The Amateur

Computerist

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

Fall 2020 Toward a Second Netizen Book Volume 34 No. 1

Table of Contents

Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

What is a Netizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3

What the Net Means to Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 4

Participatory Democracy From the 1960s . . . . . . . Page 5

Culture and Communication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 14

The Net and Netizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 20

Forward

In this issue of the Amateur Computerist, we

are publishing chapters for a new book documenting

the activities and the developing vision of the netizen

phenomenon. The following chapters are for a second

book in a possible series of books about netizen

development . The series started with the “Netizens

Netbook” put online in 1994 and then by Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet the Internet,

published in 1997 in a print edition in English and a

few months later in a Japanese translation. That book

has inspired many netizens and netizen scholars over

the years. It was the two authors’ desire to continue to

document and analyze the continuing netizen devel-

opments. The second book is intended in part to

recognize the development of the netizen phenome-

non that has taken place since the publication of the

Netizens Netbook in the 1990s. It will include some

articles written by Michael Hauben after its publica-

tion. It will also include articles documenting the

development of Netizens in China from 2002-2014

and the development of the Netizen phenomenon in

South Korea from 2002-2017.

Introduction

by Ronda Hauben

At the beginning of the 1990s, Michael

Hauben, an early Internet scholar, made a scientific

discovery when he recognized that an important ad-

vance of our times was not only the Net (i.e., the

Internet), but even more importantly the rarely recog-

nized emergence of the Netizen. The netizen is the

empowered online global citizen striving to make the

Net and the world it is part of a more desirable and

grassroots controlled environment. The vision Michael

had was the foundation of the Netizens Netbook. He

was able to both articulate the vision and see the signs

that the vision was becoming a reality in the actions

and consciousness of netizens made possible by the

Net.

The Netizens Netbook grew out of both online

suggestions to Michael that he put his inspiring

articles into a book and my thoughts that there was a

need for a book that could look ahead in a scientific

way, as the 17

Century economic writings I was

reading at the time did for their times.

Based on Michael and my desire to publish

such a book, I spent several months gathering differ-

ent articles Michael and I had written and putting

them into a set of files which we posted online in

January 1994.

We announced that the book which became

known as the “Netizens Netbook” would be available

online to download via the protocol known as FTP

(file transfer protocol). We put an announcement in a

local events-of-the-week newspaper. We were able to

arrange to use a room at the local community college

for the event.

Just a few people came. One of those attend-

ing was a teacher I had worked with at the Ford

Dearborn Engine Plant. A postman we knew from the

Page 1

post office who was also a computer enthusiast

attended, as did a former neighbor who was a Com-

modore computer user. One person came from the

notice in a local events newspaper.

Michael read a selection from “The Net and

the Netizen,” one of his chapters in the book.

I had

planned to read something, but I did not think there

was time so I didn’t present my selection. Mainly we

managed to show that the book was online and was

available to be downloaded via ftp. This was January

12, 1994.

It had only been by 1993 that the Internet had

substantially spread, though work on it had been in

process for more than 20 years by then, starting in

1973. The Netizen Netbook was a pioneering publica-

tion. Its actual title was “Netizens and the Wonderful

World of the Net,” Michael made sure the book was

announced online. Later the title became “Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Inter-

net.” Much as Michael had envisioned, the Internet

spread broadly and widely. Also what has spread is

the excitement of netizens who recognize that they are

empowered by the Net as those who take on to ex-

plore what this empowerment makes possible. What

has been quite fascinating is to meet and talk with

netizens from different places around the world and to

learn of their efforts and fortitude.

Also it has been quite fascinating to have had

the experience of learning about and then becoming

connected with the netizens of South Korea (where

the Korean word for Netizen is pronounced net-I-

zen).

In South Korea, the work has been welcomed

and spread and has been developed further.

When looking for the concept of netizen on

the Korean search engine Naver, one colleague told

me, “You are famous in Korea.” Actually it was the

concept of ‘netizen’ and Michael’s work that was

famous, but what a thrill it was to hear such a sweet

compliment for the work.

It is in Korea that netizens played the crucial

role in the election of the president of the country in

2002 and where netizens took seriously both the

weaknesses and the strengths of the empowerment

that the Net promised.

In China, there are hundreds of millions of

netizens and their amazing activity, of which the

creation of an anti-cnn web site to counter the media

myths about China spread by the western media CNN

and BBC, etc. is one of many such examples. Many

people in China have hope for the future. That hope,

they say is based on netizens and what they do online

to challenge the abuse of power.

There are other examples of important netizen

achievements. For example, netizens in Egypt built a

means to communicate across the divide of those with

left or right political perspectives.

Based on such

achievements the Egyptian people were able to bring

down the Mubarak government in 2011. Indonesian

netizens were able to spread their communication

from online to offline so the Indonesian people could

prevail against Suharto in 1998.

Over the years since the publication of

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet, Michael’s work has been quoted or

referred to in many scholarly articles. The concept of

the netizen has spread and been developed in signifi-

cant ways. See, for example, the work of Haiqing Yu

about the new form of citizenship being explored by

Chinese netizens,

or the work of Mark Poster about

the potential of the netizen to provide a significant

challenge to the corporate dominated globalization.

The title for this new book is: In the Era of the

Netizen: Models for Participatory Democracy.

I am proposing that the models for the future

in politics, journalism, economics, and culture will

emerge from those situations where there have been

participation and communication to contribute to

generative developments.

The dynamic form of the Netizen Netbook has

been said to be “path breaking,” “seminal,” “a mile-

stone” or the “renowned” book. Among the descrip-

tions for Michael’s works are, “the Original Netizen,”

“scholar,” and “the first participatory historian of the

Internet.” There have been other interesting observa-

tions that have grown out of the spread of both the

consciousness and the actions of netizens. For exam-

ple, the late Mark Poster, a noted media scholar,

recognized that “the netizen might be the formative

figure of a new kind of political relations, one that

shares allegiance to the nation with allegiance to the

Net and to the planetary political space it inaugu-

rated.” In other words, creating a netizen global space

along with contributing to a more netizen determined

nation state.

The netizen phenomenon, Poster maintained,

“will likely change the relation of forces around the

globe.” Poster proposed, “In such an eventuality, the

figure of the Netizen might serve as a critical concept

in the politics of democratization.”

Page 2

A different conception of the future that

netizens may bring about has been proposed by Indian

journalist Vinay Kamat who reported for the Times of

India. He wrote, quoting something written about

South Korea:

Not only is the Internet a laboratory

for democracy, but the scale of partici-

pation and contribution is unprece-

dented. Online discussion makes it

possible for netizens to speak out in-

dependently of institutions or officials.

But then, referring to the growing number of

netizens in China and India and the large proportion

of the population in South Korea connected to the

Internet, Kamat asked “Will it evolve into a 5

Es-

tate?,” contrasting the netizen and netizen journalism

to the current mainstream media which is considered

the 4

Estate. Kamat questioned whether netizen

online discussion will become a power replacing the

mainstream media. “Will social and political discus-

sion in social media grow into deliberation?” he

pondered. “Will opinions expressed be merely, ‘rab-

ble rousing’ or will they be ‘reflective’ instead of

impulsive?”

Articles such as these raise serious questions

and hopes for the future, and they are just a few

examples of the manifold articles being published

around the world raising such questions about the

possible impact on the future of the netizen and

netizen journalism and netizen democracy. Such

examples inspire me to hope that the new book will

give some focus and encouragement to those raising

such questions and exploring such visions for the

future.

Notes:

1. The chapter can be seen at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh

120/ch106.x01. The whole book can be seen at: http://www.

columbia.edu/~rh120/

2. See for example, “Netizens in Egypt and the Republic of

Tahrir Square”:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/ronda2014/

egypt.txt

3. Haiqing Yu, “From Active Audience to Media Citizenship:

The Case of Post-Mao China.” A version is online at:

https://

www.researchgate.net/publication/233195520_From_Active_A

udience_to_Media_Citizenship_The_Case_ of_Post-Mao_China

4. Mark Poster, Information Please, Duke University Press,

Durham, 2006, p. 70.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/ampnbspWe-are-

looking-at-the-fifth-estate/articleshow/11133662.cms

What is a Netizen?*

by Michael Hauben

The story of netizens is an important one. In

conducting research in 1993 online to determine

people’s uses for the global computer communica-

tions network, I became aware that there was a new

social institution, an electronic commons, developing.

It was exciting to explore this new social institution.

Others online shared this excitement. I discovered

from those who wrote me that the people I was

writing about were citizens of the Net, or netizens.

I started using local BBSs in Michigan in

1985. After seven years of participation on both local

hobbyist-run computer bulletin boards systems, and

global Usenet, I began to research Usenet and the

Internet. I found the online discussions to be mentally

invigorating and welcoming of thoughtful comments,

questions and discussion. People were also friendly

and considerate of others and their questions. 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

discussions 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.

As part of course work at Columbia Univer-

sity, I explored these questions. One professor’s

encouragement helped me to use Usenet and the

Internet as places to conduct research. My research

was real participation in the online community by

exploring how and why these communications forums

functioned. I posed questions on Usenet, mailing lists

and freenets. Along with these questions, I would

attach some worthwhile preliminary 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. A

real notion of ‘community’ and ‘participation’ takes

place. I found that on the Net people willingly help

each other and work together to define and address

issues important to them. These are often important

issues which the conventional media would never

Page 3

cover.

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 and what it was and its significance. This is when

my research uncovered the remaining details that

helped me to recognize the emergence of netizens.

There are people online who actively contribute

toward the development of the Net. These people

understand the value of collective work and the

communal aspects of public communications. These

are the people who discuss and debate topics in a

constructive manner, who email answers to people

and provide help to new-comers, who maintain FAQ

files and other public information repositories, who

maintain mailing lists, and so on. These are people

who discuss the nature and role of this new communi-

cations medium. These are the people who as citizens

of the Net, I realized were netizens. However, these

are not all people. Netizens are not just anyone who

comes online, and they 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 it takes effort

and action on each and everyone’s part to make the

Net a regenerative and vibrant community and re-

source. Netizens are people who decide to devote

time and effort into making the Net, this new part of

our world, a better place. Lurkers are not netizens,

and vanity home pages are not the work of netizens.

While lurking or trivial home pages do not harm the

Net, they do not contribute either.

The term netizen has spread widely since it

was first coined. The genesis comes from net culture

based on the original newsgroup naming conventions.

Network wide Usenet newsgroups included net.gen-

eral for general discussion, net.auto for discussion of

autos, net.bugs for discussion of Unix bug reports,

and so on. People who used Usenet would prefix

terms related to the online world with the word NET

similar to the newsgroup terminology. So there would

be references to net.gods, net.cops or net.citizens. My

research demonstrated that there were people active

as members of the network, which the term net.citizen

does not precisely represent. The word citizen sug-

gests a geographic or national definition of social

membership. The word netizen reflects the new non-

geographically based social membership. So I con-

tracted the phrase net.citizen to netizen.

Two general uses of the term netizen have

developed. The first is a broad usage to refer to

anyone who uses the Net, for whatever purpose. Thus,

the term netizen has been prefixed in some uses with

the adjectives good or bad. The second usage is closer

to my understanding. This definition is used to

describe people who care about Usenet and the bigger

Net and work toward building the cooperative and

collective nature which benefits the larger world.

These are people who work toward developing the

Net. In this second case, netizen represents positive

activity, and no adjective need be used. Both uses

have spread from the online community, appearing in

newspapers, magazines, television, books and other

offline media. As more and more people join the

online community and contribute toward the nurturing

of the Net and toward the development of a great

shared social wealth, the ideas and values of net-

izenship spread. But with the increasing commercial-

ization and privatization of the Net, netizenship is

being challenged. During such a period it is valuable

to look back at the pioneering vision and actions that

have helped make the Net possible and examine what

lessons they provide. That is what we have tried to do

in these chapters.

*This article is the Preface in Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben, 1997, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA.

What the Net Means to Me

by Michael Hauben

The Net means personal power in a world of

little or no personal power (of those other than on the

top – who are called powerful because of money, but

not because of thoughts or ideas.) The essence of the

Net is Communication, of personal communication

between individual people, and between individuals

and those who in society who care (and do not care)

to listen. The closest parallels I can think of are:

• Samizdat Literature in Eastern Europe.

• People’s Presses – The Searchlight (UAW Local

659), Appeal to Reason, Penny Press News-

papers, etc.

• Citizen’s Band Radio.

• Amateur or Ham radio.

Page 4

However the Net seems to have grown farther

and be more accessible than the above. The audience

is larger, and continues to grow. In addition commu-

nication via the Net allows easier control over the

information – as it is digitized and can be stored,

replied to, and easily adapted to another format.

The Net is the vehicle for distribution of

people’s ideas, thoughts and yearnings. What com-

mercial service deals with the presentation of ideas?

I do not need a computer to order flowers from FDT

or clothes from the Gap. I need the Net to be able to

voice my thoughts, artistic impressions, and opinions

to the rest of the world. The world will then be a

judge as to if they are worthy by either responding or

ignoring my contribution.

Throughout history (at least in the USA), there

has been a phenomenon of the Street Corner Soapbox.

People would “stand up” and make a presentation of

some beliefs or thoughts they have. There are very

few soapboxes in our society today. The 1970s and

1980s wiped out public expression to the public via

the financial crisis and growing sentiment of ‘put your

money where your mouth is.’ In the late 80s and early

90s, the Net emerged as a forum for public expression

and discussion. The Net is partially a development

from those who were involved with the Civil Rights,

Anti-war struggles and free speech movements in the

1960s. The personal computer is also a development

by some of these same people.

Somehow the social advances rise from the

fact that people are communicating with other people

to help them undermine the upper hand other institu-

tions have. An example is people in California keep-

ing tabs on gas station prices around the state using

Netnews. More examples of people reviewing music

– rather than telling others, you should really go buy

the latest issue of Magazine X (Rolling Stones, etc.)

as it has a great review. This is what I mean by people

power – people individually communicating to pre-

sent their take on something rather than saying go get

commercial entities’ X view from place Y. This is

people contributing to other people to make a differ-

ence in people’s lives. In addition, people have

debated commercial companies’ opposition to the

selling of used CDs. This conversation is done in a

grassroots way – people are questioning the music

industry’s profit making grasp on the music out there.

The industry definitely puts profit ahead of

artistic merit, and people are not interested in the

industry’s profit making motive, but rather great

music.

The Net is allowing two new avenues not

available to the average person before:

1. A way of expressing one’s voice –

when that voice generally does not

have a place in the normal political

order.

2. A way of organizing and question-

ing other people’s experiences so as to

have a better grip on a question or a

problem.

Thus, in some ways there is a means of regaining

control of one’s life from society.

These are all reasons why I feel so passion-

ately about 1) keeping the Net open to everyone, and

having such connections being available publically,

and 2) Keeping the Net uncommercialized and

unprivatized. Commercialism will lead to growing

emphasis on serving-oriented rather than sharing-

oriented uses of the Net. Like I said before, it is NOT

important for me to be able to custom order my next

outfit from the Gap or any other clothing store.

Companies should develop their own networks if they

wish to provide another avenue to sell their products.

In addition, commercial companies will not have it in

their interest to allow people to use the Net to realize

their political self. Again let me reemphasize, when I

say politics, I mean power over our lives, and sur-

roundings, and this type of politics I would call

democracy.

Participatory Democracy

From the 1960s and

SDS into the Future Online

by Michael Hauben

The 1960s was a time of people around the

world struggling for more of a say in the decisions of

their society. The emergence of the personal computer

in the late 70s and early 80s and the longer gestation

of the new forms of people-controlled communication

facilitated by the Internet and Usenet in the late 80s

and today are the direct descendants of 1960s.

The era of the 1960s was a special time in

America. Masses of people realized their own poten-

tial to affect how the world around them worked.

Page 5

People rose up to protest the ways of society which

were out of their control, whether to fight against

racial segregation, or to gain more power for students

in the university setting. The 1962 “Port Huron State-

ment” (PHS) created by the Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS) was a document which helped set the

mood for the decade.

By the 1970s, some of the people who were

directly involved in student protests continued their

efforts to bring power to the people by developing

and spreading computer power in a form accessible

and affordable to individuals. The personal computer

movement of the 1970s created the personal com-

puter. By the mid 1980s they forced the corporations

to produce computers which many more people could

afford. The new communications media of the Inter-

net grew out of the ARPANET research that started in

1969 and Usenet which was born in 1979. These

communication advances coupled with the availabil-

ity of computers transforms the spirit of the 1960s

into an achievable goal for our times.

SDS and the Need for Participatory

Democracy

The early members of SDS found a real

problem in American Society. They felt that the

United States was a democracy that never existed, or

rather which was transformed into a representative

system after the constitutional convention. The United

States society is called a democracy, but had ceased

being democratic after the early beginnings of Ameri-

can society. SDS felt it is crucial for people to have a

part in how their society is governed. SDS leaders had

an understanding of democratic forms which did not

function democratically in the 1960s nor do they

today. This is a real problem which the leaders and

members of SDS intuitively understood and worked

to change.

An important part of the SDS program in-

cluded the understanding of the need for a medium to

make it possible for a community of active citizens to

discuss and debate the issues affecting their lives.

While not available in the 1960s, such a medium

exists today since the 1990s. The seeds for the revival

of the 1960s SDS vision of how to bring about a more

democratic society now exist in the personal com-

puter and the Net. These seeds will be an important

element in the battle for winning control for people in

the new millennium.

The Port Huron Statement and Deep

Problems with American Democracy

The Port Huron Statement was the foundation

on which to build a movement for participatory

democracy in the 1960s. In June 1962, an SDS

national convention was held in a UAW camp located

in the backwoods of Port Huron, Michigan. The

original text of the Port Huron Statement was drafted

by Tom Hayden, who was then SDS Field Secretary.

The Statement sets out the theory of SDS’s criticism

of American society. The Port Huron convention was

itself a concrete living example of the practice of

participatory democracy.

The Port Huron Statement was originally

thought of as a manifesto, but SDS members moved

instead to call it a “statement.” It was prefixed by an

introductory note describing how it was to be a

document that should develop and change with

experience:

This document represents the results

of several months of writing and dis-

cussion among the membership, a

draft paper, and revision by the Stu-

dents for a Democratic Society na-

tional convention meeting in Port

Huron, Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. It

is presented as a document with which

SDS officially identifies, but also as a

living document open to change with

our times and experiences. It is a be-

ginning: in our own debate and educa-

tion, in our dialogue with society.

(PHS, in Miller, p. 329)

This note is important in that it signifies that

the SDS document was not defining the definite

solution to the problems of society, but was making

suggestions that would be open to experiences toward

a better understanding. This openness is an important

precursor to practicing participatory democracy by

asking for the opinions of everyone and treating these

various opinions equally.

The first serious problem inherent in Ameri-

can society identified by the Port Huron Statement is

the myth of a functioning democracy:

For Americans concerned with the

development of democratic societies,

the anti-colonial movements and revo-

lutions in the emerging nations pose

serious problems. We need to face the

Page 6

problems with humanity; after 180

years of constitutional government we

are still striving for democracy in our

own society. (PHS, in Miller, p. 361)

This lack of democracy in American society

contributes to the political disillusionment of the

population. Tom Hayden and SDS were deeply influ-

enced by the writings of C. Wright Mills, a phil-

osopher who was a professor at Columbia University

until his death early in 1962. Mills’ thesis was that the

“the idea of the community of publics” which make

up a democracy had disappeared as people increas-

ingly got further away from politics. Mills felt that the

disengagement of people from the State had resulted

in control being given to a few who in the 1960s were

no longer valid representatives of the American

people. In his book about SDS, Democracy is in the

Streets, James Miller wrote:

Politics became a spectator sport. The

support of voters was marshaled

through advertising campaigns, not

direct participation in reasoned debate.

A citizen’s chief sources of political

information, the mass media, typically

assaulted him with a barrage of dis-

tracting commercial come-ons, feeble

entertainments and hand-me-down

glosses on complicated issues. (Miller,

p. 85)

Such fundamental problems with democracy

continue today. In the Port Huron Statement, SDS

was successful in identifying and understanding the

problems which still plague us today. This is a neces-

sary first step to working toward a solution. The

students involved with SDS understood people were

tired of the problems and wanted to make changes in

society. The Port Huron Statement was written to

address these concerns:

… do they not as well produce a

yearning to believe there is an alterna-

tive to the present, that something can

be done to change circumstances in

the school, the workplaces, the bu-

reaucracies, the government? It is to

this latter yearning, at once the spark

and engine of change, that we direct

our present appeal. The search for a

truly democratic alternatives to the

present, and a commitment to social

experimentation with them, is a wor-

thy and fulfilling human enterprise,

one which moves us, and we hope,

others today. (SDS, “The Introduction,

Agenda for Change,” PHS, in Miller,

p. 331)

Describing how the separation of people from

power is the means used to keep people uninterested

and apathetic, the Port Huron Statement explains:

The apathy is, first, subjective – the

felt powerlessness of ordinary people,

the resignation before the enormity of

events. But subjective apathy is en-

couraged by the objective American

situation – the actual structural separa-

tion of people from power, from rele-

vant knowledge, from pinnacles of

decision-making. Just as the university

influences the student way of life, so

do major social institutions create the

circumstances which the isolated citi-

zen will try hopelessly to understand

the world and himself. (“The Society

Beyond,” PHS, in Miller, p. 336)

The Statement analyzes the personal discon-

nection to society and its effect:

The very isolation of the individual –

from power and community and abil-

ity to aspire – means the rise of de-

mocracy without publics. With the

great mass of people structurally re-

mote and psychologically hesitant

with respect to democratic institutions,

those institutions themselves attenuate

and become, in the fashion of the

vicious cycle, progressively less ac-

cessible to those few who aspire to

serious participation in social affairs.

The vital democratic connection be-

tween community and leadership,

between the mass and the several

elites, has been so wrenched and per-

verted that disastrous policies go un-

challenged time and again. (PHS, in

Miller, p. 336)

The Statement describes how it is typical for

people to get frustrated and quit going along with the

electoral system as something which works. The

problem has continued, as we now have all time lows

in voter turn-outs for national and local elections. In

a section titled Politics Without Publics, the State-

Page 7

ment explains:

The American voter is buffeted from

all directions by pseudo-problems, by

the structurally initiated sense that

nothing political is subject to human

mastery. Worried by his mundane pro-

blems which never get solved, but

constrained by the common belief that

politics is an agonizingly slow accom-

modation of views, he quits all pre-

tense of bothering. (PHS, in Miller, p. 337)

Students in SDS did not let these real prob-

lems discourage their efforts to work for a better

future. They wanted to be part of the forces to defeat

the problems. The Port Huron Statement contains an

understanding that people are inherently good and can

deal with the problems that were described. This

understanding is conveyed in the Values section of

the Statement:

Men have unrealized potential for

self-cultivation, self-direction, self-

understanding, and creativity. It is this

potential that we regard as crucial and

to which we appeal, not to the human

potential for violence, unreason, and

submission to authority. The goal of

man and society should be human

independence: a concern not with the

image of popularity but with finding a

meaning in life that is personally au-

thentic; a quality of mind not compul-

sively driven by a sense of powerless-

ness, nor one which unthinkingly

adopts status values, nor one which

represses all threats to its habits, but

one which easily unites the frag-

mented parts of personal history, one

which openly faces problems which

are troubling and unresolved; one with

an intuitive awareness of possibilities,

an active sense of curiosity, an ability

and willingness to learn. (PHS, in

Miller, p. 332)

Participatory Democracy

Those participating in the Port Huron conven-

tion came away with a sense of the importance of

participatory democracy. This sense was in the air in

several ways. The convention itself embodied partici-

patory democracy through the discussion and debate

over the text of the Statement as several people later

explained. The Port Huron Statement called for the

implementation of participatory democracy as a way

to bring people back into decisions about the country

in general, and their individual lives, in particular.

One of Tom Hayden’s professors at University of

Michigan, Arnold Kaufman, came to speak about his

thoughts and use of phrase ‘participatory democracy.’

Miller writes that in a 1960 essay, “Participa-

tory Democracy and Human Nature,” Kaufman had

described a society in which every member had a

“direct responsibility for decisions.” The “main just-

ifying function” of participatory democracy, quotes

Miller, “is and always has been, not the extent to

which it protects or stabilizes a community, but the

contribution it can make to the development of human

powers of thought, feeling and action. In this respect,

it differs, and differs quite fundamentally, from a

representative system incorporating all sorts of

institutional features designed to safeguard human

rights and ensure social order.” (Miller, p. 94)

“Participation” explained Kaufman, “means

both personal initiative – that men feel obliged to help

resolve social problems – and social opportunity –

that society feels obliged to maximize the possibility

for personal initiative to find creative outlets.”

(Miller, p. 95)

A participant at the Port Huron Conference,

Richard Flacks remembers Arnold Kaufman speaking

at the convention:

At one point, he declared that our job

as citizens was not to role-play the

President. Our job was to put forth our

own perspective. That was the real

meaning of democracy – press for

your own perspective as you see it, not

trying to be a statesman understanding

the big picture. (Miller, p. 111)

After identifying participatory democracy as

the means of how to wrest control back from corpo-

rate and government bureaucracies, the next step was

to identify the means to having participatory democ-

racy. In the “Values” section of The Port Huron

Statement, the means proposed is a new media that

would make this possible:

As a social system we seek the estab-

lishment of a democracy of individual

participation governed by two central

aims: that the individual share in those

social decisions determining the qual-

Page 8

ity and direction of his life; the society

be organized to encourage independ-

ence in men and provide the media for

their common participation. (PHS, in

Miller, p. 333)

Others in SDS further detailed their under-

standings of participatory democracy to mean people

becoming active and committed to playing more of a

public role. Miller documents Al Haber’s idea of

democracy as “a model, another way of organizing

society.” The emphasis was on a charge to action. It

was how to be out there doing. Rather than an ideol-

ogy or a theory.” (Miller, pp. 143-144)

Tom Hayden, Miller writes, understood partic-

ipatory democracy to mean:

number one, action; we believed in

action. We had behind us the so-called

decade of apathy; we were emerging

from apathy. What’s the opposite of

apathy? Active participation. Citizen-

ship. Making history. Secondly, we

were very directly influenced by the

civil rights movement in its student

phase, which believed that by person-

ally committing yourself and taking

risks, you could enter history and try

to change it after a hundred years of

segregation. And so it was this ele-

ment of participation in democracy

that was important. Voting was not

enough. Having a democracy in which

you have an apathetic citizenship,

spoon-fed information by a monolithic

media, periodically voting, was very

weak, a declining form of democracy.

And we believed, as an end in itself, to

make the human being whole by be-

coming an actor in history instead of

just a passive object. Not only as an

end in itself, but as a means to change,

the idea of participatory democracy

was our central focus. (Miller, p. 144)

Another member of SDS, Sharon Jeffrey

understood “Participatory” to mean “involved in

decisions.” She continued, “And I definitely wanted

to be involved in decisions that were going to affect

me! How could I let anyone make a decision about

me that I wasn’t involved in?” (Miller, p. 144)

It is important to see the value of participatory

democracy as a common understanding among both

the leaders and members of SDS. While the Port

Huron Statement contained other criticisms and

thoughts, its major contribution was to highlight the

need to more actively involve the citizens of the

United States in the daily political process to correct

some of the wrongs which passivity had allowed to

build. Richard Flacks summarizes this in his article,

“On the Uses of Participatory Democracy”:

The most frequently heard phrase for

defining participatory democracy is

that ‘men must share in the decisions

which affect their lives.’ In other

words, participatory democrats take

seriously a vision of man as citizen:

and by taking seriously such a vision,

they seek to extend the conception of

citizenship beyond the conventional

political sphere to all institutions.

Other ways of stating the core values

are to assert the following: each man

has responsibility for the action of the

institutions in which he is embedded

… . (Flacks, 1971, pp. 397-398)

The Need for Community for Participatory

Democracy

The leaders of SDS strove to create forms of

participatory democracy within its structure and

organization as a prototype and as leadership for the

student protest movement and society in general. Al

Haber, the University of Michigan graduate student

who was the first SDS national officer, describes the

need for a communication system to provide the

foundation for the movement:

The challenge ahead is to appraise and

evolve radical alternatives to the inad-

equate society of today, and to de-

velop an institutionalized communica-

tion system that will give perspective

to our immediate actions. We will

then have the groundwork for a radical

student movement in America. (Sale,

p. 25)

He understood the general society would be

the last place to approach. There was a need to start

smaller among the element of society that was becom-

ing more active in the 1960s or the students. Haber

outlined his idea of where to start:

We do not now have such a public

Page 9

[interaction in a functioning commu-

nity] in America. Perhaps, among the

students, we are beginning to ap-

proach it on the left. It is now the

major task before liberals, radicals,

socialists and democrats. It is a task in

which the SDS should play a major

role. (Miller, p.69)

The Port Huron Statement defines ‘commu-

nity’ to mean:

Human relations should involve frater-

nity and honesty. Human interdepen-

dence is a contemporary fact; … . Per-

sonal links between man and man are

needed.’ (Sale, p. 332)

Prior to his full time involvement with SDS,

Hayden wrote an article for the Michigan Daily

describing how democratic decision making is a

necessary first step toward creating community.

Hayden’s focus was on the University when he wrote:

If decisions are the sole work of an

isolated few rather than of a partici-

pating many, alienation from the Uni-

versity complex will emerge, because

the University will be just that: “a

complex, not a community.” How-

ever, this sentiment persisted in

Hayden’s and others thoughts about

community and democracy for the

whole country. (Miller, p. 54)

This feeling about community is represented

in the Port Huron Statement’s conclusion. The State-

ment calls for the communal sharing of problems to

see that they are public and not private problems.

Only by communicating and sharing these problems

through a community will it be a chance to solve them

together. SDS called for the new left to “transform

modern complexity into issues that can be understood

and felt close-up by every human being.” The state-

ment continues, “It must give form to the feelings of

helplessness and indifference, so people may see the

political, social and economic sources of their private

troubles and organize to change society… .” (PHS, in

Miller, p. 374)

The theory of participatory democracy was

engaging. However, the actual practice of giving

everyone a say within the SDS structures made the

value of participatory democracy clear. The Port

Huron Convention was a real life example of how the

principles were refreshing and capable of bringing

American citizens back into political process. The

community created among SDS members brought this

new spirit to light. C. Wright Mills writings spoke

about “the scattered little circles of face-to-face

citizens discussing their public business.” Al Haber’s

hope for this to happen among students was demon-

strated at Port Huron. SDS members saw this as proof

of Mills’ hope for democracy. This was to be the first

example of many among SDS gatherings and meet-

ings. Richard Flacks highlighted what made Port

Huron special. He found a “mutual discovery of like

minds.” Flacks continued, “You felt isolated before,

because you had these political interests and values

and suddenly you were discovering not only like

minds, but the possibility of actually creating some-

thing together.” It was also exciting because, “it was

our thing: we were there at the beginning.” (Miller, p.

118)

The Means for Change

SDS succeeded in doing several things. First,

they clearly identified the crucial problem in Ameri-

can democracy. Next, they came up with an under-

standing of what theory would make a difference. All

that remained was to find the means to make this

change manifest. They discovered how to create

changes in their own lives and these changes affected

the world around them. However, something more

was needed to bring change to all of American soci-

ety.

Al Haber understood this something more

would be an open communication system or media

which people could use to communicate. He under-

stood that, “the challenge ahead is to appraise and

evolve radical alternatives to the inadequate society of

today, and to develop an institutionalized communica-

tion system that will give perspective to our immedi-

ate actions.” (Sale, p. 25) This system would lay the

“the groundwork for a radical student movement in

America.” (Sale, p. 25) Haber and Hayden understood

SDS to be this, “a national communications network.”

(Miller, p. 72)

While many people made their voices heard

and produced a real effect on the world in the 1960s,

lasting structural changes were not established. The

real problems outlined earlier continued in the 1970s

and afterwards. A national, or even international,

public communications network needed to be built to

keep the public’s voice out in the open.

Members of SDS partially understood this,

Page 10

and put forth the following two points in the Port

Huron Statement section on “Toward American De-

mocracy”:

1. Mechanisms of voluntary associa-

tion must be created through which

political information can be imparted

and political participation encouraged.

2. The allocation of resources must be

based on social needs. A truly ‘public

sector’ must be established, and its

nature debated and planned. (PHS, in

Miller, p. 362)

International Public Communications

Network – or the Net

This network and the means to access it began

developing toward the end of the 1960s. Two mile-

stones in the genesis were 1969 when the first ARPA-

NET node was installed and in 1979 when Usenet

started. Both were pioneering experiments in using

computers to facilitate human communication in a

fundamentally different way than already existing

public communications networks like the telephone or

television networks. The ARPANET, which was a

prototype for today’s Internet, and Usenet, which for

a time continued to grow and expand around the

world, were parts of the Net, or the worldwide global

computer communication networks. Another impor-

tant step toward the development of an international

communication network was the personal computer

movement, which took place in the middle to late

1970s. This movement created the personal computer

which makes it affordable for an individual to pur-

chase the means to connect to this public network.

However, the network can not simply be

created. SDS understood that “democracy and free-

dom do not magically occur, but have roots in histori-

cal experience; they cannot always be demanded for

any society at any time, but must be nurtured and

facilitated.” (PHS, in Miller, p. 361)

Participants on the ARPANET, Internet and

Usenet inherently understood this, and built a social

and knowledge network from the ground up. As

Usenet was created to help students who did not have

access to the ARPANET, or a chance to communicate

in a similar way, they came to it in full force. In

“Culture and Communication: The Interplay in the

New Public Commons,” Michael Hauben writes that

the online user is part of a global culture and consid-

ers him or herself to be a global citizen. This global

citizen is a net citizen, or a netizen. The world which

has developed is based on communal effort to make

a cooperative community. Those who have become

netizens have gained more control of their lives and

the world around them. However, access to this world

needs to spread in order to have the largest possible

effect for the most number of people. In addition, as

some efforts to spread the Net became more commer-

cial, some of the values important to the Net were

being challenged.

A speech I was invited to present at a confer-

ence on “the Netizen Revolution and the Regional

Information Infrastructure” in Beppu, Japan helps to

bring the world of the netizen into perspective with

the ideas of participatory democracy:

Netizens are not just anyone who

comes online, and they are especially

not people who come online for iso-

lated gain or profit. They are not peo-

ple who come to the Net thinking it is

a service. Rather they are people who

understand it takes effort and action

on each and everyone’s part to make

the Net a regenerative and vibrant

community and resource. Netizens are

people who decide to devote time and

effort into making the Net, this new

part of our world, a better place.

(Hauben, “Netizens and Community

Networks,” 1995)

The Net is a technological and social develop-

ment which is in the spirit of the theory clearly

defined by the Students for a Democratic Society.

This understanding could help in the fight to keep the

Net a uncommercialized public commons (Felsen-

stein). This many to many medium provides the tools

necessary to bring the open commons needed to make

participatory democracy a reality. It is important now

to spread access to this medium to all who understand

they could benefit.

The Net brings power to people’s lives be-

cause it is a public forum. The airing of real problems

and concerns in the open brings help toward the

solution and makes those responsible accountable to

the general public. The Net is the public distribution

of people’s muckraking and whistle blowing. It is also

just a damn good way for people to come together to

communicate about common interests and to come

into contact with people with similar and differing

Page 11

ideas.

The lack of control over the events surround-

ing an individual’s life was a common concern of

protesters in the 1960s. The Port Huron Statement

gave this as a reason for the reforms SDS was calling

for. The section titled “The Society Beyond” included

that “Americans are in withdrawal from public life,

from any collective efforts at directing their own

affairs.” (PHS, in Miller, p. 335)

Hayden echoed C. Wright Mills when he

wrote, “What experience we have is our own, not

vicarious or inherited.” Hayden continued, “We keep

believing that people need to control, or try to control,

their work and their life. Otherwise, they are without

intensity, without the subjective creative conscious-

ness of themselves which is the root of free and

secure feeling. It may be too much to believe, we

don’t know.” (Miller, p. 262)

The desire to bring more control into people’s

daily life was a common goal of student protest in the

1960s. Mario Savio, active in the Berkeley Free

Speech movement, “believed that the students, who

paid the university to educate them, should have the

power to influence decisions concerning their univer-

sity lives.” (Haskins and Benson, p. 55) This desire

was also a common motivator of the personal com-

puter movement.

THE PERSONAL COMPUTER

MOVEMENT

The personal computer movement immedi-

ately picked up after the protest movements of the

1960s died down. Hobbyist computer enthusiasts

wanted to provide access to computing power to the

people. People across the United States picked up

circuit boards and worked on making a personal mini-

computer or mainframe which previously only large

corporations and educational institutions could afford.

Magazines, such as Creative Computing, Byte and Dr.

Dobbs’ Journal, and clubs, such as the Homebrew

Club, formed cooperative communities of people

working toward solving the technical problems of

building a personal and inexpensive computer.

Several pioneers of the personal computer

movement contributed to the tenth anniversary issue

of Creative Computing Magazine. Some of their

impressions follow:

The people involved were people with

vision, people who stubbornly clung

to the idea that the computers could

offer individuals advantages previ-

ously available only to large corpora-

tions … . (Leyland, p. 111)

Computer power was meant for the

people. In the early 70s computer cults

were being formed across the country.

Sol Libes on the East Coast and

Gordon French in the West were orga-

nizing computer enthusiasts into clubs

… . (Terrell, p. 100)

We didn’t have many things you take

for granted today, but we did have a

feeling of excitement and adventure.

A feeling that we were the pioneers in

a new era in which small computers

would free everyone from much of the

drudgery of everyday life. A feeling

that we were secretly taking control of

information and power jealously

guarded by the Fortune 500 owners of

multi-million dollar IBM mainframes.

A feeling that the world would never

be the same once “hobby computers”

really caught on. (Marsh, p. 110)

There was a strong feeling [at the

Homebrew Club] that we were sub-

versives. We were subverting the way

the giant corporations had run things.

We were upsetting the establishment,

forcing our mores into the industry. I

was amazed that we could continue to

meet without people arriving with

bayonets to arrest the lot of us.

THE NET and CONCLUSION

The development of the Internet and of Usenet

have been an investment in a strong force toward

making direct democracy a reality. These and other

new technologies present the chance to overcome the

obstacles preventing the implementation of direct

democracy. Online communication forums also make

possible the discussion necessary to identify today’s

fundamental questions. One criticism is that it would

be impossible to assemble the body politic in person

at a single time. The Net allows for a meeting which

takes place on each person’s own time, rather than all

at one time. Usenet newsgroups provided discussion

forums where questions were raised, and people could

leave comments when convenient, rather than at a

Page 12

particular time and at a particular place. As a com-

puter discussion forum, individuals can connect from

their own computers, or from publicly accessible

computers across the nation to participate in a particu-

lar debate. The discussion takes place in one concrete

time and place, while the discussants can be dis-

persed. Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists have

proven that citizens can both do their daily jobs and

participate in discussions that interest them within

their daily schedules.

Another criticism was that people would not

be able to communicate peacefully after assembling.

Online discussions do not have the same characteris-

tics as in-person meetings. As people connect to the

discussion forum when they wish, and when they

have time, they can be thoughtful in their responses to

the discussion. Whereas in a traditional meeting,

participants have to think quickly to respond. In

addition, online discussions allow everyone to have a

say, whereas finite length meetings only allow a

certain number of people to have their say. Online

meetings allow everyone to contribute their thoughts

in a message, which is then accessible to whomever

else is reading and participating in the discussion.

New communication technologies hold the

potential for the implementation of direct democracy

in a country as long as the necessary computer and

communications infrastructure are installed. Future

advancement toward a more responsible government

is possible with such new technologies. While the

future is discussed and planned for, it will also be

possible to use such technologies to assist in the

citizen participation in government. Netizens are

watching various government institutions on various

online forums and mailing lists throughout the global

computer communications network. People’s

thoughts about and criticisms of their respective

governments are being aired on the currently uncen-

sored networks.

These networks can revitalize the concept of

a democratic “Town Meeting” via online communica-

tion and discussion. Discussions involve people

interacting with others. Voting involves the isolated

thoughts of an individual on an issue, and then his or

her acting on those thoughts in a private vote. In

society where people live together, it is important for

people to communicate with each other about their

situations to best understand the world from the

broadest possible viewpoint.

The individuals involved with SDS, the per-

sonal computer movement and the pioneers involved

with the development of the Net understood they were

a part of history. This spirit helped them to push

forward in the hard struggle needed to bring the

movements to fruition. The invention of the personal

computer was one step that made it possible for

people to afford the means to connect to the Net. The

Internet has emerged as a laboratory for democracy

available to the public. It is important that the combi-

nation of the personal computer and the Net be spread

and made widely available at low or no costs to

people around the world. It is important to understand

the tradition which these developments have come

from, in order to truly understand their value to

society and to make them widely available. With the

hope connected to this new public communications

medium, I encourage people to take up the struggle

which continues in the great American radical tradi-

tion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Felsenstein, Lee. “The Commons of Information.” In Dr. Dobbs’

Journal. May 1993. http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/impact/

s94/speakers/felsenstein/felsenstein-article.html

Flacks, Richard. “On the Uses of Participatory Democracy”. In

Dissent. No 13. November 1966. pp. 701-708. Re-

printed in The American Left. Edited by Loren Baritz.

1971. pp. 397-405.

Freiberger, Paul and Michael Swaine. Fire in the Valley: The

Making of the Personal Computer. Osborne/McGraw-

Hill. Berkeley. 1984.

Haskins, James and Kathleen Benson. The 60s Reader. Viking

Kestrel. New York. 1988.

Hauben, Michael. “Culture and Communication: The Interplay

in the New Public Commons – Usenet and Commu-

nity.” 1995.

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

usenet-culture.txt

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

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. 1994

http://

www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Hauben, Michael. “Netizens and Community Networks.” Pre-

sentation at Hypernetwork ‘95, Beppu Bay Conference.

November 24, 1995. Beppu Bay, Oita Prefecture,

Japan.

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/text/bbc95

spch.txt

Leyland, Diane Asher. “As We Were.” In Creative Computing.

Vol 10 no 11. November, 1984. pp. 111-112.

Marsh, Robert. “1975: Ancient History.” In Creative Computing.

Vol 10 no 11. November, 1984. pp. 108-110.

Miller, James. Democracy in the Streets. Simon and Schuster.

New York. 1987

Port Huron Statement (PHS). June 15, 1962. As found in Miller.

pp. 329-374.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. Vintage Books. New York, 1974.

Terrell, Paul. “A Guided Tour of Personal Computing.” In

Page 13

Creative Computing. Vol 10 no 11. November, 1984.

pp. 100-104.

[Editor’s Note: The following is an expanded and

updated version of a paper prepared for the IFIP-WG

9.2/9.5 Working Conference on Culture and Democ-

racy Revisited in the Global Information Society,

May 8-10, 1997, Corfu (Greece). A version appears

as Chapter 17, in An Ethical Global Information

Society: Culture and Democracy Revisited, Jacques

Berleur and Diane Whitehouse, Editors, IFIP, 1997,

pp. 197-202.]

Culture and Communication:

The Impact of the Internet on

the Emerging Global Culture

by Michael Hauben

Any document that attempts to cover

an emerging culture is doomed to be

incomplete. Even more so if the cul-

ture has no overt identity (at least

none outside virtual space). But the

other side of that coin presents us with

the opportunity to document the ebb

and flow, the moments of growth and

defeat, the development of this young

culture. (John Frost, Cyberpoet’s

Guide to Virtual Culture, 1993)

ABSTRACT

As we approached the new millennium, social rela-

tionships were changing radically. Even in 1969, the

anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote of an “ap-

proaching worldwide culture.” While she wrote of a

global culture made possible by the electronic and

transportation advances of her day, her words actually

foresaw fundamental changes that have been substan-

tially enhanced by the computer communication

networks that were just beginning. A new culture is

being formed out of a universal desire for communi-

cation. This culture is partly formed and formulated

by new technology and by social desires. People are

dissatisfied with their conditions, whether traditional

or modern. Much of the new communication technol-

ogy facilitates new global connections. This article

will explore the emerging culture and the influence of

the net on this new participatory global culture.

I. – The Emerging Globalization of

Everyday Life

The concept of a global culture arises from the

extensive development of transportation and commu-

nication technologies in the twentieth century. These

developments have linked the world together in ways

which make it relatively simple to travel or communi-

cate with peoples and cultures around the world. The

daily exposure of the world’s peoples to various

cultures makes it impossible for almost any individual

to envision the world consisting of only his or her

culture (Mead, 1978, p. 69). We really are moving

into a new global age which affects most aspects of

human life. For example, world trade has become

extensive, more and more words are shared across

languages, people are aware of political situations

around the world and how these situations affect their

own, and sports and entertainment are viewed simul-

taneously by global audiences. The exposure to media

and forms of communication helps spread many of

these cultural elements. While television and radio

connect people with the rest of the world in a rather

removed and often passive fashion, computer net-

works are increasingly bringing people of various

cultures together in a much more intimate and grass-

roots manner. A global culture is developing, and the

Internet is strongly contributing to its development.

Culture is a difficult concept to define. Tim

North has gathered six different definitions in his

unpublished Masters thesis:

1. Culture: The shared behavior learned by members

of a society, the way of life of a group of people

(Barnouw, 1987, p. 423).

2. A culture is the way of life of a group of people,

the complex of shared concepts and patterns of

learned behavior that are handed down from one

generation to the next through the means of language

and imitation (Barnouw, 1987, p. 4).

3. Culture: The set of learned behaviors, beliefs,

attitudes and ideals that are characteristic of a particu-

lar society or population (Ember and Ember, 1990, p.

357).

4. Culture … taken in its wide ethnographic sense is

that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief,

art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities

and habits acquired by man as a member of a society

Page 14

(Tyler, 1871; cited in Harris 1988, p. 122).

5. Culture: The customary manner in which human

groups learn to organize their behavior in relation to

their environment (Howard, 1989, p. 452).

6. Culture (general): The learned and shared kinds of

behavior that make up the major instrument of human

adaption. Culture (particular): The way of life charac-

teristic of a particular human society (Nanda, 1991, p.

G-3). (North, 1994, chapter 4.2.1)

One common category in some of these

definitions is the passing of previously learned

behavior from one generation to the next. Another

common category in North’s definitions of culture is

the importance of experience and patterns of behavior

being shared among a group of people.

Historically, during most periods, culture has

changed slowly and has been passed on from genera-

tion to generation. In the last half of the twentieth and

the beginning of the twenty-first century, however,

for most peoples the normal rate of cultural evolution

has been accelerating. Mead (1978, p. 64) writes that

while in the past, culture was transmitted from the

older generation to the younger with slow change

from generation to generation, today the younger

generation learn from both their elders and their

peers. The learning from peers is then shared with

their elders. Human culture gets set by how people

live their lives (Graham, 1995). Culture is created and

re-enforced through how that person lives in context

of society and social movements. One is taught the

culture of his or her society while growing up, but

those perceptions change as he or she matures, devel-

ops and lives an adult life. Culture is not statically

defined. Rather a person grows up into a culture and

then can contribute to its change as time progresses.

(Mead, 1956)

People are increasingly living a more global

lifestyle, whether mediated through television, radio

and newspapers, travel or actual experience. This

global experience is facilitated by the ability of the

individual to interact with people from other cultures

and countries on a personal level. Images and

thoughts available via mass media show that other

cultures exist. But when people actually get a chance

to talk and interact, then the differences become less

of an oddity and more of an opportunity (Uncapher,

1992). Professor Dennis Sumara observes the forma-

tion of self-identity is influenced by relations with

others. He writes:

The sense of self-identity … emerges

… from our symbiotic relations with

others. In coming to know others we

learn about ourselves. It is important

to note, however, that it is not a static

or unified self that we come to know,

for in the coming-to-know – we are

changed. We evolve through our rela-

tions with others … . (Sumara, 1996,

p. 56) That implies that people and

cultures change from the interaction

with other people’s cultures. This new

interaction and subsequent change is

part of the formation of a global cul-

ture.

There are critics (Appadurai, 1990: etc.) who

claim this global culture, or mass culture is snuffing

out individual differences for a pre-packaged com-

mercial culture. These critics call for the isolation of

communities from each other so that uniqueness can

be preserved. This criticism misses that human

culture is a dynamic element of society, and freezing

it would produce a museum of human society.

Uncapher (1992) correctly points out that what these

critics do not recognize is that more and more people

of various cultures are understanding the power of the

new communication technologies. More and more

people are reacting against the mass media and

corporate dominance and calling for a chance to

express their views and contribute their culture into

the global culture. As an example, Margaret Mead

tells a story (1978, pp 5-6) of returning to a village in

New Guinea which she had visited three decades

earlier. She wrote:

In the 1930s, when one arrived in a

New Guinea village, the first requests

were for medicine … and for trade

goods. The European was expected to

bring material objects from the outside

world … but in 1967 the first conver-

sation went:

“Have you got a tape recorder?”

“Yes, why?”

“We have heard other people’s sing-

ing on the radio and we want other

people to hear ours.” (Mead, 1978, p. 5)

The presence of radios made the villagers

aware of the music of others, and they wanted a part

of their culture broadcast around the world.

Mead understood the importance of diversity

to the survival and strength of a species, whether

Page 15

human or animal. However, she also understood that

part of the global commonality was through the

spread of scientific understandings and technological

developments. The desire for technology is strong

among those who have only heard about their advan-

tages. She wrote, “People who have only seen air-

planes in the sky and heard the wonderful ways of

radio, satellites, telescopes, microscopes, engines, and

script are eager to experience these things for them-

selves.” (Mead, 1978, p. 121)

The Internet is one of the new technological

advances of today, and can be seen to fit with the

above examples but for more advanced societies. It is

important to understand that coupled with the desire

for the technological advances is the understanding of

the need to control the introduction of such technol-

ogy and participate to have its use benefit the particu-

lar peoples in their particular needs. The peoples of

the world understand that with the implementation of

technology comes a responsibility for the manage-

ment and careful handling of that technology. Mead

writes about this:

… the very burgeoning of science that

has resulted in world-wide diffusion

of a monotonous modern culture has

also stimulated people throughout the

world to demand participation. And

through this demand for participation

in the benefits of a monotonous, ho-

mogeneous technology, we have actu-

ally generated new ways to preserve

diversity. (Mead, 1978, pp. 153-154)

Even in the primitive communities that Mead

studied in the Pacific Islands, she recorded that these

people adopted democracy and the use of technology

with their own variations and new aspects that served

their own needs. The new advances in communication

technologies facilitate new democratic processes.

People are discovering new ways to participate and

add their cultural contributions to a larger world.

Efforts to communicate require the acceptance of

technological standards and the building of a common

technical framework. The growth of communications

networks and standards at the same time allows

diverse cultures to share and spread their varying

cultures with others.

II. – Global Contact over Computer

Networks

The new media of forums, newsgroups, email,

chat rooms, blogs, webpages and social media on the

internet facilitate the growth of global interactive

communities. These electronic communication forms

are made available through community networks,

universities, the workplace, portals and internet access

providers (Hauben & Hauben, 1997, p. 8). Human

culture is ever evolving and developing, and the new

public commons that these technologies make possi-

ble is of a global nature. A growing number of people

are coming together online and living more time of

their daily lives with people from around the world.

Through the sharing of these moments by people,

their cultures are coming to encompass more of the

world not before immediately available. Mead (1978,

p. 88) understood that a global community and

awareness would require the development of a new

kind of communication that depended on the partici-

pation of those who previously had no access to such

power or such a voice.

Newsgroups and forums are a relatively young

medium of human discourse and communication. The

Usenet technology, one of the first broad newsgroup

networks, was developed by graduate students in the

late 1970s as a way to promote the sharing of infor-

mation and to spread communication between univer-

sity campuses. Their design highlighted the impor-

tance of the contribution by individuals to the com-

munity. The content of Usenet was produced by

members of the community for the whole of the

community. Active participation was required for

Usenet to have anything available on it. It was the

opposite of a for-pay service that provides content and

information. On Usenet, the users produced the

content, i.e., talk, debate, discussion, flames, report-

age, nonsense, and scientific breakthroughs filled the

space. Usenet was a public communications technol-

ogy framework which was open. The users partici-

pated in determining what newsgroups were created,

and then filled those newsgroups with messages that

were the content of Usenet. In forming this public

space, or commons, people were encouraged to share

their views, thoughts, and questions with others

(Hauben & Hauben, 1997, p. 4). The chance to con-

tribute and interact with other people spread Usenet to

become a truly global community of people hooking

their computers together to communicate. People both

desire to talk and to communicate with other people

(Graham, 1995; Woodbury, 1994). Usenet was

created to make that communication happen. In time

Page 16

it also gave a public voice to those who would not

have had the opportunity otherwise to have their voice

heard. By promoting a democratic medium, these

graduate students who created Usenet were helping to

create the kind of medium Mead believed was an

important condition toward the development of a

global culture.

In a study about the global online culture, Tim

North (1994, chapter 5.2) asked the question “is there

an online culture and society on Usenet?” His conclu-

sion was that there was a definite Usenet culture. He

listed four of the important defining aspects of this

unique online culture:

1. The conventions of the culture are

freely discussed.

2. The culture is not closed to outsid-

ers and welcomes new members.

3. There is a strong sense of commu-

nity within the Net culture.

4. It’s what you say, not who you are.

North described the Usenet culture as open

and welcoming of newcomers even if there was an

occasional unfriendliness to “newbies.” He focused

on how the online culture was documented and

available so newcomers could figure out how the

community functioned and more easily join it. But

also not only was the documentation available online

to learn from, it was open for discussion.

Another researcher in the 1990s, Bruce Jones

described the fullness of net culture:

… the Usenet network of computers

and users constitutes a community and

a culture, bounded by its own set of

norms and conventions, marked by its

own linguistic jargon and sense of

humor and accumulating its own folk-

lore. (p. 2)

Jones elaborates on what he saw to be an

egalitarian tendency or tendency to contribute to the

community’s benefit. Jones wrote:

… the people of the net owe some-

thing to each other. While not bound

by formal, written agreements, people

nevertheless are required by conven-

tion to observe certain amenities be-

cause they serve the greater common

interest of the net. These aspects of

voluntary association are the elements

of culture and community that bind

the people of Usenet together. (p. 4)

While North proposed that Usenet was a

distinct culture, he argued that it could not be consid-

ered a separate society. Rather Usenet was “a super-

structural society that spans many mainstream societ-

ies and is dependent upon them for its continued

existence” (North, 1994, chap. 4.2.2).

North argued that the Net does not need to

provide the physical needs made possible by a soci-

ety. He wrote:

In this superstructural view, the Net is

freed of the responsibilities of provid-

ing certain of the features provided by

other societies (e.g., reproduction,

food and shelter) by virtue of the fact

that its members are also members of

traditional mainstream societies that

do supply them. (North, 1994, chap.

4.2.2)

Rather, those who use the Net live in their

daily offline society, and come to the Net for reasons

other than physical needs. Others (Avis, 1995; Gra-

ham, 1995; Jones, 1991) also studied this new online

culture and its connection to the growing global

culture. They saw there are a distinct online culture

and a distinct offline global culture. While the online

culture strongly contributes to the developing global

culture offline, it is not the sole contributing factor.

The contribution of the online culture to the global

culture through such technologies as forums and

electronic mailing lists is important as the online

media requires participation of the users to exist.

Since as media forums, newsgroups and social web-

sites encourage participation, they support the contri-

butions of many diverse people and cultures to the

broader global culture.

Both the technological design of opening

one’s computer up to accept contributions of others

and the desire to communicate led to the creation of

an egalitarian culture (Jones, 1991; North, 1994;

Woodbury, 1994). People have both a chance to

introduce and share their own culture and a chance to

broaden themselves through exposures to various

other cultures. As such, the online culture is an

example of a global culture which is not a reflection

of purely one culture. Instead, it both incorporates

cultural elements from many nations and builds a new

culture (North, 1994). Self-identity evolves through

relations with others. (Sumara, 1996, p.56) The new

connections between people of different cultures

allows each culture to broaden itself based on the new

Page 17

understandings available from other places; culture

changes through the exchange with new ways of

understanding and life. And this change and shared

changes gets shared around the world.

III. – Community Networks Making Online

Access Available

Being a relatively young medium, the Net is

available to a subset of the world. However, this is

rapidly changing. Projects are extending the connec-

tions to undeveloped countries and the basic technol-

ogy needed to gain access is as simple as a computer

and modem connected to the local telephone or

amateur radio network or use of Internet connectivity

available from an Internet service provider. More and

more people around the world are getting online via

mobile devices. Another hurdle to overcome is

technical training. However, the democratic ethos of

the Net spreads through the help that users offer each

other online. A large number of people who are on the

Net want more people to be able to use computer

technology. Many are helpful and take the time and

effort to spread their knowledge to others who desire

to learn. Similarly everyone online at one point was

new and learning. This experience of “newbie”ness

provides a common heritage to unite people. The

problems encountered in implementing and using new

technology encourages people to connect to others

using the technology. This is an incentive to hook into

the Internet where such people can be contacted. The

commonality of people participating in the same

technology creates a basis to develop commonality

toward other interests.

Community networks in the 1990s provided a

way for citizens of a locality to hook into these global

communities for little or no cost (Graham, 1995).

Community networks also provided a way for com-

munities to truly represent themselves to others

connected online (Graham, 1995; Weston, 1994).

Without access made available through community

networks, through publicly available computer

terminals or local dial-in phone numbers, only those

who could have afforded the cost of a computer and

the monthly charges of commercial Internet service

providers (ISPs) or online services or who had access

through work or school would represent themselves

(Avis, 1995). Particular portraits of various cultures

would thus be only partially represented. Also, when

access is available and open to all, a greater wealth of

contributions can be made. For example, there was a

strong push in Canada and Canadian communities to

get online. A lot of grassroots community network

building took place. A Canadian national organiza-

tion, Telecommunities Canada, stressed the impor-

tance of contributing Canada’s various cultures to the

online community and in this way made a contribu-

tion to the whole community (Graham, 1995; Weston,

1994). In a similar way, Izumi Aizu (1995, p. 6) says

that Japan had “an opportunity to bring its own

cultural value to the open world.” He continues, “It

also opens the possibility of changing Japan into a

less rigid, more decentralized society, following the

network paradigm exercised by the distributed nature

of the Internet itself” (Aizu, 1995, p. 6).

There is something to be said about the

attraction of representing one’s self to the greater

community. The many-to-many form of communica-

tion where an individual can broadcast to the commu-

nity and get responses back from other individuals is

an empowering experience. No longer do you have to

be rich and powerful to communicate broadly to

others and to represent yourself and your own views.

This power is making it possible for individuals to

communicate with others of similar and differing

interests around the world. Grass-roots organization

is boosted and even the formation of local community

groups is all accelerated. Development of the com-

mons to the exclusion of the big media representa-

tions makes this an electronic grassroots medium, or

a new enlarged public commons (Felsenstein, 1993).

The online culture is primarily a written one,

but there are an increasing number of videos and pod-

casts, although much of the text is written generally in

an informal, almost off-the-cuff fashion. While

people will post papers and well thought-out ideas,

much of the conversation is generated in an immedi-

ate response to others’ messages. This text can feel

like a conversation, or a written version of oral

culture. Stories akin to the great stories of the pre-

history come about. Legends and urban myths circu-

late and are disseminated (Jones, 1991). Pictures and

other non-text items can be posted or sent in mes-

sages. These nontext items are primarily transferred

and not modified, thought upon or communally

worked on as are the textual ideas, but the comments

often resemble a conversation. Graphics and graphical

communication and collaboration occur more on

websites, although they are still a less effective

communication medium. The common shared online

Page 18

language was in the beginning English (Aizu). That

has changed. Other languages exist in country hierar-

chies and newsgroups and in mailing lists, along with

chat rooms, search engines and web pages. Moreover,

all these developments, textual or graphic or video,

make possible a global conversation of diverse views.

Mead recognizes that “True communication is a

dialogue.” (Mead, 1978, p.77) She points out that real

communication occurs “… in a world in which con-

flicting points of view, rather than orthodoxies, are

prevalent and accessible.” (Mead, 1978, p. 80)

IV. – Conclusion

The new global culture is forming in several

ways, none of which is a generic corporate rubber

stamp. People are taking charge. They are bringing

their own cultures into the global culture and spread-

ing this new culture around the world. This is taking

on a general form and an online form. The online

form provides a strong means by which people can

spread their ideas and culture which in turn affects the

broader global culture. This broader global culture

also has an effect on newsgroups or online media. The

ability to express oneself to the rest of the world is

addictive and the rapid increase of new people joining

the online global community makes that manifest.

“The voice-less and the oppressed in every part of the

world have begun to demand more power … . The

secure belief that those who knew had authority over

those who did not has been shaken” (Mead, 1978,

p.5). Mead states later, “There are new technological

conditions within which a new initiative for the

human race is possible. But it will not be found

without a vision.” To the former call for brotherhood

and sisterhood or of loyalty to kin and one’s ances-

tors, Mead proposes, “we can now add a vision of a

planetary community.” She explains that “Within

such a vision, the contributions of each culture … can

become complementary.” However, Mead empha-

sizes, “but within the new vision there must be no

outsiders.” (pp. 147-148)

References

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umn/aizu.html

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Global Cultural Economy,”Public Culture, 2 1–24.

Avis, Andrew. (1995) Public Spaces on the Information High-

way: The Role of Community Networks. Unpublished

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berta, Canada.

Barnouw, V. (1987). An Introduction to Anthropology: Ethnol-

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[Online]. Available:

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works. Prepared for Telecommunities Canada for

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ml/con ferences/access95/reading/crtc_bri.txt.html

Harris, M. (1988). Culture, People, Nature: an Introduction to

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ed. New York: Harper and

Row.

Hauben, Michael and Ronda Hauben. (1997). Netizens: On The

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. Los

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available (1994):

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

netbook/

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Jones, Bruce. (1991). An Ethnography of the Usenet Computer

Network: Proposal for a Ph.D. Dissertation in Commu-

nications. University of California, San Diego. Dept. of

Communication.

Mead, Margaret. (1956). New Lives for Old: Cultural Trans-

formations-Manus, 19281953. New York. William

Morrow & Company.

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Relationships Between the Generations in the 1970s.

Garden City, NY. Anchor Books/Doubleday.

Nanda, S. (1991). Cultural anthropology. 4

ed. Belmont, CA:

Wadsworth. North, Tim. (1994) The Internet and

Usenet Global Computer Networks: an Investigation of

Their Culture and its Effects on New Users. Unpub-

lished master’s thesis. Curtin University of Technology.

Perth, Australia.

Sumara, Dennis J. (1996). “Private readings in public: Schooling

the literary imagination.” In Studies in the Postmodern

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Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg General Editors).

New York. Peter Lang.

Uncapher, Willard. (1992). Between Local and Global: Placing

the Mediascape in the Transnational Cultural Flow.

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481/Uncapher.doc

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0/019722497129214?queryID=%24{resultBean.quer

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3. Available:

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[Editor’s Note: Beginning in March, 1993, Michael

Hauben started research by posting questions to

Usenet, an international online forum system, to

Freenet community networks, and to some mailing

lists. In response to inquiries about the uses of the net

that people had found up until that time, he received

many enthusiastic replies. Based on this data, he

wrote “Common Sense: The Net and Netizens,”

which appeared online on July 6, 1993.

The follow-

ing article is a version of his 1993 post with slight

changes to make it more readable for the current

reader.]

The Net and Netizens:

The Impact the Net has on

People’s Lives

by Michael Hauben

Preface

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. Virtually you live next door

to every other single netizen in the world. Geograph-

ical separation is replaced by existence in the same

virtual space.

The situation I describe is only a prediction of

the future, but a large part of the necessary infrastruc-

ture currently exists. The Net – or the Internet, other

physical networks, and other logical networks and so

on – has rapidly grown to cover all of the countries in

the world. Everyday more computers attach to the

existing networks and every new computer adds to the

user base. As of 2020, at least 4.57 billion active

Internet users are interconnected.

We are seeing a revitalization of society. The

frameworks are being redesigned from the bottom up.

A new more democratic world is becoming possible.

As one user observed, the Net has “immeasurably

increased the quality of … life.” The Net seems to

open a new lease on life for people. Social connec-

tions which never before were possible, or relatively

hard to achieve, are now facilitated by the Net.

Geography and time are no longer boundaries. Social

limitations and conventions no longer prevent poten-

tial friendships or partnerships. In this manner

netizens are meeting other netizens from far-away and

close by that they might never have met without the

Net.

A new world of connections between people

– either privately from individual to individual or

publicly from individuals to the collective mass of

many on the Net is possible. The old model of distri-

bution of information from the central Network

Broadcasting Company is being questioned and

challenged. The top-down model of information being

distributed by a few for mass consumption is no

longer the only news. The Net brings the power of the

reporter to the netizen. People now have the ability to

broadcast their observations or questions around the

world and have other people respond. The computer

networks form a new grassroots connection that

allows the excluded sections of society to have a

voice. This new medium is unprecedented. Previous

grassroots media have existed for much smaller-sized

selections of people. The model of the Net proves the

old way does not have to be the only way of network-

ing. The Net extends the idea of networking – of

making connections with strangers that prove to be

advantageous to one or both parties.

The complete connection of the body of

citizens of the world that the Net makes possible does

not yet exist, and it is still a struggle to make access

to the Net open and available to all. However, in the

future we might be seeing the possible expansion of

what it means to be a social animal. Practically every

single individual on the Net today is available to

every other person on the Net. International connec-

tion coexists on the same level with local connection.

Also the computer networks allow a more advanced

connection between the people who are communicat-

ing. With computer-communication systems, infor-

mation or thoughts are connected to people’s names

and electronic mail addresses, or social media tags.

On the Net, one can connect to others who have

similar interests or whose thought processes they

Page 20

enjoy.

Netizens make it a point to be helpful and

friendly – if they feel it to be worthwhile. Many

netizens feel they have an obligation to be helpful and

answer queries and followup on discussions to put

their opinion into the pot of opinions. Over a period

of time the voluntary contributions to the Net have

built it into a useful connection to other people around

the world. When I posted the question, “Is the Net a

Source of Social/Economic Wealth?” many people

responded. Several corrected my calling the net a

source of accurate information. They pointed out that

it was also a source of opinions. However, the reader

can train himself to figure out the accurate informa-

tion from the breadth of opinions. Presented here is an

example of the broadness of views and opinion which

I was able to gather from my research in the early

1990s on the Net. The Net can be a helpful medium to

understand the world. Only by seeing all points of

view can anyone attempt to figure out his or her

position on a topic.

Net society differs from offline society by

welcoming intellectual activity. People are encour-

aged to have things on their mind and to present those

ideas to the Net. People are allowed to be intellectu-

ally interesting and interested. This intellectual

activity forms a major part of the online information

that is carried by the various computer networks.

Netizens can interact with other people to help add to

or alter that information. Brainstorming between

varieties of people produces robust thinking. Informa-

tion is no longer a fixed commodity or resource on the

Nets. It is constantly being added to and improved

collectively. The Net is a grand intellectual and social

commune in the spirit of the collective nature present

at the origins of human society. Netizens working

together continually expand the store of information

worldwide. One person called the Net an untapped

resource because it provides an alternative to the

normal channels and ways of doing things. The Net

allows for the meeting of minds to form and develop

ideas. It brings people’s thinking processes out of

isolation and into the open. Every user of the Net

gains the role of being special and useful. The fact

that every user has his or her own opinions and

interests adds to the general body of specialized

knowledge on the Net. Each netizen thus becomes a

special resource valuable to the Net. Each user con-

tributes to the whole intellectual and social value and

possibilities of the Net.

Introduction

The world of the netizen was envisioned more

than fifty years ago by J. C. R. Licklider. Licklider

brought to his leadership of the Department of De-

fense’s ARPA Information Processing Techniques

Office (IPTO) a vision of “the intergalactic computer

network.” Whenever he would speak, he would

mention this vision. J. C. R. Licklider was a prophet

of the Net. In the paper, “The Computer as a Commu-

nication Device” (1968), which Licklider wrote with

Robert Taylor, they established several principles

from their observations of how the computer would

play a helpful role in human communication.

They

clarified their definition of communication as a

creative process differentiating between communica-

tion and the sending and receiving of information.

When two tape recorders send or receive information

to each other that is not communication. They wrote:

We believe that communicators have

to do something non-trivial with the

information they send and receive.

And to interact with the richness of

living information – not merely in the

passive way that we have become

accustomed to using books and librar-

ies, but as active participants in an

ongoing process, bringing something

to it through our interaction with it,

and not simply receiving from it by

our connection to it. We want to em-

phasize something beyond its one-way

transfer: the increasing significance of

the jointly constructive, the mutually

reinforcing aspect of communication

– the part that transcends ‘now we

both know a fact that only one of us

knew before.’ When minds interact,

new ideas emerge. We want to talk

about the creative aspect of communi-

cation.

Licklider and Taylor defined four principles

for computers to make a contribution toward human

communication. They are:

1. Communication is defined as an

interactive creative process.

2. Response times need to be short to

make the “conversation” free and

easy.

3. Larger networks would form out of

smaller regional networks.

Page 21

4. Communities would form out of

affinity and common interests.

Licklider and Taylor’s understandings from

their 1968 paper have stood the test of time, and do

represent the Net today. A later paper Licklider co-

wrote with Albert Vezza, “Applications of Informa-

tion Networks,”

explores the possible business

applications of information networks. Licklider and

Vezza’s survey of business applications in 1978 come

short of the possibilities Licklider and Taylor outlined

in their 1968 paper, and represent but a tiny fraction

of the resources the Net currently embodies.

In the 1968 paper, Licklider and Taylor

focused on the Net being comprised of a network of

networks. While other researchers of the time focused

on the sharing of computing resources, Licklider and

Taylor had a bigger vision and wrote:

The collection of people, hardware,

and software – the multi-access com-

puter together with its local commu-

nity of users – will become a node in

a geographically distributed computer

network. Let us assume for a moment

that such a network has been formed.

Through the network of message pro-

cessors, therefore, all the large com-

puters can communicate with one

another. And through them, all the

members of the super community can

communicate – with other people,

with programs, with data, or with a

selected combinations of those re-

sources.

Their concept of the sharing of both comput-

ing and human resources together matches the mod-

ern Net. The networking of various human connec-

tions quickly forms, changes its goals, disbands and

reforms into new collaborations. The fluidity of such

group dynamics leads to a quickening of the creation

of new ideas. Groups can form to discuss an idea,

focus in or broaden out and reform to fit the new

ideas that have been worked out.

The various available discussion tools on the

Net are extremely dynamic. Most can be formed

immediately for either short or long term use. As

interests or events form, discussion groups can be

created, e.g., a mailing list, 9NOV89-L, about Ger-

many after the fall of the Berlin Wall appeared

already in November, 1989.

The virtual space created on noncommercial

computer networks is accessible universally. The

content on commercial networks in the 1990s, like

Compuserve or America On Line, were only accessi-

ble by those who paid to belong to that particular

network. The space on noncommercial networks is

accessible from the connections that exist, whereas

social networks in the physical world generally are

connected by limited gateways. So the capability of

networking on computer nets overcomes limitations

inherent in non-computer social networks. This is

important because it reduces the problems of popula-

tion growth. Population growth need not mean limited

resources any more – rather that very growth of

population now means an improvement of resources.

Thus growth of population can be seen as a positive

asset. This is a new way of looking at people in our

society. Every new person can mean a new set of

perspectives and specialties to add to the wealth of

knowledge of the world. This new view of people

could help improve the view of the future. The old

model looks down on population growth and people

as a strain on the environment rather than the increase

of intellectual contribution these individuals can

make. However, access to the Net needs to be univer-

sal for the Net to fully utilize the contribution each

person can represent. As long as access is limited –

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

the Net can offer. Lastly the people on the Net need to

be active in order to bring about the best possible use

of the Net.

Licklider foresaw that the Net allows for

people of common interests, who are otherwise

strangers, to communicate. Much of the magic of the

Net is the ability to make a contribution of your ideas,

and then be connected to utter strangers. He saw that

people would connect to others via this Net in ways

that had been much harder in the past. Licklider

observed as the ARPANET spanned two continents.

This physical connection allowed for wider social

collaborations to form. This was the beginning of

computer data networks facilitating connections of

people around the world.

My research on and about the Net was very

exciting for me. When posting inquiries, I usually

received the first reply within a couple of hours. The

feeling of receiving that very first reply from a total

stranger is always exhilarating! That set of first

replies from people reminds me of the magic of

email. It is nice that there can be reminders of how

exciting this new form of communication really is –

Page 22

so that the value of this new use of computers is never

forgotten.

Critical Mass

The Net has grown so much since its birth in

the 1960s that a critical mass of people and interests

has been reached. This collection of individuals adds

to the interests and specialties of the whole commu-

nity. Most people can now gain something from the

Net, while at the same time helping it out. There are

enough people online now, that anyone coming online

will find something of interest. People are meshing

intellects and knowledge to form new ideas. As early

as 1990, Larry Press made this clear by writing, “I

now work on the Net at least two hours per day. I’ve

had an account since around 1975 but it has only

become super important in the last couple of years

because a critical mass of membership was reached.

I no longer work in L.A., but in cyberspace.”

While the original users of the Net were from

exclusively technical and scientific communities,

many of them found it a valuable experience to

explore the Net for more than just technical reasons.

Today, many different kinds of people are connected

to the Net. The original users of the Net (then several

test-beds of network research) were from only a few

parts of the world. Now people of all ages, from most

parts of the globe, and of many professions, make up

the Net. The original prototype networks (e.g.,

ARPANET in the USA, the network of the National

Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom,

CYCLADES in France and other networks around the

world) developed the necessary physical infrastruc-

ture for a fertile social network to develop. Einar

Stefferud wrote of this social connection in an article,

“The ARPANET has produced several monumental

results. First, it provided the physical and electrical

communications backbone for development of the

latent social infrastructure we now call ‘THE INTER-

NET COMMUNITY.’”

Starting in the early 1990s, many different

kinds of people comprised the Net. The university

community sponsored access for a broad range of

people (i.e., students, professors, staff, professor

emeritus, etc.). Many businesses were also connected.

A “K-12 Net” existed which invited younger people

to be a part of the online community. Special bulletin

board software existed to connect personal computer

users to the Net. Various Unix bulletin board systems

existed to connect other users. It was virtually impos-

sible to tell what kind of people connected to public

bulletin board systems, as only a computer (or termi-

nal) and modem were the prerequisites to connect.

By 2020, almost five billion users connected to the

internet.

In addition to the living body of resources the

diversity of netizens represents, there is also a contin-

ually growing body of digitized data that forms

another body of resources. Whether it was netizens

digitizing great literature of the past (e.g., the

Gutenberg Project, Project Bartleby), or it is people

gathering otherwise obscure or non-mainstream

material (e.g., various religions, unusual hobbies, gay

lifestyle, fringe.), or if it is netizens contributing new

and original material, the Net follows in the great

tradition of other public institutions, such as the

public library or the principle behind public educa-

tion. The Net shares with these institutions that they

serve the general populace. This data is just part of

the treasure. Often living netizens provide pointers to

this digitized store of publicly available information.

Many of the network access tools have been created

with the principle of being available to everyone. An

early example was the method of connecting to file

repositories via FTP (file transfer protocol) by log-

ging in as an “anonymous” user. Most World Wide

Web Sites, Wide Area Information Systems (WAIS),

and gopher sites were open for all users of the Net. It

is true that the Net Community was smaller in the

1990s than it is now, but even then the Net had

reached a point of general usefulness no matter who

you were.

All of this evidence is exactly why it is a

problem for the Net to come under the control of

commercial entities. If ever commercial interests gain

complete control, the Net will be much less powerful

for the ordinary person than it is currently. Commer-

cial interests vary from those of the common person.

They attempt to make profit from any available

means. Compuserve was an example of one commer-

cial network. A user of Compuserve paid for access

by the hour. If this scenario would be extended to the

Net of which I speak, the Netiquette of being helpful

would have a price tag attached to it. If people had to

pay by the minute during the Net’s development, very

few would have been able to afford the network time

needed to be helpful to others.

The Net has only developed because of the

hard work and voluntary dedication of many people.

It has grown because the Net benefited from the

Page 23

control and power of the people at the grassroots

level, and because these people developed it. People’s

posts and contributions to the Net have been the

developing forces.

Grassroots

The Net brings people together. People put

into connection with other people can be powerful.

There is power in numbers. The Net allows an indi-

vidual to realize his power. The Net, uncontrolled by

commercial entities, becomes the gathering, discus-

sion and planning center for many people.

The combined efforts of people interested in

communication has led to the development and ex-

pansion of the global communications system. What’s

on the Net? Well – email, library catalogs, free soft-

ware, electronic newsletters and journals, Multi-User

Domain/Dungeon (mud)/mush/moo, WhatsApp, We

Chat, the multimedia world wide web (WWW),

video-sharing and podcast hosting platforms, and

many kinds of data banks. Different servers attempt

to order and make utilizing the vast varieties and

widespread information easier. There exist both

public and private services and sources of informa-

tion. The public and free services often come about

through the voluntary efforts of one or a few people.

These technologies allow a person to help make the

world a better place by making his or her unique

contribution available to the rest of the world. People

who have been overlooked or have felt unable to

contribute to the world, now can. Also, these net-

works allow much more open and public interaction

over a much larger body of people than available

before. The common people have a unique voice

which is now being aired in a new way.

The emphasis is that the Net introduces every

single person as someone special and in possession of

a useful resource.

Netizen Comments on Grassroots from

the 1990s

From Brian May:

Simple by access to a vast amount of

information and an enormous number

of brains!

From Simon Raboczi:

For a geographically sparse group as it

is, MU* allows people to get to know

one another, the relevant newsgroup

gives a sense that there’s a community

out there and things are happening,

and an associated ftp site allows art

and writing to be distributed.

From Brent Edwards:

In summary, nets have helped enor-

mously in the dissemination of infor-

mation from people knowledgeable in

certain areas which would be difficult

to obtain otherwise.

From Rosemary Warren:

I get to communicate rapidly and

cheaply with zillions of people around

the world.

The following examples help to show how this

is possible. People are normally unprotected from the

profit desires of large companies. Steven Alexander

from California was using the Net to try to prevent

over-charging at gas stations. This is an example of

the power of connecting people to uphold what is fair

and in the best interest of the common person in this

society.

From Steven Alexander:

I have started compiling and distribut-

ing (on the newsgroup ca.driving) a

list of gas prices at particular stations

in California to which many people

will contribute and keep up to date,

and which, I hope, will allow consum-

ers to counteract what many of us

suspect is the collusive (or in any case,

price-gouging) behavior of the oil

companies.

A user from Germany also reported using the Net to

muckrake:

A company said they were a [non-

profit organization]. Someone looked

them up in the [nonprofit] Register,

and they did not exist there. Someone

else said that he had contact with the

person who sent the letter, only under

another company-name, and that he

simply ignored this person since he

looked like a swindler. So they are

swindlers, and people from the Net

proved it to us, we then of course did

not engage with them at all.

The Net has proven its importance in other

contemporary critical situations. As the only available

line of communications with the rest of the world, the

Page 24

Net helped defeat the attempted coup in the ex-Soviet

Union in 1990. The members of the coup either did

not know about or understand the role the Russian

RELCOM network could play or the connections

proved resilient enough for information about the

coup to be communicated inside and out of the

country in time to inform the world and encourage

resistance to the coup.

The Net has also proven its value by providing

an important medium for students. Students partici-

pating in the 1989 Chinese “Pro-Democracy” move-

ment were kept in touch with others around the world

via their fragile connection to the Net. The Net pro-

vided an easy way of evading government censors to

get news around the world about events in China and

to receive back encouraging feedback. Such feedback

was vital support to keep the fight on when it seemed

impossible or wrong to do so. In a similar way, stu-

dents in France used the French Minitel system to or-

ganize a successful fight against plans by the French

government to restrict admission to government sub-

sidized universities.

The information flow on the Net is controlled

by those who use the Net. People actively provide the

information that they personally and other people

want. There is a much more active form of participa-

tion than what is provided for by other forms of mass

media. Television, radio, magazines are all driven by

those who own and determine who will write for

them. The Net gives people a media they can control.

This control of information is a great power that has

not been available before to the common everyday

person. For example, Declan McCreesh describes

how this made possible access to the most up to date

information.

From Declan McCreesh:

You get the most up to date info. that

people around the world can get their

hands on, which is great. For instance,

the media report who wins a Grand

Prix, what happened and not a great

deal more. On the net, however, you

can get top speeds, latest car and tech-

nology developments, latest rumors,

major debates as to whether Formula

1 or Indy cars are better etc.

The Net helps to make the information avail-

able more accurate because of the many-to-many or

broadcast and read and write capability. That new

capability, which is not normally very prevalent in

our society, allows an actual participant or observer to

report something. This capability gives the power of

journalism or the reporter to the individual. This new

medium allows the source to report. This is true

because the medium allows everyone online to make

a contribution. The old media instead controls who

reports and what they say. The possibility of eyewit-

ness accounts via the net can make the information

more accurate. Also this opens up the possibility for

a grassroots network. Information is passed from

person to person around the world. Thus German

citizens could learn about the 1986 Chernobyl explo-

sion from the Net before the government decided to

release the information to the public via the media.

The connection is people to people rather than gov-

ernments to governments. Citizen Journalists can now

distribute to more than those they know personally.

The distribution of the writings of ordinary people is

the second step after the advent of the inexpensive

personal computer in the early1980s. The personal

computer and printer allowed anyone to produce mass

quantities of documents. Personal publishing is now

joined by wide personal distribution.

Not only is there grassroots reporting, but the

assumption that filtering is necessary has been chal-

lenged. People can learn to sort through the various

opinions themselves. Steve Welch disagreed that the

Net is a source of more accurate information, but

agreed that people develop discriminatory reading

skills.

From Steve Welch:

When you get more information from

diverse sources, you don’t always get

more accurate information. However,

you do develop skills in discerning

accurate information. Or rather, you

do if you want to come out of the

infoglut jungle alive.

Governments that rule based on control of

information will succumb eventually to the tides of

democracy. As Dr. Sun Yat-Sen of the Chinese

Democracy Movement once said, “The worldwide

democratic trend is mighty. Those who submit to it

will prosper and those who resist it will perish.” The

Net reintroduces the basic idea of democracy as the

grassroots people power of netizens. Governments

can no longer easily keep information from their

people.

Many groups which do not have an estab-

lished form of communications available to them

Page 25

have found the Net to be a powerful tool. For exam-

ple, for people far away from their homeland, the Net

provides a new link.

From Godfrey Nolan:

The Net has immeasurably increased

the quality of my life. I am Irish, but I

have been living in England for the

past five years. It is a lot more diffi-

cult to get information about Ireland

than you would expect. However a

man called Liam Ferrie who works in

Digital in Galway, compiles a newspa-

per on the weeks events in Ireland and

so I can now easily keep abreast of

most developments in Irish current

affairs, which helps me feel like I’m

not losing touch when I go home

about twice a year. It is also transmit-

ted to about 2000 Irish people all over

the first and third worlds.

From Madhur K. Limdi:

I read your above posting and wanted

to share my experience with you. I

have been a frequent reader of news in

Usenet groups, such as soc.cult-

ure.indian, misc.news.southasia. Both

of these keep me reasonably informed

about the happenings in my home

country India.

Also in the United States, the Net has provide

stable communications for people of various religious

and sexual persuasions. Many other communities

have also found the Net to be a excellent medium to

help increase communications:

From Gregory G. Woodbury:

We will be going to a march on Wash-

ington and are coordinating our plans

and travel with a large number of

other folks around the country via

email and conversations on Usenet.

From Jann VanOver:

I’m a member of a Buddhist organ-

ization and just found a man in Berke-

ley who keeps a Mailing List that

sends daily guidance and discussions

for this group. So I get a little reli-

gious boost when I log on each day.

From Carole E. Mah:

For me and for many of my friends,

the Net is our main form of communi-

cation. Almost every aspect of inter-

personal communication on the net-

work has a gay/lesbian/bi aspect to it

that forms a tight and intimate ac-

quaintanceship which sometimes even

boils over into arguments and enmi-

ties. This network of connections,

friends, enemies, lovers, etc. facili-

tates political goals that would not

otherwise be possible (organizing

letter-writing campaigns about the

Gays in the Military Ban via the ACT-

UP list, being able to send email di-

rectly to the White House, finding out

about activism, bashing, etc. in other

states and around the world, etc).

From Robert Dean:

As a member of the science fiction

community, I’ve met quite a few peo-

ple on the net, and then in person.

Communication with New People

In many netizens’ lives the Net has alleviated

feelings of loneliness, which seem common in today’s

society. The Net’s ability to help people network both

socially and intellectually makes the Net valuable and

irreplaceable in people’s lives. This is forming a

group of people who want to keep the Net accessible

and open to all.

The Net brings together people from diverse

walks of life and makes it easier for these people to

communicate. It brings them together into the same

virtual space and removes the impact or influence of

first impressions.

From Malcolm Humes:

I’m in awe of the power and energy

linking thousands into a virtual intel-

lectual coffee-house, where strangers

can connect without the formalities of

face to face rituals (hello, how are you

today) to allow a direct-connect style

of communication that seems to tran-

scend the ‘how’s the weather’ kind of

conversation to just let us connect

without the bullshit.

Strangers are no longer strange on the Net.

People are free to communicate without limits, fears

or apprehension. It used to be that there was a rather

generous atmosphere that thrived on the Net and that

welcomed new users. People were happy to help

Page 26

others, often as a return for the help they had re-

ceived. Things have changed, and the general wel-

come to new-comers is not as universally friendly, but

there are many online who still try and help new

people. Others are nasty, but the goodwill still over-

powers the unfriendly comments.

From Jean-Francois Messier:

My use of the Net is to get in touch

with more people around the world. I

don’t know for what, when, how, but

that’s important for me. Not that I’m

in a small town, far from everybody,

but that I want to be able to establish

links with others. In fact, because of

those nets I use, I would !NOT! want

to go to a small town, just because the

phone calls would be too expensive.

I’ve to say that I’m not an expressive

people. I’m not a great talker, nor

somebody who could make shows.

I’m more an ‘introvert’.

Yet Jean-Francois wrote me. This is just one

example of the social power of the Net. Another

netizen comments on how the Net helped her befriend

strangers.

From Laura Goodin:

Last summer I was traveling to Den-

ver and I used a listserv mailing list to

find out whether a particular running

group I run with had a branch there.

They did, and I had a wonderful time

meeting people with a common inter-

est (and drinking beer with them); I

was no longer a stranger.

Broadened and Worldly Prospective

Easy connection to people and ideas from

around the world has a powerful effect. Awareness

that we are members of the human species which

spans the entire globe changes a person’s point of

view. It is a broadening perspective. It is very easy for

people to assume a limited point of view if they are

only exposed to certain ideas. The Net brings the

isolated individual into contact with other people,

experiences, and views from the rest of the world.

Exposure to many opinions gives the reader a chance

to actually consider multiple views before settling on

a specific opinion. Having access to the “Marketplace

of Ideas” allows a person to make a reasoned judg-

ment.

From Jean-Francois Messier:

My attitudes to other peoples, races

and religions changed, since I had

more chances to talk with other peo-

ples around the world. When first

exchanging mail with people from

Yellowknife, Yukon, I had a real

strange feeling: Getting messages and

chatting with people that far from me.

I noticed around me that a lot of peo-

ple have opinions and positions about

politics that are for themselves, with-

out knowing others.

Because I have a much broader view

of the world now, I changed and am

more conciliatory and peaceful with

other people. Writing to someone you

never saw, changes the way you write,

also, the instancy of the transmission

makes the conversation much more

‘live’ than waiting for the damn slow

paper mail. Telecommunications

opened the world to me and changed

my visions of people and countries.

From Anthony Berno:

I could not begin to tell you how dif-

ferent my life would be without the

Net. My life would be short about a

dozen people, some of them central, I

would be wallowing in ignorance on

several significant subjects, and my

mind would be lacking many broad-

ening and enlightening influences.

From Henry Choy:

More things to look at. Increased per-

spective on life. The computer net-

work brings people closer together,

and permits them to speak at will to a

large audience. I recommend that the

telecommunications and computer in-

dustry make large scale computer net-

working accessible to the general pub-

lic. It’s like making places accessible

to the handicapped. People brought

closer together will release some ex-

isting social tensions. People need to

be heard, and they need to hear.

From Paul Ready:

You don’t have to go to another coun-

try to meet people from there. It is not

Page 27

the same as personally knowing them,

but I always pay special attention to

information from people outside the

States. They are likely to have a dif-

ferent perspective on things.

From Leandra Dean:

I love to study people, and the Net has

been the best possible resource to this

end. The Net is truly a window to the

world, and without it we could only

hope to physically meet virtually thou-

sands of people everyday to gain the

same insights. I shudder to think about

how different and closed in my life

would be without the Net.

Material Changes to People’s Lives and

Lifestyles

The time spent online can affect the rest of a

person’s life. The connections, interfaces or collabo-

rations between times on and offline form an interest-

ing area of study. Netizens attest to the power of the

Net by explaining the effect the Net has had on their

lives. Because of the information available and the

new connections possible, people have changed the

way they live their lives. There are examples of both

changes in the material possessions and changes in

lifestyle. The changes in lifestyle are probably the

more profound changes, but the new connections

made possible are important. Often the material gains

are not financial. Rather worthwhile goods can be

redistributed from those to whom the goods might

have lost personal value to those who would value the

goods.

Netizen Comments on Material Changes

From William Carroll:

Primarily because of the information

and support from rec.bikes, three

years ago I gave up driving to work

and started riding my bike. It’s one of

the best decisions I’ve ever made.

A response received via email:

When I started using ForumNet (a

chat program similar to IRC, but

smaller) back in January 1990, I was

fairly shy and insecure … . I had a few

close friends but was slow at making

new ones. Within a few weeks, on

ForumNet, I found myself able to be

open, articulate, and well-liked in this

virtual environment. Soon, this dis-

covery began to affect my behavior in

“real” face-to-face interaction. I met

some of my computer friends in per-

son and they made me feel so good

about myself, like I really could be

myself and converse and be liked and

wanted.

Of course, computer-mediated social

interaction is not properly a crutch to

substitute for face-to-face encounters,

but the ability to converse via key-

board and modem with real people at

the other end of the line has translated

into the real-life ability for me to

reach out to people without the medi-

ating use of a computer. My life has

improved. I wouldn’t trade my experi-

ence with the Net for anything.

From Jack Frisch:

I must begin my comments on the

Internet with one simple yet signifi-

cant statement: the availability and

use of the Internet is changing my

life profoundly.

From Carole E. Mah:

I also used to facilitate a vegetarian

list, which radically altered many peo-

ple’s lives, offering them access to

mail-order foods, recipes, and friend-

ship via net-contact with people who

live in areas where non-meat alterna-

tives are readily available.

From Jann VanOver:

Well, the first thing I thought of is

purchases I’ve made through the Net

which have ‘changed my life’ I drove

my Subaru station wagon until last fall

when I acquired a VW Camper van

that I saw on a local Net ad. I wasn’t

looking for a van, wasn’t even shop-

ping for another vehicle, but the sec-

ond time this ad scrolled by me, I

looked into it and eventually bought it.

I will certainly say that driving a 23

year old VW camper van has changed

my life!

I thought I would be ridiculed, but

Page 28

have found that people have a lot of

respect and admiration for this car!

Through the Net, I heard that Roger

Waters was going to perform “The

Wall” again, an event I had promised

myself not to miss, so I made a trip to

Berlin (East and West) in 1990 to see

this concert. This was CERTAINLY a

life changing event, seeing Berlin less

than one week after the roads were

open with no checkpoints required. I

don’t think I would have known about

it soon enough if not for the Net.

From Robert Dean:

As for me, my main hobby is and was

playing wargames and role-playing

games. Net access has allowed me to

discuss these games with players

across the world, picking up new

ideas, and gathering opinions on new

games before spending money on

them. In addition, I’ve been able to

buy and sell games via Net connec-

tions, allowing me to adjust my col-

lection of games to meet my current

interests, and get games that I no lon-

ger wanted to people who do want

them, whether they live down the road

from me in Maryland, or in Canada,

Austria, Finland, Germany or Israel. I

have also taken an Esperanto course

via email, and correspond irregularly

in Esperanto with interested parties

world wide.

From Caryn K. Roberts:

Usenet & Internet are available to me

at work and by dial-up connection to

work from home. I have been materi-

ally enriched by the use of the Net. I

have managed to sell items I no longer

needed. I have been able to purchase

items from others for good prices. I

have saved money and am doing my

part to recycle technology instead of

adding burdens to the municipal waste

disposal service.

Using the Net I have also been en-

riched by discussions and information

found in numerous newsgroups from

sci.med to sci.skeptic to many of the

comp.* groups. I have offered advice

to solve problems and have been able

to solve problems I had by using in-

formation in these forums.

The Net as a Source of Enormous

Resources

Before the Net was widely seen as an enor-

mous social network, some were experimenting with

the sharing of computing resources. The following are

some examples of ways netizens utilize the informa-

tion resources available on the Net.

From Tim North:

I’m faculty here at University and I

use the Net as a major source of tech-

nical information for my lectures, up-

to-date product information, and in-

formed opinion. As such I find that I

am constantly better informed than the

people around me. (That sounds vain,

but it’s not meant to be. It’s simply

meant to emphasize how strongly I

feel that the Net is a superb informa-

tion resource.)

From R. J. White:

I used the Net to find parts for my

1971 Opel GT. I was living in North

America at the time, and going

through the normal channels, like GM,

are no good. The Net was like an un-

tapped resource.

From John Harper:

[My] uses of the network [1] I once

asked a question about an obscure

point in history of math on the

sci.math newsgroup and got a useful

answer from Exeter, U.K. Before-

hand I had no idea where anyone

knowing the answer might be. I had

drawn a blank in Oxford. [2] I asked a

question about a slightly less obscure

point on comp.lang.fortran which gen-

erated a long (and helpful) discussion

on the Net for a week or two.

From Paul Ready:

Yes, it is a worldwide rapid distribu-

tion center of information, on topics

both popular and obscure. It may not

make the information more valuable,

Page 29

but it certainly increases the informa-

tion, and the propagation of informa-

tion. To those connected, it is a valu-

able resource. Flame wars aside, a lot

of generally inaccessible information

is readily available.

From Lee Rothstein:

Usenet and mailing lists create a group

of people who are motivated and capa-

ble of talking about a specific topic.

The software allows deeply contextual

conversations to occur with a mini-

mum of rehash. As experience devel-

ops with the medium, each user real-

izes that the other that he talks to or

will talk to generally help him/her,

and can do him/her no harm because

of the remoteness imposed by the

cable.

From Lu Ann Johnson:

Hi! Usenet came to my rescue I’m a

librarian and was working with a

group of students on a marketing pro-

ject. They were marketing a make-

believe product; a compact-disc of

“music hits of the 70s.” They needed

a source to tell them how much it cost

to produce a CD without mastering,

etc. I exhausted all my print resources

so I posted the question in a business

newsgroup. Within hours I learned

from several companies that it cost

about $1.50 to produce a CD. :) The

students were very grateful to get the

information.

From Laura Goodin:

I teach self-defense, and in rec.mar-

tial-art someone posted information

about a study on the effectiveness of

Mace for self-defense that I had been

looking for for years.

From Cliff Roberts:

I have been using Internet through a

program in New Jersey to bring the

fields of Science and Math to gram-

mar school children grades K-8. We

have implemented a system where the

class rooms are equipped with PC’s

and are able to dial in to a UNIX sys-

tem. There they can send email and

post questions to a KidsQuest ID. The

ID then routes the questions to volun-

teers with accounts on UNIX. The

scientists then answer or give advice

of where to find the information they

want. Another well accepted feature is

to list out the soc.penpals list and

email people in different countries that

are being studied in the schools.

From Joe Farrenkopf:

I think Usenet is a very interesting

thing. For me, it’s mostly just a way

to pass time when bored. However, I

have gotten some very useful things

from it. There is one group in partic-

ular called comp.lang.fortran, and on

several occasions when I’ve had a

problem writing a program, I was

able to post to this group to get some

help to find out what I was doing

wrong. In these cases, it was an in-

valuable resource.

Collective Work

As new connections are made between people,

more ideas travel over greater distances. This allows

either like-minded people or complementary people

to come in touch with each other. The varied re-

sources of the networks allow these same people to

keep in touch even if they would not have been able

to be in touch before. Electronic mail allows enough

detail to be contained in a message that most if not all

communications can take place entirely electroni-

cally. This medium allows for new forms of collabo-

rative work to form and thrive. New forms of research

will probably arise from such possibilities. Here are

some examples:

From Wayne Hathaway:

One ‘unusual’ use I made of the Net

happened in 1977. Along with five

other ‘Net Folks’ I wrote the follow-

ing paper: ‘The ARPANET Telnet

Protocol: Its Purpose, Principles, Im-

plementation, and Impact on Host

Operating System Design,’ with

Davidson, Postel, Mimno, Thomas,

and Walden: Fifth Data Communica-

tions Symposium, Snowbird, UT;

September 27-29, 1977. What’s so

unusual about a collaborative paper,

Page 30

you ask? Simply that the six of us

never even made a TELEPHONE call

about the paper, much less had a meet-

ing or anything. Literally EVERY-

THING – from the first ideas in a

‘broadcast’ mail to the distribution of

the final ‘troff-ready’ version – was

done with email. These days this

might not be such a deal, but it was

interesting back then.

From Paul Gillingwater:

… in Vienna was an online computer

mediated art forum, with video con-

ferencing between two cities, plus an

online discussion in a virtual MUD-

type conference later that evening.

A Response I received via email:

In response to your question about

having fun on the net, and being cre-

ative, one incident comes to mind. I

had met a woman on ForumNet (a

system like IRC). She and I talked

and talked about all sorts of things.

One night, we felt especially artistic.

We co-wrote a poem over the com-

puter. I’d type a few words, she’d

pick up where I left off (in the mid-

dle of sentences or wherever) and on

and on. I don’t think we had any idea

what it was going to be in the end,

thematically or structurally. In the

end, we had a very good poem, one

that I would try to publish if I knew

her whereabouts anymore.

Improving Quality of Everyday Life

Information flow can take various shapes. The

strangest and perhaps most interesting one is how

emotion can be attached to information flow. They

often seem like two very different things. I received

a large number of responses that reported real-life

marriages arising from Net meetings. The Net facili-

tates the meeting of people of like interests. The

newness of the Net even after 30 years means we

cannot fully understand it as of yet. However, it is

worth noting that people have also broken up online.

So while it is a new social medium, a range of dynam-

ics will exist.

From Caryn K. Roberts:

I have found friends on the Net. A

lover. And two of the friends I met,

also met online and got married. I

attended the wedding (in California).

From Scott Kitchen:

I think I can add something for your

paper. I met my fiancee four years ago

over the net. I was at Ohio State, and

she was in Princeton, and we started

talking about an article of hers I’d

read in rec.games.frp. We got to talk-

ing, eventually met, found we liked

each other, and the rest is history. We

were married 31 December 1994.

From Gregory G. Woodbury:

I met the woman who became my

wife when I started talking to the folks

at “phs” (the third site of the original

Usenet) during the development of

Netnews. I would not have been wan-

dering around that area if I hadn’t

been interested in the development of

the net.

From Laura Goodin:

And now, the BEST story: about eight

months ago I was browsing soc.cul-

ture.australia and I noticed a message

from an Australian composer studying

in the U.S. about an alternative tune to

“Waltzing Matilda.” I was curious, so

I responded in email, requesting the

tune and just sort of shooting the

breeze. We began an email correspon-

dence that soon incorporated voice

calls as well. One thing led inexorably

to another and we fell in love (before

we met face to face, actually). We did

eventually meet face to face. Last

month he proposed over the Internet

(in soc.culture.australia) and I ac-

cepted. Congratulatory messages came

in from all over the United States,

Australia, and New Zealand. Houston

(that’s his name) and I keep our phone

bills from resembling the national debt

by sending 10 or 12 emails a day

(we’re well over 1400 for eight

months now), and chatting using IRC.

A long-distance relationship is hellish,

but the pain is eased somewhat by the

Page 31

Internet.

From Chuq Von Rospach:

(oh, and in the “how the Net made

my non-net life better” category, I

met my wife via the net. Does that

count?)

Work

The fluid connections and the rapidly chang-

ing nature of the networks make the Net a welcome

media for those who are job hunting and for those

who have jobs to offer. The networks have a large

turnover of people who are looking for jobs. The

placement of job announcements is easy and can be

kept available for as long as the job is offered. Email

allows for the quick and easy applications by sending

resumes in the email. Companies can respond quickly

and easy to such submissions, also by email. Besides

finding work, the Net helps people who are currently

working perform their job in the best manner. Many

people utilize the Net to assist them with their jobs.

Several examples of each follow:

From Laura Goodin:

My division successfully recruited a

highly-qualified consultant (a Finn

living in Tasmania) to do some work

for us; the initial announcement was

over Usenet; subsequent negotiations

were through email.

From jj:

I’ve hired people off the net, and

from meeting them in muds, when I

find somebody who can THINK.

People who can think are hard to

find anywhere.

From Diana Gregory:

I have learned to use UNIX, and as a

result may be able to keep/advance in

my job due to the ‘net.’

From Neil Galarneau:

It helps me do my job (MS Windows

programming) and it helps me learn

new things (like C++).

From Kieran Clulow:

The Internet access provided me by

the university has greatly facilitated

my ability to both use and program

computers and this has had the direct

result of improving my grades as well

as gaining me a good job in the com-

puter field. Long live the Internet (and

make it possible for private citizens to

get access!)

From Mark Gooley:

I got my job by answering a posting

to a news-group.

From Anthony Berno:

I develop for NEXTSTEP, and the

Net is very useful in getting useful

programming hints, info on product

releases, rumors, etcetera.

From Gregory G. Woodbury:

Due to contacts made via Usenet and

email, I got a job as a consultant at

BTL in 1981 after I lost my job at

Duke. Part of the qualifications that

got me in the door was experience

with Usenet.

Improved Communications with Friends

Another way of improving daily life is by

making communications with friends easier. The ease

of sending email bought back letter writing. However,

the immediacy of email meant less care could be

made in the process of writing. Email, chat platforms

and forums make it much easier to keep in touch with

friends outside one’s local area.

Netizen Comments on Improved

Communications

From Bill Walker:

I also have an old and dear friend

(from high school) who lives in the

San Francisco area. After I moved to

San Diego, we didn’t do very well at

keeping in touch. She and I talked on

the phone a couple of times a year.

After we discovered we were both on

the net, we started corresponding via

email, and we now exchange mail

several times a week. So, the Net has

allowed me to keep in much closer

touch with a good friend. It’s nothing

that couldn’t be done by phone, or

snail mail, but somehow we never got

around to doing those things. Email is

quick, easy and fun enough that we

don’t put it off.

From Anthony Berno:

Page 32

Incidentally, it is also one of my pri-

mary modes of communication with

my sister (who lives in N.Z.) It’s more

meditative than a phone call, faster

than a letter, and cheaper than either

of them.

From Carole E. Mah:

It also facilitates great friendships.

Most of my friends, even in my own

town, I met on the network. This can

often alleviate feelings of loneliness

and “I’m the only one, I must be a

pervert” feelings among queer people

just coming out of the closet. They

have a whole world of like-minded

people to turn to on Usenet, on

BITNET lists, on IRC, in personal

email, on BBSs and AOL type confer-

ences, etc.

From Jann VanOver:

Apart from purchases, I have been

contacted by:

1. a very good friend from college

who I’d lost track of. She got married

to a man she met in a singles news-

group (they’ve been married 2 years+)

2. someone who went to my high

school, knew a lot of the same people

I did, but we didn’t know each other.

We are now ‘mail buddies’

3. an old girlfriend of my brothers.

They went out for eight years, but I

learned more about her from ONE

email letter than I had ever learned

when meeting her in person.

From Godfrey Nolan:

Above all it helps me keep in touch

with friends who I would inevitably

lose otherwise. The Net helps those

that move around for economic rea-

sons to lessen the worst aspects of

leaving your friends in the series of

places that you once called home. It’s

the best thing since sliced bread.

Problems

With all of the positive uses and advantages of

the Net, it is still not perfect. The blind-view of

people on the Net seems to shield everyone, but in the

1990s not women. Then, there was a relatively large

male to female percentage population on the Net.

Women online could feel the effects of this differ-

ence. Women who had easily identifiable user names

or IDs were prone to be the center of much attention.

While that might have been good in itself, much of

that attention was of a hostile or negative nature. By

2019, in the U.S. the ratio was virtually one-to -one

and the prevalence of harassment of women is lower.

But Net harassment continues against other users.

Also, people with unpopular ideas need to be strong

to withstand the outlash of abuse they might receive

from others.

The worst non-people problem seems to be

information overflow. Information adds up very

quickly and it can be hard to organize it all and sort

through. This problem should be solvable as technol-

ogy is being developed to handle it.

From Scott Hatton:

There is a problem with this brave

new world in that a lot of people don’t

appreciate there’s another human

being at the other keyboard. Flaming

is a real problem – especially in

comp.misc. This is all a new facet of

the technology as well. People rarely

trade insults in real life like they do on

Internet. There’s a tendency to stereo-

type your opponent into categories. I

think this is because you’re not around

to witness the results. I find this more

on Internet newsgroups than on

CompuServe. I think this is down to

maturity – a lot of folk on the Internet

are students who aren’t paying for

their time on the system. Those on

CompuServe are normally slightly

older, not so hotheaded and are paying

for their time. Damn. Now I’m at

stereotyping now. It just goes to show.

From Joe Farrenkopf:

There is something else I’ve discov-

ered that is really rather fascinating.

People can be incredibly rude when

communicating through this medium.

For example, some time ago, I posted

a question to lots of different news-

groups, and many people felt my

question was inappropriate to their

particular group. They wrote to me

Page 33

and told me so, using amazingly nasty

words. I guess it’s easier to be rude if

you don’t have to face a person, but

can say whatever you want over a

computer.

From Brad Kepley:

I get a little irritated with people al-

ways claiming someone else is ‘wast-

ing bandwidth’ because they disagree

with them. About half the time it turns

out that the person being told to shut

up was right after all. Then again,

when you look at things like alt.bi-

naries.pictures.erotica and other ‘non-

bandwidth-wasting’ activities, it seems

almost comical to me when someone

says this. There is nothing more

wasteful than 95% of what Usenet is

used for. It’s a joke to say that a par-

ticular person is ‘wasting’ it. To say

that they are off-topic makes more

sense. I guess this is just a gripe rather

than what you are looking for. Wast-

ing bandwidth again. :)

Conclusion

For the people of the world, the Net provides

a powerful means for peaceful assembly. Peaceful

assembly allows for people to take control over their

lives, rather than that control being in the hands of

others. This power deserves to be appreciated and

protected. Any medium or tool that helps people to

hold or gain power is something that is special and

has to be protected.

The Net has made a valuable impact on human

society. My research in the 1990s demonstrated

people’s lives had been substantially improved via

their connection to the Net. This sets the basis for

providing access to all in society. Using similar

reasoning, in 1978 J. C. R. Licklider and Robert

Taylor believed that access to the then growing

information network should be made ubiquitous.

They felt that the Net’s value would depend on high

connectivity. In their article, “The Computer as a

Communication Device,” they argued that the impact

upon society depends on how available the network is

to the society as a whole.

Society will improve if Net access is made

available to people as a whole. Only if access is

universal will the Net itself advance. The ubiquitous

connection is necessary for the Net to encompass all

possible resources. One Net visionary responded to

my research by calling for universal access.

From Steve Welch:

If we can get to the point where any-

one who gets out of high school alive

has used computers to communicate

on the Net or a reasonable facsimile or

successor to it, then we as a society

will benefit in ways not currently

understandable. When access to infor-

mation is as ubiquitous as access to

the phone system, all Hell will break

loose. Bet on it.

Steve is right, “all Hell will break loose” in the

most positive of ways imaginable. The philosophers

Thomas Paine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and all other

fighters for democracy would have been proud.

Similar to past communications advances such

as the printing press, mail, and the telephone, the

Global Computer Communications Network has

already fundamentally changed our lives. Licklider

predicted that the Net would fundamentally change

the way people live and work. It is important to try to

understand this impact, so as to help further this

advance.

Notes:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-

worldwide/ and https://ourworldindata.org/internet

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

Communication Device,” reprinted in In Memoriam: J. C. R.

Licklider 1915-1990, Digital Research Center, August 7, 1990;

originally published in Science and Technology, April, 1968.

3. Ibid., p. 32.

4. “Proceedings of IEEE,” vol. 66 no. 11, November, 1978.

5. J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, p. 32.

6. Stefferud, Einar et. al., “Quotes from Some of the Players,”

ConneXions – The Interoperability Report, vol. 3 no. 10, Foster

City, California. October, 1989, p. 21.

7. The original version of this article also gave other details

about the Net in the 1990s. By the mid-1990s. many if not all

Fidonet BBSs (a very common BBS type) had at least email and

many also participated through a gateway to Netnews. Prototype

community network systems were forming around the world

(e.g., Cleveland Free-Net, Wellington Citynet, Santa Monica

Public Electronic Network (PEN), Berkeley Community Me-

mory Project, Hawaii FYI, Capitol Free-Net and others in

Canada, etc.). Access via these community systems could be as

easy as visiting the community library and membership was open

to all who live in the community.

8. See article by Larry Press posted on the comp.risks news-

group, September 6, 1991.

Page 34

9. Ibid., J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, p. 40.

Much thanks is owed to the many who contributed

Usenet posts and email responses to requests for examples of

how the Net has changed people’s lives. Only a few of the many

replies received could be quoted but all contributed to this work.

In the 1990s, the following people who were quoted chose that

their email addresses be included:

Jim Carroll

jcarroll@jacc.com,

Kieran Clulow

u1036254@vmsuser.acsu.unsw.edu.au,

Robert Dean

robdean@access.digex.net,

Jack Frisch

frischj@gbms01.uwgb.edu,

Scott Hatton

100114.1650@compuserve.com,

Lu Ann Johnson ai411@yfn.ysu.edu,

Jean-Francois Messier

messier@igs.net,

Larry Press

lpress@isi.edu,

Chuq Von Rospach

chuqui@plaidworks.com,

Gregory G. Woodbury

news@wolves.durham.nc.us

1. The first draft in three parts can be accessed from: https://

www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Post

s/1993_Common_Sense_Usenet_Posts/

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.

Articles can be submitted via e-mail:

jrh29@columbia.edu

Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in a non

profit publication provided credit is given, with name of author

and source of article cited.

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

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