both to take along our

software and to attempt an experimental trial opera-

tion between Beijing and Karlsruhe! It even emerged

immediately thereafter that even on the American

Page 39

Fig. 2. Local test configuration to simulate the China link

Fig: 3. Test configuration at the ICA

side a pronounced interest existed in a computer

linkup to China.

The matter was now imparted with some drive.

Within 24 hours Michael was enlisted to accompany

us on the trip to China if he wanted to (which he

did). A project plan was drawn up. The Chinese

partners were notified. A plane ticket was obtained,

his passport sent to the Chinese embassy. A list of

the required hardware and software components was

drawn up. And the local test field for simulation of

the Chinese environment in Karlsruhe was defined

(Figure 2).

With the support of Gerd Wacker, who later

held a position in Karlsruhe, Michael Finken needed

at least half a week to get the test configuration

running. After that it seemed clear what it would

need to look like but it was unclear what else we

would still need locally:

• Line monitor

• PROM programmer

• PASCAL compiler

• Run-time system

• Latest PDN version

and more besides.

We decided (mindful of the DM 2100, previ-

ously paid for excess baggage) to only take the most

necessary items with us, i.e., the CSNET- BS2000

software and protocol converter PC96 each with two

spare versions, in case something should go wrong

during the flight or security checks. Everything was

finally ready on the first of September and after a

stopover in Bangkok we touched down in Beijing on

Thursday 3 September.

On Friday 4 September the first journey after the

welcome ceremony led us to the ICA. To begin with,

we set up the X.25 link to Karlsruhe and reported our

arrival in Beijing. After this Michael loaded the

software, whereby it turned out that one of the tapes

had in fact suffered damage.

The most important data is listed below in the

form of a journal starting on 4 Sept. 1987:

Friday, 4.9.

12.00 Installation CSNET software on

Siemens 7.760 in the ICA.

Local CSNET mail ran!

After this initial success though, it took a further

three tough weeks of day and night working (virtu-

ally round-the-clock) until the mail also ran via the

computer linkup. For a better understanding of the

subsequent trials please refer to Fig. 3 which ex-

plains the configuration used.

The four switch positions in the connecting field

have the following meaning:

1. IBM PC is connected as a local terminal via the

protocol converter PC96 (brought over from

Germany) to a 9600-baud MSV1 line on the

DUET (planned).

2. As under 1, but here the connection is via a

Chinese GZ7 protocol converter (an ICA in-

house development – worked already).

3. The IBM PC is connected to the PTT PAD and

via this, e.g., in REMOTE DIALOGUE to one of

the computer systems in the LINK (worked

already).

4. The Siemens system is connected via the PC96

to the PTT PAD in Beijing and via this by com-

puter linkup to the Siemens-HOST in Karlsruhe

(planned).

We tested the various connection variants and

found to our shock that the PTT PAD required a

speed transformation from 9600-baud to 300-baud,

whilst our PC 96 was generated at both ends with

9600-baud. Although we did ask for the essential

technical data by sending a further mail to the ICA

Page 40

before our departure, that message remained laying

unread in Karlsruhe.

It now felt like we were wandering in the desert

with sufficient food but no can-opener; you see the

PC96's software is stored in EPROM but of course

we had neither the sources nor a PROM programmer

with us, and unfortunately the PC96 did not have a

DIP switch for baud rate settings. What could we do?

The problem of not having a PROM program-

mer was quickly resolved since the ICA (which

incidentally is also very well equipped in other

things), had one, and furthermore the correct one.

First a patch had to be made to modify the speed to

300-baud. We sent the problem by mail to Karlsruhe

and in the meantime turned to the working connec-

tion 2 to the Chinese protocol converter.

Friday, 4.9.

16.00 Attempt to output an e-mail on the IBM

Result: DCAM-ERROR!!

The cause was quickly isolated: the ICA is still

running BS2000 version 7.1 and a corresponding old

version of DCM, whereas our software runs on 7.5

and was developed under DCM version 8. Therefore,

recompile! For this though, the source modules for

the assembler routines, which implement the access

to DCAM, need to be fetched from a library, which

in turn was created with FMS (BS2000 File Manage-

ment System).

But the ICA does not have FMS. Where in

Beijing could FMS be got hold of? Idea: the Siemens

branch office must in fact have it. Phone call to

Siemens. Bernd Grüther agreed to provide support,

with the technician to bring it along on Monday.

That’s as far as we can go – for the moment.

Friday, 4.9.

Evening: Welcoming of the delegation in the Peo-

ple’s Hall by Minister Zhao Jia Hua, (who

even mentioned our project personally).

Saturday, 5.9. Visit to the Great Wall

Sunday, 6.9. Visit to the Mao Mausoleum,

meet-up with the interpreters for the pur-

poses of discussing the lectures.

Monday, 7.9.

9.00 Opening of the 3

CASCO symposium.

Main lecture “Computer networks – Cur-

rent state and development trends.”

16.00- Attempt to reach Siemens by telephone

17.00

17.15 Siemens has FMS

18.00- Fetch and load FMS

19.00 Message: EDT failed!!

Remedy: Build an EDT dummy and insert

underneath.

20.00 Recompilation: CSNET run-time system

OK. Output of text on IBM PC via GZ7.

Text appears on the screen, entries from the

IBM-PC though do not arrive!

Recollection: PC96 is generated in the

PDN with a different terminal type than

GZ7. Mail software is adjusted to the PC96.

Consequently, the first 15 characters are

discarded when inputting.

Problem: To change this, the CSNET

software would need to be recompiled with

PASCAL. ICA however does not have a

PASCAL compiler!

Idea: Patch the object module by

overwriting the “15”.

Patching the object code is easier said than done.

The CSNET software is several 100-Kbytes long and

contains a lot of binary code “15”. However this was

the only option in this situation. We set about it and

after 20 minutes had the correct “15”. Using PAM a

“3” was overlaid and a new attempt started.

Monday, 7.9.

21.00 Text entered arrives correctly.

Next problem: on outputting, an unwanted

“@” is appended as the station-specific

message header.

To suppress the @ we again had to delve into

the binary code. This time it was more complicated

because the Pascal compiler’s optimisation had been

applied at this point. The length of the message

header “@” was exactly ONE, a value that the Pascal

run-time system always keeps in a register. Conse-

quently, at this point the content of a register was

written to memory instead of the constant 1. Ponder-

ing, poring over the machine description … then the

idea; search back through the code to see whether a

numbers in the corresponding command. We are in

luck and find such a register 10 commands further

on.

Monday, 7.9.

22.00 New trial: Input works, REP is ok.

New problem: It does not go any further.

The mail protocol is stuck!

23.00 Action taken: We insert a LlNE MONI-

Page 41

TOR in the line and observe an incredible

amount of TRAFFIC between GZ7 and

DUET.

24.00 Assumption: V.24 problem???

Idea: Check the signals. (A Chinese

colleague comments with a glance at the

clock: “The Germans are impossible”). We

want to continue but somehow the right

cable for the tester is missing and we de-

cide to break off and resume again the

following morning.

The problem at midnight was simply that once

again the ICA is without power on Tuesdays. Al-

though director Li had already got in touch with the

municipal works department to obtain special treat-

ment in our case, this was by no means guaranteed.

Tuesday, 8.9.

9.00- Lectures, separate parallel session on

17.00 “E-mail and other services in local area net-

works,” demonstration of local mail.

17.30 Testing of V.24 signals with and without

a null-modem, V.24 is OK.

20.45 Cause of the incredible TRAFFIC found:

The GZ7 protocol converter’s transmission

also includes the TRANSDATA HEADER

which upsets the NET/ONE in Karlsruhe.

21.30 Message from Karlsruhe: to set a speed of

300-baud, the contents of address hex

“349” must be changed from 0C to 5C.

At last!!

22.30 Finish for the day because the change

cannot be made until the following Mon-

day.

On Wednesday a project meeting was held with

vice-president Yang, where, upon our recommenda-

tion, it was at last decided that the Chinese side

should for the first time attend the International

Academic Networkshop in Princeton, N.J. on 9 and

10 November 1987, and also hold a networking con-

ference in spring 1988 in Beijing. Invitations to this

should include Prof. Landweber, University of

Wisconsin, Prof. Farber, University of Delaware

(both CSNET) and Dr. Dennis Jennings, University

College Dublin (EARN). Immediately after the

meeting I sent off the appropriate invitations by mail.

Wednesday, 9.9.

Morning: ICA burns-in a new PROM for PC96

Afternoon: PC96 is connected.

Does not run!!!

Symptom: PC96 is not polled by

DUET, whereas GZ7 operates per-

fectly.

Ideas: Check the PDN generation,

V.24 signals synchronous/asyn-

chronous, check buffer 9603 hardware-

wise.

By reference to the hardware manuals, the head

of the ICA team, Mrs. Qiu, determines that the

DUET requires a correction in the WIRE WRAP on

pin 83, which supplies the clock pulse for asyn-

chronous buffers. She promises the change will be

made by the following morning.

Thursday, 10.9.

8.30- PC96 is still not running, although the

11.00 WIRE WRAP and V.24 are OK. We are

being slowly driven to despair. Neither

does OSI help things along. We just don’t

know on which ISO layer the error might

be hidden!

11.00 Power failure, ICA switches over to the

emergency supply (UPS) with which the

7.760 runs for about a further ten minutes.

13.00 DUET runs STAND ALONE until an UPS

alarm emphatically demands a total shut-

down.

Idea: Have the 9603 buffer checked by

Siemens. Call to Siemens. Technicians are

there but have a huge workload, we should

go there and explain the problem.

17.00 Trip into the CITIC building to Siemens.

Messrs. Fleischmann and Schneider are

both extremely familiar with the buffers.

We persuade Mr. Schneider to come with

us to the ICA and take a look immediately

thereafter.

18.00 Nobody is in the ICA and the power is off

because a reception is taking place in the

Friendship Hotel. On top of that, our own

one. We give up!

Friday, 11.9.

8.30- Concluding lectures, ending of the con-

11.00 ference, Mr. Fleischmann from Siemens

is meanwhile testing the buffer (with all

tricks), repairs the timing, generates the

PDN anew. Line is polled. At last!

12.00 Messages from Wisconsin, Delaware and

Dublin. Prof. Landweber, Prof. Farber and

Dennis Jennings all accept for spring 1988.

Great!

13.45 PC96 runs!! Data can be input via the

Page 42

IBM PC and the CSNET script simulated.

Wow!

14.00 We plug together the cables between

China (DUET) and Germany (PTT PAD)

for the first time (connection option no. 4 –

see Fig. 3 above) and wait for the PAD

message: “WELCOME IN BEIJING.”

Nothing, instead we get ERROR!

14.00- We check out all of the options (see Fig.

18.00 3): - IBM PC via PC96 to Siemens runs

(1) - IBM PC via PAD with Karlsruhe runs

(3) -Siemens with PAD via PC96 returns

ERROR (4)

LINE MONITOR shows: PC96 generates

in direction DUET a string of ???

Mail query in Karlsruhe: when can that

happen?

Laconic reply: if PC96 receives invalid

characters.

In the middle of our work we are obliged to

break the work off in order to participate at

a Siemens reception in the Park Restaurant.

22.00 Return to the ICA. The team in Karlsruhe,

comprising Michael Rotert and Gerd

Wacker, is on line, which allows us to hold

a direct terminal-to-terminal dialogue.

Back to the ???-Problem: possible reasons

are poor signals and PARITY errors.

Idea: PARITY definition between PC96/

Siemens and PTT PAD is incorrect.

Test: We alter the PARITY on the IBM

PC and the PC96 actually generates the

??? Great!

3.00 Now we want to know from Karlsruhe how

one alters the PARITY parameter in PC96;

the same problem as with the 300-baud,

except that until Sunday afternoon we only

have one and ½ days left before our flight

leaves. The Karlsruhe team doesn’t know

either where patching is to be done. Perhaps

Hans Lackner, sitting at home unsuspect-

ingly having his tea, will know the answer.

We speak imploringly and with all our

powers of persuasion that he should be call-

ed in, when finally the message arrives; he

is on his way and seeking the location.

In the meantime we are trying to find

out the PKTELCOM PAD parameter for

PARITY. It also answers nicely to the

param command with a column of numbers

of 15 x 2 values, but who keeps them indi-

vidually in their head? Fortunately, the ICA

still has a copy of the MICOM PAD man-

ual that I brought over the previous year.

We check the parameters and set the rele-

vant ones to HOST-HOST communication.

We send the lot through to Karlsruhe again,

who also believe the parameters must be

OK.

Hard luck in this was just that; the

critical PAD parameters that define the

PARITY bits (7/8 EVEN/ODD/NO) lie

from 101 upwards and are not standardised

internationally. For that reason we really

ought not have been angry with the

PKTELCOM PAD since it ignored our 101

parameter entries, which it was fully enti-

tled to do. Nevertheless, we were angry and

decided to complain or make enquiries the

following morning at the Beijing PTT.

4.00 Message from Karlsruhe: the PATCH is

there, we are to alter cell ‘X348’ from “FA”

to “CA” or “EA”. Eureka!! Feelings of

extreme gratitude emerge.

We enquire further as to what the individ-

ual bits signify and are sent a partial list of

assignments.

4.30 The Karlsruhe team is now applying pres-

sure; we are to insert the patch and test. But

now we were slowly beginning to show

effect and in doing so made an interesting

observation; in the computer centre at 5

o’clock in the morning the skin colour of

Europeans and Chinese becomes increas-

ingly similar and meets up in a pale shade

of green. All those involved were also of

the same frame of mind and we explained

to the Karlsruhe team at the other end of the

line that we simply could not do anymore

and would continue in the morning.

Saturday, 12.9.

11.00 Again in the ICA, Mrs. Qiu and the others

had indeed tried again during the night to

alter the PROM, but the PROM program-

mer was faulty.

12.00 Director Li decides to buy a new one and

sends an employee to the nearest computer

store with a cheque (which incidentally

Page 43

Fig. 4. Yin and Yang

would not be that simple at a German university)!

13.00 We meanwhile place bets as to the PAR-

ITY setting that will make it work. In the

ICA we find the INTEL manual, which

gives an exact description of the control

words for the I/O module in the PC96.

14.00 Patched PROMs ready, installation, tests,

result: ??? ... as previously.

We are ready to freak out.

18.00 Systematic checking through all combina-

tions of PARITY – nothing! Even now

??? ...

18.00- Evening meal and discussion of the

22.00 situation with Prof. Wang. The others think

we should break off and quietly give the

matter some thought in Germany and then

start up again in October or November. I

say that we want to find out now and make

a final attempt at it this very evening.

22.00 Execution of a series of tests to determine

whether the ??? ... problem is determinate

or indeterminate.

Selection of all possible combinations of

PAD and IBM PC parameters.

Result: Problem appears to be determinis-

tic.

2.00 Everything stops working, even the local

connection of the IBM PC to the Siemens

no longer works.

2.30 An absolute low point!

Recollection of yin and yang (see Fig. 4).

Yü Hiung spoke: “The cycle is never ending.

Who though notices the hidden changes of the

heaven and earth? For when things get less on one

side they increase on the other, when they become

full here they reduce there.”

“Decrease and increase, completion and reduc-

tion are constantly being generated and ceasing, their

arrival and departure are linked to one another by

invisible transitions. Who indeed notices? Every-

where a force does not suddenly increase, a shape

does not suddenly reduce, which is why one does not

notice their completion or decline. It is the same as

with people, who from birth until old age change

daily in external appearance and in the level of their

knowledge; skin, nails and hair are continuously

being generated and fall off. Nothing remains sta-

tionary at the level of childhood without change. The

transitions are imperceptible; one only notices them

afterwards. Yin and yang gave us the certainty that,

after a low point, things could only get better and

this was the case.”

2.35 Stephan Paulisch had the idea of trying to

set up the connection to Karlsruhe manu-

ally, i.e., using the IBM PC to set up the

connection to the Siemens in Karlsruhe and

to then manually replug to the Siemens in

the ICA. We decide to make this last at-

tempt and, in fact:

2.45 The first correct characters arrive from

Karlsruhe!!! Hooray!!

The reason: both Siemens systems

work with the same character representa-

tion, whereby the PAD parameters are set

such from the Karlsruhe side that the char-

acters pass through correctly.

3.00 Discussion of the situation and assess-

ment; with the improvised solution of man-

ual connection setup via the IBM PC it is

possible to test the CSNET link as regards

software.

5.00 Individual discussion in the Friendship

Hotel

I take Michael Finken to one side to ask him

whether he could not stay on in Beijing alone to

complete the work, for the rest concerned primarily

his software. Good-natured and motivated as he was,

he also agreed straight away! To be fair, it should be

said that in Germany I had already prepared him for

this possibility. Nevertheless, I think highly of him

for his spontaneous agreement because, after all, he

had let himself in for a solo adventure and sacrificed

the no doubt delightful Yangtze river trip, which had

already been booked for him and paid for.

Page 44

Waiting for correct characters from Karlsruhe.

Fig. 5. Configuration of CSNET nodes in Beijing and Karlsruhe

Received: from Peking by unika1; Sun, 20 Sep 87

16:55 (MET dst)

Date: Mon, 14 Sep 87 21:07 China Time

From: Mail Administration for China <MAIL@ze1>

To: Zorn@germany, Rotert@germany,

Wacker@germany, Finken@unika1

CC: [email protected], [email protected],

jennings%irlean.bitnet@germany,

cic%relay.cs.net@germany, Wang@ze1, RZLI@ze1

Subject: First Electronic Mail from China to

Germany

“Ueber die Grosse Mauer erreichen wir alle

Ecken der Welt “

”Across the Great Wall we can reach every

corner in the world “

Dies ist die erste ELECTRONIC MAIL, die von China

aus ueber Rechnerkopplung in die internationalen

Wissenschaft snetze geschickt wird.

This is the first ELECTRONIC MAIL supposed to be

sent from China into the international scientific

networks via computer interconnection between

Beijing and Karlsruhe, West Germany (using

CSNET/PMDF BS2000 Version).

University of Karlsruhe Institute for Computer

- Informatik Application of State

Rechnerabteilung - Commission of Machine

(IRA) Industry (ICA)

Prof. Dr. Werner Zorn Prof. Wang Yuen Fung

Michael Finken Dr. Li Cheng Chiung

Stephan Paulisch Qui Lei Nan

Michael Rotert Ruan Ren Cheng

Gerhard Wacker Wei Bao Xian

Hans Lackner Zhu Jiang

Zhao Li Hua

Fig. 6. First Electronic Mail from China 20 Sept. 1987

(the messages to Zorn and Finken were sent to provide

copies in their German mail boxes).

Sunday, 13.9.

11.00 Closing discussion in the ICA

Announcement: Michael Finken is to stay

on until things are running! Our ICA

friends are very happy for they were just as

committed to success as we were. O p t i -

mistic as we were, we set up a greeting

message to be sent all over the world in the

event that the system worked. “Across the

Great Wall we can reach all corners of the

world” (see Fig. 6).

Further mail to Michael Rotert and Gerd Wacker in

Karlsruhe, who authorised this, to do everything

conceivably necessary to give optimum support to

Michael Finken in Beijing.

14.00 Departure from the Friendship Hotel

16.00 Departing flight to Chengdu, in Sichuan

province

I picked up the further continuation of the work

by telephone when traveling (which in some cases

was not very easy), which means that I too can now

only report by “View from the wall:” – to resolve the

tiresome ??? problem called for a further patch in the

PC96, which Roland Stoffel quietly discovered and

passed on to Beijing.

The solution to a further fundamental problem

though was still to come; the CSNET mailers were

hung in DEADLOCK!!! The reason: an error in the

PMDF standard protocol. This error was later re-

ported to the CIC (CSNET Information Centre) and

confirmed by them. Many years previously this prob-

lem had occurred when telephone connections were

Page 45

“Computer links are developed”

“China can now have computer links with more than

10,000 scientific research institutes, universities and

computer manufacturers around the world.

The link using two Siemens computers in Beijing and

Karlsruhe, Federal Republic of Germany, went into

operation recently.

Prof. Wang Yunfeng, advisor on electronics information

and technology for the State Science and Technology

Commission, described the development as a technical

breakthrough concerning the integration of China’s

universities and research institutes with the worldwide

computer network. The link, he said, was successfully

established by an expert team under the direction of

Professor Werner Zorn of the University of Karlsruhe. The

team included scientists from the Beijing Institute for

Computer application, the University of Karlsruhe,

Siemens, and CSNET of the United States” (Xinhua).

Fig. 7. Press release in the China Daily of 25 Sept. 1987

very bad, but had not been rectified at the time, and,

because line quality had improved, the problem had

cleared itself.

In our case nothing cleared up just by itself,

which meant Michael Finken (in Beijing) working

together with Gerd Wacker (in Karlsruhe) was

obliged to develop and implement a special protocol

extension that dealt reliably with further error cases.

This called for a further week of hard day-and-night

work, with the hindrance of power outages and still

the lack of a PASCAL compiler. On top of this, there

was the time difference and the fact that the foreign

language institute in which Michael was staying,

locked up at midnight, which meant he sometimes

had to kip down in the ICA (on a bamboo mat).

Finally though, the moment had at last arrived.

Sunday, 20.9.

23.55 The prepared first mail is transferred

correctly to Karlsruhe and from there to

further networks.

The good news reached me in Macao,

where we drafted a press release the same

evening. This was telexed to director Li

and from there and disseminated through-

out the world via the official Chinese

news agency, Xinhua (See Fig. 7).

The remaining time, until departure on 25

Sept. for Hong Kong and from there back to Ger-

many with the entire group, was utilised by Mi-

chael to stabilise the software, install the adminis-

tration and set up mail accounts, create the docu-

mentation and give instruction to the operating staff

at ICA.

Friday, 25.9.

11.00 Arrival of Michael in Hong Kong with

the China Daily of the same day

(which is never available in Hong Kong

until the next day) and our press release.

20.00 Return flight to Germany with the

delegation

Despite the joy of a successful mission, after our

return the worrying question was whether the link

would continue to work without our local support.

We monitored our X.25 inputs continuously:

nothing! Then finally on October 8 the ICA node

signed on again, whereby in hindsight there was a

simple explanation for the broadcasting silence.

October 1 is a national holiday in China, which

many Chinese use to take a well-earned short break

and this included our friends at the ICA. After their

return the link continued to work without any prob-

lems and subsequently rendered useful services,

including finding a solution to further problems still

quite unresolved:

1. Official American agreement to the linkup

with China.

2. Participation of China in the International

Academic Networkshop in Princeton (9,10

Nov 1987) with admission into the net-

working community.

3. Propagation of services inside and outside of

China with the goal of building China’s own

internal computer network.

As is known, we had received merely the OK

from CSNET for an experimental test link but not

yet the final approval. However, on account of the

technical status now achieved, Dave Farber and

Larry Landweber immediately put every effort into

obtaining official agreement on the part of the

American NSF (National Science Foundation)

responsible for this.

It was a fine prelude to the Princeton meeting

that Prof. Farber (CSNET) was able to hand over

the official NSF letter of approval to vice-president

Yang, head of the three-man Chinese delegation

(see Fig. 8).

Page 46

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20550

Division of Networking and Communications Research

and Infrastructure

Professor David Farber, Mr. Ira Fuchs,

Chairman Chairman

CSNET BITNET

Executive Committee Executive Committee

Gentlem

en:

The extension of BITNET and CSNET electronic mail to

China is a natural enlargement of the telephone and postal

services that will increase the possibilities for collaboration

among U.S. and Chinese research scientists. I welcome

this move witch your organization has made.

Sincerely,

Stephen S. Wolff

Fig. 8. Text of the official NSF letter of approval

Thus, approval is given not just for our

CSNET link but equally for further planned linkups

with China within BITNET.

In response to the press release sent right

around the world, we learned that other groups

were also working intensely to achieve a network

link with China.

A project under the overall control of George

Kemper and Jaan Laane of the Texas A & M

University was running with the working title;

CHINANET - BITNET to connect 17 Chinese

universities to BITNET with a planned start of

operation for the Transpacific link of 1 Oct. 1987!

The Chinanet project group immediately

started a computer search by e-mail for a professor

“Tso-en,” who is said to have achieved the linkup

using a “Xi men Xi” computer, and soon made a

find. Since then there has been increasingly flour-

ishing communication with many interesting and

interested partners, which proves once again that

computer networks do not alienate the people of the

world but bring them closer to one another.

This article is a translation of the original publication:

Zorn, Werner: “Wie China mit den internation-

alen Rechnernetzen verbunden wurde” in “PIK-

Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kom-

munikation.” 11 Jahrgang 1988, Heft 1, S. 22–29

http://www-ks.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/index.php?id=36

Annex:

1988 Start of CANET

28.-30.03.1988 CANET- Chinese Academic

Network launched at ICA/Beijing in

presence of Daniel Karrenberg

(RIPE), Dr. Dennis Jennings (EARN) and Prof. Werner Zorn

(Karlsruhe University)

1990 Registration of .CN Domain

9.10. Prof. Yunfeng Wang (ICA/Beijing) meets Prof. Zorn at Karlsruhe

University in Germany. They discuss further possibilities to support

networking in China in general and CANET particularly. (E-mail –

Prof. Zorn to Qian Tian Bai)

18.10. Prof. Zorn sends a pre request for “CN” to the Internet NIC (cc E-mail

– Prof. Zorn to Qian Tian Bai on Oct. 24).

03.11. CANET/ICA highly welcomes this ini-

tiative and asks for technical support during the migration phase

toward DNS (E-mail – Qian Tian Bai to Prof. Zorn).

26.11. Prof. Zorn officially applies for regis-

tration of the Chinese Top Level Do-

main CN at the Internet NIC. Primary

Domain Name Server for CN is:

IRAUN1.IRA.UKA.DE

International Secondary Domain Servers for CN are:

MCSUN.EU.NET and UUNET.EE.NET

(E-mail – Prof. Zorn to Qian Tian Bai on Dec. 02, as well as the

E-mail answer from Qian Tian Bai to Prof. Zorn on Dec. 03).

2.12. First usage of the newly registered :

TLD “CN” (E-mail – Arnold Nipper/

Xlink to Prof. Zorn on Dec. 03).

1991

03.01. – 19.01.: Prof. Zorn sends an expert

team from Karlsruhe University to ICA/ Beijing, consisting of

Michael Rotert, Gerd Wacker and Nikolaus von der Lancken.

Rotert implements the local DNS service together with the newest

CSNET/PMDF-software on the VAX at ICA, Wacker and von der

Lancken install LAN-components and the Dial-In Server.

01/1991- 05/1994

Karlsruhe University runs the CN Primary DNS until this service

was taken over completely by the Chinese side (CNNIC), thanks

to a direct link between China and the USA, which allows the

provision of full Internet services.

(The e-mails are all still available from Prof. Zorn).

Netizens and Protecting the

Public Interest in the

Development and Manage-

ment of the Internet: An

Economist’s Perspective

by Anders Ekeland, NIFU STEP

[email protected]

Introduction

This article will discuss some aspects of

Internet governance with a focus on the role that

“economic theory” plays in this discussion with

respective to the roles of markets, government and

civil society. The fundamental question is of course

Page 47

what is the most important aspect of the Internet. In

my opinion it is the free exchange of information

and opinions. This is a common good and a public

good. The commercial use of the Internet is of

secondary importance from an Internet governance

point of view. This is not the dominant point of

view among economists. But there is no such thing

as “economic theory” in the singular. There are

neoclassical, evolutionary, institutional, post-

Keynesian theories, just to mention a few. None of

these theories, and in particular the policies they

recommend, are neutral, objective, built on a purely

scientific basis. No social-science theory can be

value-free.

This article is divided into two parts. In the

first part, I argue that the major result from neo-

classical theory that unregulated markets produced

the social optimum. is not based on solid scientific

evidence. In the second part, I illustrate that as soon

as one does not take the “Pareto optimality” of

unregulated markets as a fact, when in fact it is a

dogma, quit a new look is needed on most ques-

tions of Internet governance.

Throughout the article I define “mainstream”

as economic theory that uses “perfect competition”

as its benchmark for the optimal, “first best” state

of markets. I argue at length that the “results” from

this paradigm are very strong in a normative sense

and very weak in a scientific sense. The fundamen-

tal reason being that the “general equilibrium” is

not only built on extremely unrealistic conditions,

but it is not a stable equilibrium and – as argued by,

among many other Nobel laureates, Haavelmo and

Stiglitz – the “results” are not robust and conse-

quently cannot be the basis for policy formulation

regarding the role of government and the role of

markets. Further, my argument is that mainstream

economics is – due to the static nature of the theory

– far too narrow in its analysis of Internet gover-

nance. First of all, it does not discuss the justice,

the legitimacy of the “initial endowments,” i.e., the

initial distribution of power and/or property rights.

Secondly when it comes to the actual governance

of the Internet, the DNS system, the mainstream

economists believe in using markets – there is no

room for democratic, deliberative mechanisms in

their models. This is in contradiction to the origin

of the Internet when a rather small circle of scien-

tists “ruled the root.” Since 1998 the U.S. gov-

ernment through the Department of Commerce and

the DOC through ICANN has been governing the

key infrastructure of the Internet.

The belief in markets raises several important

questions. Not the least the fact that markets take

into account only needs backed by money. What

about those whose legitimate needs are not backed

by (enough) money? But even on the condition that

we shall leave certain parts of Internet governance

to markets, do markets actually work – even rough-

ly – as the model of perfect markets predict? If not,

how do we regulate markets in order to make them

serve the public interest? For example is it com-

pletely logical from a neoclassical perspective to

create and encourage competition among different

Internets, different DNS systems in order to reap

the benefits of competition? But it is necessary to

ask: what is the dynamic of such competition – and

who will it benefit? Is the public interest served by

several competing Internets?

There is not “economic theory” in

the singular

If you go to an ordinary mainstream economist

conference you will invariably hear the speakers

use phrases like “what does economic theory tell us

about this” or “according to economic theory” as if

there were some basic set of uncontroversial theo-

ries that every sane economist builds his work

upon, like in physics. Using Google, I found 10,400

instances of the phrase “economic theory tells us,”

but only four of “neoclassical economic theory tell

us” But there are of course several, very different

economic paradigms “out there.” Beside the domi-

nating neoclassical, there are Austrian, evolution-

ary, Schumpeterian, institutional, post-Keynesian

and Marxian theories.

Each of them is a broad

church containing important different current. None

of these theories, and in particular the policies they

recommend, are neutral, objective, purely scien-

tific. No social-science theory can be value-free.

The existing economic theories can be divided into

two camps, often labeled by economists themselves

as the orthodox and heterodox schools of economic

thought. The fundamental dividing issue being the

belief that the state of the economy described by

“perfect competition” is the most desirable. The

fact that there is fundamentally different schools of

thought in economics is obvious. The fact that most

neoclassical economists disregard this fact is in my

Page 48

opinion, just one more indication of the weak

scientific character of the neoclassical paradigm. It

is therefore no big surprise that Karl M. Manheim

and Lawrence B. Solum in a high quality, well-

written research paper titled “An Economic Analy-

sis of Domain Name Policy” consequently write as

if there is only one “economics,” “economic

analysis.”

In one place they write “from the stand-

point of neoclassical economics” only to conclude

that “… if root service is a ‘private good’, then well

established and uncontroversial economic theory

suggests that it can best be provided by markets”

(page 355).

That neoclassical economics is well estab-

lished is a fact, but it is just as much a fact that neo-

classical theory is controversial. It always has

been, and is non the less controversial today. One

indication is the title of J. E. Stiglitz Nobel Prize

lecture: “Information and the Change of Paradigm

in Economics.” To call a theory uncontroversial

when a Nobel Prize laureate argues for a change of

a paradigm is clearly not scientific method at its

best. In the concluding remarks of his Nobel Prize

lecture Stiglitz writes:

In this talk I have traced the replacement of

one paradigm with another. The deficiencies in

the neoclassical paradigm – both the prediction

which seemed counter to what was observed,

some so glaring that one hardly needed refined

econometric testing, and the phenomena that

was left unexplained – made it inevitable that

it was simply a matter of time before it became

challenged. One might ask, how can we ex-

plain the persistence of the paradigm for so

long? Partly, it must be because, in spite of its

deficiencies, it did provide insights into many

economic phenomena. […] But one cannot

ignore the possibility that the survival of the

paradigm was partly because the belief in that

paradigm, and the policy prescriptions, has

served certain interests. (Stiglitz 2002)

I will return to the question of whose interest

the belief in the paradigm and especially its policy

prescriptions have served – and are serving. But

first it is necessary to discuss the theoretical struc-

ture of the neoclassical paradigm in order to argue

that the general policy prescriptions are not some-

thing that is “proven,” neither theoretically nor

empirically.

On the nature of the neoclassical

paradigm

It is of course beyond the scope of this article

to discuss all aspects of the neoclassical paradigm.

My aim here is to summarize in a non mathemati-

cal way the well-known fundamental weaknesses

of this paradigm so that a discussion of Internet

governance can start without dogmas. I use well-

known economists, two of them Nobel Laureates,

in order to substantiate the proposition that there is

no “rough consensus” regarding the way markets

work, and consequently the division between

government and markets.

The two meanings of the word com-

petition

A continuous source of confusion in the eco-

nomics literature and in the public discourse about

economic policy is the fact that the neoclassical

concept of perfect competition is used in fact is

confused, with the commonsense concept of com-

petition. This problem was spelled out clearly by

one of the founders of modern game theory, Oscar

Morgenstern. In his article “Thirteen Critical Points

in Contemporary Economic Theory: An Interpreta-

tion” he pointed out the two totally different mean-

ings of the word competition:

Consider ‘competition’: the common sense

meaning is one of a struggle with others, of

fight, of attempting to get ahead, or at least to

hold one’s place. It suffices to consult any

dictionary of any language to find that it de-

scribes rivalry, fight, struggle, etc. Why this

word should be used in economic theory in a

way that contradicts ordinary language is

difficult to see. No reasonable case can be

made for this absurd usage which may confuse

and must repel any intelligent novice. In cur-

rent equilibrium theory there is nothing of this

true kind of competition: there are only indi-

viduals, firms or consumers, each firm and

consumer insignificantly small and having no

influence whatsoever upon the existing condi-

tions of the market (rather mysteriously

formed by tatônnement) and therefore solely

concerned with maximizing sure utility of

profit – the latter being exactly zero. The

contrast with reality is striking: the time has

come for economic theory to turn around and

Page 49

‘face the music.’ (Morgenstern (1972), page

1164).

The fact that “perfect competition” excludes

changes in prices, technologies, tastes and initial

endowments

cannot fit the rapid changing reality

of Internet development and the ICT industry at all.

To use a static model for anlysing rapid change in

technology, price-setting behaviour, the growth of

small garage firms to dominant, strategic players in

the market, demands some really good arguments.

To argue that the model of perfect competition

shows the “final state,” the final equilibrium is of

very little help. Change has been going on for

decades, and will most probably go on for quite a

number of decades to come. One really has a

difficult job to reconcile a theory whose basic

results depend on static equilibrium with one of the

areas in society that has been marked by the most

dynamic development. This leads to the fundamen-

tal question, which is also the title of an article by

a Nobel Laureate in Economics, the Norwegian

Trygve Haavelmo.

What can the static equilibrium

models tell us?

There is a widespread feeling that economists

are much too abstract, too mathematical. I want to

emphasize, although correct, that is in a way a

superficial criticism. It mistakes the symptoms for

the cause. The founders of the theory, Jevons,

Menger and Walras did not want it to be utterly

divorced from reality, but the conditions under

which one can prove that “markets are best” just

turned out to be extreme. Step by step from the late

nineteenth century to the Arrow-Debreu finaliza-

tion in the fifties, every piece of realism had to be

weeded out of the theory. If the theory was just too

abstract, too mathematical, the answer to such a

critique would be to make the theory more complex

– as is always the case when any theory becomes

more realistic and consequently less abstract - in

economics as in engineering. Our critique is more

fundamental. In our opinion the static Arrow-

Debreu model is mathematically consistent, but it

is utterly divorced from dynamic reality – and must

be so to serve its political function. The fact that it

is divorced from reality has been pointed out by

economists, like Kornay (1971), Kaldor (1971),

Metcalfe (1995) Stiglitz (1995, 2003) just to men-

tion a few. One of the most accessible analyses for

the non mathematical reader of the deep problem

with the static nature of “perfect competition” is

the above-mentioned article “What can the static

equilibrium models tell us?” by Trygve Haavelmo.

First published in Norwegian in 1958, at the same

time as Gerard Debreu (1959) published his semi-

nally “A Theory of Value.” The article was pub-

lished in English translation in Economic Inquiry.

Haavelmo’s starting point is to …

discuss how fantastically complicated the

argument that price and quantity are deter-

mined by the scissors [market cross] really is,

even if one accepts the most hard-boiled as-

sumptions about market behaviour. […] In its

naked simplicity, the well-worn picture of the

intersecting curves is still the most important

– and perhaps the only – rational foundation

that one has to stand on if one wants to believe

in the automatism of the free market.

Haavelmo then repeats for sake of argument

the textbook logic behind the supply and demand

curve and goes on:

What is then so wrong with the proposition

that the ‘price will be where the curves inter-

sect each other’? Only this: there is of course,

not an iota of information in our behaviour

scheme for buyers and sellers about how they

themselves would ‘find the market price.’ Sup-

pose we let buyers and sellers loose on each

other under the presumption that a given

market price will rule, and they then find that

isn’t the case? What will they do? Even if they

where to act quite sensibly, in no way what-

soever could their behaviour be deduced just

from the information that the supply and

demand curve gives us.

Haavelmo goes on to propose that:

… the conceptual apparatus of game theory

could conceivably be used to construct such a

model. But which assumptions should one then

make about contacts between sellers and

buyers, about their negotiation strategy, about

their knowledge of the market, and so on?

Here the possibilities are obviously endless.

One thing is in any case certain: a vague postu-

late of ‘many buyers and sellers’ will not

suffice to determine how this game should

proceed.

Page 50

The industrial economics literature has indeed

borne out Haavelmo’s prophecy that the possibili-

ties are endless. He further comments that for the

game to be static and at the same time to “reflect

practical possible behaviour” the buyers and sellers

would have to find the market price at “their first

try.” Haavelmo dryly comments that, “Presumably

we would find that the buyers and sellers taking

part in such a game would have to be some

remarkably well informed beings.” Haavelmo then

goes on to discuss the usual answer to these diffi-

culties: “just make the theory dynamic.” Haavelmo

responds: “That answer however, seems to come

very close to saying that the demand-supply cross

is indeed a fine thing; it is just that it cannot answer

any of our questions!” Haavelmo points out that

when textbooks tell the intuitively very credible

story that when prices are too high they will fall

and if they are too low they will rise, but as

Haavelmo points out, too high or low in this con-

text “are expressions that are given their meaning

by reference to the demand-supply cross” – and it

was where they would intersect that was the origi-

nal problem! Haavelmo finishes his small article by

discussing the development of the general equilib-

rium model. In economics after Walras the exis-

tence of a meaningful solution has been the focus

and that the demonstration “that such solution

exists under quite general assumptions is consid-

ered one of the greatest triumphs in the area of gen-

eral equilibrium theory.” Haavelmo continues:

As is well known, that Walrasian general

equilibrium model may be assumed to have

certain ‘optimal’ properties according to a

definition due to Pareto. Seemingly, all that

was lacking was a demonstration that the

system actually possessed a feasible solution.

Since that has now been put in order, all might

seem to be well. But there is a problem with

the dynamics when the system is found ‘of its

equilibrium point’. So far, economic theory

has, I think, treated the latter problem with

somewhat less respect than it deserves. The

system’s dynamic motion has been regarded as

no more than an appendix to the static model

– an appendix of such sort that if only the

static model has a certain form, prices and

quantities will be drawn to the equilibrium

point. What has been said above should give

reason to be careful in making the claim that

the solution of the general equilibrium model

shows what will actually happen in a freely

competitive market system.

It would be beyond the scope of this article to

analyse the efforts that have been done in order to

try to show that the general, static equilibrium is in

fact a stable equilibrium. The interested reader can

consult among other works F. M. Fisher Disequi-

librium Foundations of Equilibrium Economics

from 1983. The main conclusion of that book, writ-

ten by an author fundamentally positive to the

neoclassical paradigm, but with also a strong sense

of scientific rigour is worth quoting: “This investi-

gation has come some distance from its origins in

the traditional stability literature. Unfortunately,

there is still a long way for further research before

we have a sound foundation for equilibrium eco-

nomics.” (page 212).

In my opinion that is still the

case, which means that even on the level of highly

abstract theory there is no compelling reason to

give the well-known policy recommendations from

main stream economics any privileged status.

The role of government – from a

theoretical point of view

For the economic elites of society one of the

most important “results” of neoclassical theory, is

that “the less government, the better.” But as soon

as one takes into consideration all the endless

imperfections, externalities, information asym-

metries of real life this “result” has no scientific

foundation, only an important ideological role to

play. Or as Stiglitz formulates this in the above

cited Nobel lecture:

In the 1980s, there was a strong movement

toward privatizing state enterprises, even in

areas in which there was a natural monopoly,

in which case government ownership would be

replaced with government regulation. While it

was apparent that there were frequently prob-

lems with government ownership, the theories

of imperfect information also made it clear

that even the best designed regulatory systems

would work imperfectly. This raised naturally

the question of under what circumstances

could we be sure that privatization would

enhance economic welfare. As Herbert Simon

[1991] the 1978 Nobel Prize winner had earlier

emphasized, both public and private sectors

Page 51

face information and incentive problems; there

was no compelling theoretical argument for

why large private organizations would solve

these incentive problems better. (Stiglitz 2003,

my emphasis)

To sum up: What is called “economic theory”

is highly controversial. The theory is based on

assumptions that cannot be relaxed while keeping

its main results about markets making the optimal

allocation of resources and that government have

no intrinsic positive role to play. One could of

course ask if the lack of scientific foundation for

neoclassical policy recommendations have any

practical significance. It is beyond the scope of this

article to argue this at length on a general, macro-

economic level, but in my opinion the recent

transformation in Eastern Europe and the experi-

ence of the Nordic countries are relevant in this

respect. The experience of Russia shows clearly

that although you do everything according to the

recommendations of neoclassical economics you

might find yourself in a worse situation, not only in

the short, but also in the medium term. This is no

surprise, given that you do not have a theory of

change, of a path from A to B, only a theory of an

unstable equilibrium point. To do worse than the

Soviet Union under Brezhnev and Gorbatchov, is

actually making quite an achievement. In the

Nordic countries – where for decades before and

after WWII one has done most things “against the

book,” the labour productivity and welfare is unsur-

passed. This means that strong unions, compressed

wage scale, huge economic transfers

are not a

brake on economic efficiency. This comes as no

surprise as soon as one frames the problem not as

static equilibrium, but as an optimal control prob-

lem – where government, unions and other civil

society has an indispensable role in utilising both

the creative and the destructive aspects of capitalist

competition.

The problem of “initial endowments”

One of the claims of objectivity of the neoclas-

sical school, is that it only discusses what is the

most efficient allocation of scare resources. It

leaves so to speak the judgement on the initial

distribution of wealth and resources for other

ethical, moral and philosophical “value systems,”,

i.e., “subjective” theories to evaluate the initial

distribution of wealth. But this neat separation does

not hold as soon as one take into consideration the

real life links between distribution and efficiency.

Feudal tenants produce more than slaves; peasants

owning land more than tenants; trusted and valued

labour, more than distrusted and oppressed labour.

As Stiglitz puts it in discussing the transition in

Eastern Europe:

I stress the results on the link between issues

of distribution and issues of efficiency, be-

cause some of the recent discussions of reform

within Eastern Europe have stressed efficiency

concerns, with limited regard to the conse-

quences for distribution. Years from now this

lack of concern for distribution, I will argue

later, may come to haunt these economies, not

just in the form of social unrest, but more

narrowly in terms of long-run economic effi-

ciency. At the very least, there is no intellec-

tual foundation for the separation of efficiency

and distributional concerns. (Stiglitz 1995,

page 50, my emphasis)

In regard to Internet governance, the neoclassi-

cal economists do not at all discuss the legitimacy

– or the efficiency of the initial distribution of

wealth, in this particular context – the initial distri-

bution of control over key Internet resources. The

Internet was created by researchers with a vision

(see the other articles in this issue). Did these

researchers create an inefficient infrastructure – or

was it one that in many ways was very well suited

as a platform for the free flow of information,

opening up a space for deliberative, participatory

democracy? Was the governance of the Internet in

any significant way improved when the U.S.

government took the governance out of the hands

of the research community and semi-privatized it

through the creation of ICANN?

Do m a i n n a m e s as “ in i ti a l

endowments”

The question of creation, distribution and

governance of domain names is an excellent illus-

tration of the question of initial endowments and

the role of government in this area. The fundamen-

tal question is of course one of legitimate power.

History has seen various forms of legitimate power,

both Hellenic slave-owner democracy and absolute

monarchy. But after the French revolution the prin-

ciple that legitimate power resides with the repre-

Page 52

sentative assembly elected by all adult inhabitants

has become achieved rough consensus. Even

dictatorships organise fake elections in order to

give themselves legitimacy by this principle. The

same goes for the regulation of questions of global

importance, to which the governance of Internet

clearly belongs. That is why the dominance of the

U.S. government is seen as a result of an unplanned

historical development, but which cannot be the

final solution for Internet governance. But there

will always be historical given circumstances that

shape the representative process, making it more or

less representative.

There are fake elections in dictatorships like

China, North Korea, and Iran. Also, there are elec-

toral processes that are grossly unproportional

and/or influenced by the resources put into the elec-

tion campaign by the wealthy that one might

question their legitimacy. The U.S. is notoriously

known for the influence of money, the parliaments

of UK and France for the very un-proportional

nature of the electoral process. There are “repre-

sentative bodies” like the ITU

that are less repre-

sentative of the “users” than IAB and IETF

and

other informal, NGO-like structures.

The complexities of democracy are the funda-

mental themes of political science and it is not the

focus of this article. The key issue in this context is

that neoclassical theory does not see the fundamen-

tal difference and potential contradiction between

the fundamental democratic principle of one man

one vote and one dollar one vote. The latter are the

dollarocracy of market processes which neoclassi-

cal theory holds will maximise welfare. But what

happens if elected government disagrees with the

“market?” The governance of ccTLDs

is an

illustrative example.

From the late seventies to the late nineties the

distribution of the ccTLDs was in the hands of John

Postel and his network.

Postel gave them away

according to his own judgement. The result was in

most cases acceptable. In some cases idealists turn-

ed over the country code to the government. In

other cases they made a fortune out of them. There

are examples like .la for Laos that for some years

was not under the control of the Laotian govern-

ment, but was used in Los Angeles. There are .tv,

.cc, .nu and .ws (small island states) that are fully

commercial, i.e., the contents of the second level

domains have nothing to do with the states or their

culture. In Norway for example, to register a

second level domain name in the .no top level

domain, requires registration in the official busi-

ness register, which means that only organisations

with a presence on Norwegian territory can regis-

ter. The Government Advisory Committee of

ICANN has argued that it has property rights in the

country codes when used as second level domain

names for example fr.com, fra.com. The point here

is not to discuss whether such claims are reason-

able, only to point out that neoclassical theory by

its anti-government theoretical basis, or more

precisely, bias, tends to say that the “market”

should solve such issues -, i.e., in most cases

favouring the already wealthy and/or powerful.

Is the Internet a public good?

There is general agreement that the use of the

information and communication facilities on the

Internet is a public good. It fulfils the two condi-

tions of non-rivalry in consumption and non-

excludability. It is of course well known that there

are few pure public goods. National defense is an

often used example, but it is clear that in a given

situation there might be limited forces. Parts of the

national territory might be left to the enemy or get

less air or ground support because it is inefficient to

distribute the forces of national defense. With

digitalisation, radio waves can be encrypted to

achieve excludability in order to avoid free-riding

in pay-TV systems. On the Internet, as in tele-

phony, there are capacity limits, but the cost of

increasing capacity is so low, that there are no real

shortage and no rivalry in consumption. There is an

ample possibility to try to exclude, but no good

reason to do so. The conclusion being that from a

practical, commonsense point of view, the use of

the Internet is as a public good.

Is the domain name system a public

good?

To answer this question in the negative and to

argue that auctions of domain names would inc-

rease the use of Internet resources is the main aim

of Mannheim and Solum’s article “An Economic

Analysis of Domain Name Policy.” In their article

Mannheim and Solum are so eager to make every-

thing private goods that they also argue that the

root server service is a private good. This part of

Page 53

the Manheim and Solum argumentation is not very

convincing. The fact that the infrastructure is costly

is of course no argument that the root server service

is a private good. Take water in Norway. The

infrastructure certainly costs, but costs are covered

by taxes.

But water is clearly a public good, since

it is abundant in Norway. Both non rival and non

excludable. The cost of the root server system is

marginal to the cost of the Internet as a whole – and

we are all benefitting from the fact that others let us

use their hardware for free in order to use the

information they put out for free.

That domain names are scarce – in contrast to

the domain name system – is obvious. Not because

there is – as Manheim and Solum also point out –

an “engineering scarcity” – there is more than

enough possible letter combinations. Domain

names are scares because they carry meaning and

thus make navigation on the Internet easier. Each

domain name can only be allocated to one firm/per-

son. From this fact Manheim & Solum concludes:

We think this [auction] system could break the

logjams that have characterized the addition of

new gTLDs to the root. A paradigm shift is

required to make this work. ICANN has to

stop treating the name space as a public good

– requiring strict regulation in the public

interest. Once it recognizes that domain names

are private goods, and allows market alloca-

tion, a more efficient system of name space

management should emerge. (page 408)

From the neoclassical perspective an auction

insures that a scarce resource is put to its best use.

In my opinion this overlooks the fact that the

reason why domain names are valuable is because

they are a kind of language and in this respect a

common good. The fact that the TLD system we

have, and which no one now sees as optimal, shows

how important is path dependency, i.e., historical

“accident.” The .gov, .mil and .edu testifies to this.

Why should not .edu be used by all educational

institutions world wide and not only U.S.? Or as a

common second level domain for such institutions,

e.g., edu.us, edu.fr and edu.uk?

One has really to

be a true believer in the virtues of the market to

believe that an auction scheme would give the most

rational use of domain names.

Who will speak for

those with less money – both poor states, diverse

ethnic, religious and political communities? That

the current procedure of the ICANN is far from

optimal is equally true.

To charge 50,000 USD as

some non refundable proposal processing fees is a

really questionable procedure. The criteria that

ICANN used choosing seven of the 44 applicants

seems far from clear. What is needed is a much

larger process, a multi stakeholder process where

representative governments, business community

and civil society became involved. Basically it is

the users of the Internet, the Netizens, that should

have a decisive voice here. Ironically, a world wide

discussion would be as close as one in reality could

come to “perfect information” about the prefer-

ences regarding what system of domain names

would serve us best. That there would be very

different opinions is clear, but it is not given that a

rough consensus could not be reached.

The Manheim and Solum critique of

the “taxonomy” alternative

Every auction alternative faces the problem

that in contrast to, for example radio frequencies or

telephone number series, it is far from given what

TLDs should be auctioned. Manheim and Solum

write:

It is unrealistic to expect ICANN to rationally

determine which gTLDs should be added to

the root. There are few if any objective selec-

tion criteria. Does a gTLD need to be pro-

nounceable or have semantic meaning? Does

it need to be descriptive? (page 418)

It is strange to pose the question, do domain

names need to have semantic meaning. That is

precisely why they are useful, why they become

scarce and acquire economic value. A bit further

down on the same page they conclude:

In fact, there may be no rational policy

choices. Regulatory decisions on which

gTLDs to add are inevitably arbitrary, or sim-

ply favour particular interest groups. The

highly engineered grid of gTLD assignments

that mark the current domain name space does

not necessarily measure or meet the needs of

the Internet community. (page 418)

As indicated above, and as I will discuss in

more detail further down, there is a rational choice:

to call upon the Internet users, some of them in

their capacity as experts in fields like linguistics,

information theory, communication etc. It is illu-

sory to think that domain names are neutral; they

Page 54

will of course be socially constructed. It is a good

thing that they “favour” special interest groups,

society consists of special interest groups. The

question is only which interest group(s) get the

upper hand when the domain name system is

designed. Like many others when they discuss

Internet governance Mannheim and Solum speaks

with contempt about “political pressures.” Again,

to be useful the Internet should suit some political

interest. Neither researchers nor “markets” are

politically neutral. In various contexts they do more

or less express the interests of consumers or a

majority/minority of the economic and political

elites. It should come as no surprise that ICANN

with its “baroque structure,” its promarket and anti-

government ethos is a creation not well suited to

create a rational domain name system.

The current root, which has worked rather

well, was intended to be taxonomized. The ccTLDs

are the standardised ISO codes for states. The

gTLDs were intended to designate various catego-

ries of information providers. The famous .com

was for commercial enterprises, .org was for

nonprofit enterprises, .net for internet related

information providers, etc. What is really the prob-

lem is as Mannheim and Solum quite precisely

point out: “… the taxonomy paradigm has already

been violated by the opening of restricted TLDs

(such as .org, .net, and even ccTLDs such as .tv and

.us) to general commercial use. But given the

existing Internet, guessability does not prove that a

taxonomy is better than auctions. […] The

guessability argument fails, first and foremost,

because second and third level domains are not

taxonomized.” (page 439)

But why has it been violated? Is that not

precisely because one has bowed before market

forces, has not installed a regime that would create

a rational information system? Mannheim and

Solum do not seem to have any qualms about the

misuse of the .tv, i.e., the ccTLDs of micro states.

But the DOC and ICANN have the power, not only

to protect trademark and brand names, but also to

discipline those registrars that misuse the intended

meaning of domain names. The same goes for

second and third level domain names. We are back

to the lack of a democratic, Netizen-inspired

process of creating a DNS.

No wonder Mannheim and Solum do not like

the taxonomy alternative. The only vision they

have is that, “a taxonomy committee … [which]

would consist of a small number of individuals,

likely volunteers, likely without a substantial staff,

who would work part-time on the project of devel-

oping the taxonomy.” (page 438). They are equally

skeptical of ICANN in this respect:

If ICANN did decide to expand the root by

creating an expanded taxonomy, that decision

would be made by the bottom-up, consensus

driven ICANN process. But that process is not

well suited as a method for determining the

highest and best uses of the root. Participants

in the ICANN process are, for the most part,

technical specialists and not entrepreneurs.

(page 439)

To Mannheim and Solum, even after Enron

and the dotcom crash – it is entrepreneurs that

really are capable of creating the best of all possi-

ble worlds. That “technical specialists,” guided by

a vision, created the Internet is of course of virtu-

ally no importance in this context.

Reform ICANN or create new naviga-

tion tools by semantic web?

This is yet another big issue beyond the scope

of this article, but in my opinion ICANN is beyond

reform. And in any case, domain names are a very

information poor structure, better than nothing of

course, but using domain names for navigation

belongs to the past. Netizens of Cyberspace should

unite, ally themselves with firms and governments

and UN-organisations that go for an open process

of semantification. This will reduce the importance

and consequently the commercial value of domain

names. Still of course “controlling the root will be

important” because the threat to throw out those

that do not behave according to the rules lays in the

hands of those controlling the root. But the nav-

igation aspect of domain names will change. But

most importantly – once more noncommercial (but

not anti-commercial) mechanism can improve the

use of this very important public good that the

Internet has been, is and will be in the foreseeable

future. In short, the new and vaguely outlined

Internet Governance Forum should focus on the

semantic web in order to “create facts on the

ground,” in order to mobilize the Netizens and

progressive parts of the private sector. The private

sector is better served by a new and vastly more

Page 55

powerful semantic web

than an enlarged set of

gTLDs. What is the use of having both .com and

.biz beside having to do defensive acquisitions in

both domains?

Do we need competing Internets?

I raise this really bizarre question only to show

how “far out” this belief in neoclassical vision of

perfect competition can lead us. When you believe

that competition is the answer to most social and

economic challenges, then why have one Internet –

why not have competing root server systems? Or as

it was stated in the “Green Paper” that laid the

foundation for the privatization of the DNS:

Where possible, market mechanisms that

support competition and consumer choice

should drive the management of the Internet

because they will lower costs, promote innova-

tion, encourage diversity, and enhance user

choice and satisfaction.

In a working paper from the International

Centre for Economic Research, Gordon L. Brady

argues enthusiastically for competing Internets:

Let us hope that the alternative Internets will

arise without unnecessary restrictions andmake

the sluggish (and highly political) regulation

by ICANN less important.

The background for Brady’s wish for alternative

Internets are real. Brady points out that:

ICANN rejected ‘dot-travel,’ proposed by the

International Association of Travel Agents

(IATA), which represents more than 70% of

all travel agents on the grounds that IATA was

not representative of the industry. ICANN also

decided to add ‘dotbiz’ as a TLD while refus-

ing to recognize that the owners of the pre-

existing ‘dotbiz’ registration on a competing

root server system might have a prior claim to

that name on the A-root server. This suggests

that ICANN may block efforts to broaden

competition within cyberspace.

Although they in principle agree on the desir-

ability of competition for root service, Mannheim

and Solum are for once realistic enough to realize

that root service is a natural monopoly. They

correctly outline the scale, scope and network

effects that create a monopoly.

Consequently they

pose the real question:

What is surprising is that any alternative root

service providers exist at all. What explains

the emergence of these failed attempts to

compete with ICANN? The most obvious

explanation is ICANN’s restriction on the

TLD space. (page 364)

Brady goes into the technical details on how to

use alternative root servers. The simple fact that to

have to use different Internets, with different – and

competing DNS – would be a big step backwards

is completely overshadowed by the fascination of

the wonders of competition.

That Brady cares

more for IATA and the owners of the alternative

.biz than for the millions of knowledge and infor-

mation users of the Internet just makes the picture

complete.

The costs of competition and

auctions

Mannheim and Solum, like most other neoclas-

sical economists underestimate the costs of compe-

tition – like for example the PR-wars between

producers when their products basically are in

reality homogenous, i.e., identical as the neoclassi-

cal model requires (shampoo, cars, soft-drinks, etc.,

etc.) and irrational product differentiation is a ques-

tion of life and death. In this context it is far from

clear that more general TLDs would do any good.

Most big firms and most governments would have

to buy their brand name as a SLD in any TLD in

order to block others from misusing it. More TLDs

would only benefit those who live off selling

registration and register services. Mannheim and

Solum’s solution to this problem is to argue that

every big firm could have its own TLD,

probably

through yet another costly auction process. But if

one from the start had a Netizen perspective on

domain names both cyber squatting and the cure,

the UDRP, could have been mostly avoided. It

would have been rational to give

www.ibm.com to

IBM, since that is part of a rational way to find the

web-pages of IBM. As Mannheim and Solum point

out there will be windfall gains. The challenge for

the economics profession would be to create a

theory, taking into consideration the history and

dynamics of the relevant markets, where most of

these gains end up in the public sector and used for

transferring wealth to those whose legitimate needs

are not backed by enough purchasing power.

Page 56

Conclusion

The aim of this article has been threefold. First

of all to argue that there is not economic theory in

the singular, that there are fundamentally different

approaches to the mainstream neoclassical para-

digm. Secondly I argue that the neoclassical para-

digm has a weak scientific foundation. It is inher-

ently static and cannot handle dynamic processes

well. The reason why it dominates is that its policy

recommendations in general favour the economic

elites and not trade unions and developing coun-

tries. Thirdly I argue that in the discussion of

ICANN and the Internet domain name system,

belief in markets makes them overlook that domain

names work because they are a kind of language,

and that markets/auctions are not better suited to

create a rational system than a world wide demo-

cratic process regarding the domain name system.

Given the impasse around ICANN the most realis-

tic way to ensure that navigation on the Internet is

done in a rational way is to have a democratic

process connected to the “semantification” of the

Internet, i.e., the next generation Internet. From a

Netizen point of view, it is to avoid the Scylla of

naïve market idealisation and the Carybdis of

ICANN’s lobby prone procedures. The task is to

create an open, transparent multistakeholder pro-

cess of Internet governance. The Geneva and Tunis

WSIS were small steps in the right direction.

Notes

1.This paper takes as its starting point my presentation with

the same title at the conference “Past, Present and Future of

Research in the Information Society,” one of the official side

events to the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis,

Nov. 13th–15th, 2005, but is an enlarged and extended

version.

2. One recent example of this breadth of heterodox economics

is the special issue of Cambridge Journal of Economics, “On

the economics of the future,” Vol. 29, No 6, 2005, herafter

CJE-Future

3. See for example, E. Tsakalatos, “Homo economicus and the

reconstruction of political economy: six thesis on the role of

values in economics,” CJE-Future

4. Manheim and Solum (2004, page 344 ff)

5. “Initial endowments” is economist speak for wealth,

income and fortunes.

6. A newer and less mathematically demanding overview is

found in Currie and Steedman (1990).

7. Seen from a neo-classical point of view. From a social

democratic point of view, the enormous incomes of the

wealthy are not legitimate, so the taxation actually brings the

income distribution more in line with what it should have

been according to the real productive effort.

8. The International Telecommunication Union, originally an

organization of state telecom companies. After deregulation

a more fuzzy membership, but the ITU has UN status and is

as such a legitimate body.

9. The Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineer-

ing Task Force. IAB is a body elected via the Internet. The

IETF is a network, a forum for governance of the more

technical aspects of the Internet.

10. Country code Top Level Domains, i.e., like .us, .uk, .fr for

U.S., United Kingdom and France.

11. This is not an accurate account of this process. To my

knowledge no systematic history of this process exists.

12. These taxes could have been lump sum. In most cases

they are proportional to number of square meters that the

household possesses. This can be seen either as a proxy for

consumption or as a kind of progressive tax.

13. Actually in the U.K. ac for academic is often used.

14. Stiglitz in his book, Wither Socialism? has an interesting

approach in this respect. Since the model of market socialism

shares the fundamental belief in perfect markets as the neo-

classical paradigm – all the reasons why market socialism did

not work are at the same time arguments why capitalist

markets do not work the way the neo-classical model predicts.

To understand how markets really work one most turn to the

heterodox, dynamic schools of economic modeling.

15. Mannheim and Solum hold that “…ICANN’s current

staffing plan is arguably inadequate. For example it does not

have a professional economist on staff – a dangerous condi-

tion for an entity responsible for making economic decisions

with potentially enormous consequences.” One is tempted to

propose two economists, one orthodox and one heterodox in

order to also get another view of market dynamics, relation-

ship between market and democracy, etc.

16. Their devotion to an auction solution lead Mannheim and

Solum to be unenthusiastic about a new real semantic

onthology based Internet. They write: “But we do not need to

taxonomize the root in order to add ‘Yet Another Hierarchi-

cally Organized Outline’ to those that already exist. Such

taxonomized schemes of Internet access are provided by

YAHOO, Google, Lycos, and dozens of other services.” (page

439). But these services are based on indexing of free-text,

only ad-hoc, post-fact classification is involved – and conse-

quently they often give thousands of irrelevant hits even when

searching for well identified information.

17. That “increasing returns to scale” are pervasive, that to

create them is a major way of competing – and that they

completely destroy the solution of a general equilibrium

model seem not to worry Mannheim and Solum.

18. That in real life – utterly imperfect – competition is the

driving force of growth, see Baumol (2003).

19. They use the example of .att for AT&T

References

Brady, Gordon L. (2003) International Governance of the

Internet: An Economic Analysis, Working Paper No. 17/2003,

Page 57

International Centre for Economic Research, Turin

http://www.icer.it/docs/wp2003/Brady17-03.pdf

Currie, Martin and Steedman, Ian, (1990): Wrestling with

time: Problems in Economic Theory, Manchester University

Press, London

Fisher, Franklin M. (1983), Disequilibrium Foundations of

Equilibrium Economics, Econometric Society Monographs in

Pure Theory no. 6, Econometric Society, Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, Cambridge

Haavelmo, Trygve (1974), “What Can Static Equilibrium

Models Tell Us?”, Economic Inquiry, 1974, vol. 12, issue 1,

Oxford University Press, Oxford, pages 27-34

Kaldor, Nicholas (1972), “The Irrelevance of Equilibrium

Economics,” Economic Journal, vol. 82, issue 328, pages

1237-55

Kleinwächter, Wolfgang, (2004), “Macht und Geld im Cyber-

space,” Telepolis

Kornai, János (1971), Anti-equilibrium : On Economic

Systems Theory and the Tasks of Research, North-Holland,

Amsterdam

Manheim, Karl M. and Solum, Lawrence B. (2004), An Eco-

nomic Analysis of Domain Name Policy, University of San

Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series,

http://law.bepress.com/sandiegolwps/le/art1/

Morgenstern, Oscar (1972), “Thirteen Critical Points in Con-

temporary Economic Theory: An Interpretation,” Journal of

Economic Literature, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec., 1162-1189)

Prada, Fernando, (2005), Mechanisms for financing the

Information Society from a Global Public Goods Perspective,

Instituto del Tercer Mundo

http://www.choike.org/documentos/financing_is_gpgs.pdf

Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1995), Whither Socialism?, The MIT Press

Cambridge, MA

Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2002), “Information and the Change in the

Paradigm of Economics,” The American Economic Review,

Vol. 92, No. 3, June.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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