The Amateur

Computerist

November 2022 Toward 25 Years of the Netizen Book (Part 3) Volume 35 No. 3

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

What is a Netizen?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Net and Netizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3

Social Forces Behind Development of Usenet . . Page 20

Vision of Interactive Computing And the Future. . Page 26

Untold Story of ARPANET & Computer Science . Page 29

Introduction

The year 2022 marks the 25

Anniversary of the

May 1, 1997 publication of the print edition of

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben. This

issue is again part of the celebration of that Anniver-

sary. The articles here are the Preface and Chapters 1,

3, 5 and 7 by Michael Hauben in that book.

The first article, the Preface asks, “What is a

Netizen?” Michael answers by telling some of how he

came online on local hobbyist-run computer bulletin

board systems starting in 1985 and then on global Use-

net. He found Usenet discussions to be mentally invig-

orating and welcoming of thoughtful comments, ques-

tions and discussion. He became aware that there was

a new social institution, an electronic commons,

developing. He discovered from those who wrote to

him that the people he was writing about were citizens

of the Net, or Netizens.

The second article, “The Net and Netizens” be-

gins with his often quoted opening in 1994, “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.” He

includes his prediction, “We are seeing a revitalization

of society. The frameworks are being redesigned from

the bottom up. A new, more democratic world is

becoming possible.” Much of the article are quotes

from the people who wrote to Michael which were

Michael’s data from which he learned that many

Usenet users were acting as citizens of the Net.

The next article was the result of Michael’s

searching for “The Social Forces Behind the Develop-

ment of Usenet.” The article is a tour through ARPA-

NET, Usenet and UNIX. It sees the Internet as provid-

ing a route for the increased distribution of Usenet.

Michael focuses on Usenet as a social network whose

very nature promotes change. His analysis leads to the

conclusion that Usenet is a democratic and technologi-

cal breakthrough and that the very nature of Usenet

means people are going to be working for its expan-

sion.

In the fourth article. “The Vision of Interactive

Computing And the Future” Michael explains the role

of the time-sharing mode of computer use as a source

of the vision. Sharing time on the same computer gave

rise to communities of researchers. Expanding that

reality give rise to a view of one grand public utility or

connecting the communities by connecting their com-

puters. Michael centers the vision for what today we

call the Internet on J. C. R. Licklider and his advocacy

and financial support as the director of the Information

Processing Technologies Office for interactive comput-

ing. Licklider’s vision was of an “intergalactic net-

work.” This article documents what that meant to

Licklider and those who developed the ARPANET.

The last article in this issue is “Behind the Net:

The Untold Story of the ARPANET and Computer

Science.” It is the story told in the ARPANET Comple-

tion Report that the ARPANET was fundamentally

connected to and born of computer science rather than

of the military. From the founding of ARPA in re-

sponse to the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik in

1957, through Licklider changing the emphasis from

command and control to the more fundamental level of

interactive computing. The article describes the work

of the graduate students in the Network Working

Group (NWG) to develop the needed protocols and

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

Page 1

functionality to connect dissimilar computers and for

the use for practical tasks. In this process these stu-

dents created a form for the open exchange of ideas

documented in reports called Requests For Comments

(RFCs). Michael concludes that the work of the NWG

blazed the trail which the developers of the TCP/IP

protocol suit successfully followed. Fundamentally,

Licklider and the ARPANET researcher achieved their

many successes because they viewed the computer as

a communication device.

[Editor’s Note: At the end of November 1995, Michael Hauben

visited Japan for two weeks. He was invited to speak at the

COARA Hypernetwork '95, Beppu Bay Conference in Beppu,

Kyushu, Japan. The theme of the conference was “The Netizen

Revolution and the Regional Information Infrastructure.” He pre-

sented his speech “The Netizens and Community Networks” on

November 24, 1995 as part of the Netizens section. That speech

was the first version of the article below and can be seen online at:

https://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/feb/hauben.html. The

version below appears as the Preface of Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and

Ronda Hauben published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer Society

Press, pp. ix-xi.]

What is a Netizen?

The story of Netizens is an important one. In

conducting research five years ago online to determine

people’s uses of the global computer communications

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 bulletin board systems in

Michigan in 1985. After seven years of participation on

both local hobbyist-run computer bulletin board sys-

tems and the global Usenet, I began to research Usenet

and the Internet. I found these online discussions to be

mentally invigorating and welcoming of thoughtful

comments, questions and discussion. People were

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 won-

dered 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 on-

line world.

As part of course work at Columbia University,

I explored these questions. One professor encouraged

me to use Usenet and the Internet as places to conduct

research. My research was real participation in the on-

line community, exploring how and why these com-

munications forums functioned. I posed questions on

Usenet, mailing lists, and freenets. Along with my

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, fostering a sense of community and participa-

tion. 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

that the conventional media would never 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, what it was, and its significance. This is when my

research uncovered the remaining details that helped

me recognize the emergence of Netizens. There are

people online who actively contribute to the develop-

ment 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 e-mail

answers to people and provide help to newcomers, who

maintain FAQ files and other public information re-

positories, who maintain mailing lists, and so on. These

are the people who discuss the nature and role of this

new communications medium. These are the people

who as citizens of the Net I realized were Netizens.

However, these are not all people. Netizens are not just

anyone who comes online. Netizens are especially not

people who come online for individual gain or profit.

They are not people who come to the Net thinking it is

a service. Rather, they are the 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. 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.

Page 2

The term Netizen has spread widely since it was

first coined. The genesis comes from net culture based

on the original newsgroup naming conventions. Net-

work wide Usenet newsgroups included net.general 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 news-

group terminology. So there would be references to

net.gods, net.cops or net.citizens. My research demon-

strated that there were people active as members of the

network, which the words net citizen do not precisely

represent. The word citizen suggests a geographic or

national definition of social membership. The word

Netizen reflects the new non-geographically based so-

cial membership. So I contracted net.citizen to Netizen.

Two general uses of the term Netizen have de-

veloped. The first is a broad use to refer to anyone who

uses the Net, for whatever purpose. Thus, the term net-

izen has been prefixed in some uses with the adjectives

good or bad. The second use is closer to my under-

standing. 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, tele-

vision, books and other off-line media. As more and

more people join the online community and contribute

toward the nurturing of the Net and toward the devel-

opment of a great shared social wealth, the ideas and

values of Netizenship spread. But with the increasing

commercialization and privatization of the Net, Neti-

zenship is being challenged. During such a period, it is

valuable to look back at the pioneering vision and

action that made the Net possible and examine the

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

in these chapters.

Michael Hauben

New York and Beppu

November 1995

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: The earliest version of the following article first

appeared on Usenet in three posts on July 6, 1993. A version also

appeared as Chapter 7 of The Netizens and the Wonderful World

of the Net: An Anthology on January 12, 1994. A version is often

cited as Chapter 1 of Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben

published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 3-34.]

The Net and Netizens

The Impact the Net Has on

People’s Lives

by Michael Hauben

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 con-

tact with much of the world via the global computer

network. Virtually, you live next door to every other

single Netizen in the world. Geographical 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 infrastructure

currently exists. The Net – or the Internet, BITNET,

FIDOnet, other physical networks, Usenet, VMSnet,

and other logical networks – has rapidly grown to

cover all of the developed countries in the world.

Every day, more computers are attached to the existing

networks, and every new computer adds to the user

base – at least twenty-seven million people are inter-

connected today.

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 in-

creased the quality of … life.” The Net seems to open

a new lease on life for people. Social connections that

were never before 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 potential 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 pub-

licly, from individuals to the collective mass of many

on the Net – is possible. The old model of distribution

of information from the central Network Broadcasting

Page 3

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.

Netnews brings the power of the reporter to the Neti-

zen. 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 excluded sec-

tions of society to have a voice. This new medium is

unprecedented. Previous grassroots media have existed

for much smaller groups of people. The model of the

Net proves the old way does not have to be the only

way of networking. The Net extends the idea of net-

working, 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 will be a struggle to make access to the

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

we might see the 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 connection exists on the same level with

local connection. Also, the computer networks allow a

more advanced connection between the people who are

communicating. With computer communication sys-

tems, information and thoughts are connected to peo-

ple’s names and electronic-mail addresses. On the Net,

one can connect to others who have similar interests or

whose thought processes he or she enjoys.

Netizens make it a point to be helpful and friend-

ly – if they feel it will be worthwhile. Many Netizens

feel they have an obligation to be helpful, answer

queries, and follow up on discussions; to put their

opinions 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 So-

cial/Economic Wealth?” many people responded. Sev-

eral corrected my calling the Net a source of accurate

information. They pointed out that it was also a source

of opinions. However, readers can train themselves to

figure out the accurate information from the breadth of

opinions. Presented here is an example of the broad

range of views and opinions that I was able to gather

from my research on the Net. The Net can be a helpful

medium to help one understand the world. Only by

seeing many points of view can one figure out his or

her position on a topic.

Net society differs from off-line society by wel-

coming intellectual activity. People are encouraged to

be thoughtful and to present their ideas to the Net.

People are allowed to be intellectually 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. Brain-

storming among different types of people produces

robust thinking. Information is no longer a fixed com-

modity or resource on the Net. 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 so-

ciety. 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 contrib-

utes to the whole intellectual and social value and

possibilities of the Net.

LICKLIDER’S VISION

The world of the Netizen was envisioned more

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

Licklider brought to his leadership of the Department

of Defense’s ARPA Information Processing Tech-

niques Office (IPTO) a vision of “the intergalactic

computer network.” He shared this vision with others

when he spoke as a representative from ARPA.

Licklider was a prophet of the Net. In the 1968 paper,

“The Computer as a Communication Device” written

with Robert Taylor, they established several principles

from their observations on how the computer would

play a helpful role in human communication.

They

clarified their definition of communication as a cre-

ative process, differentiating between communication

and the sending and receiving of information. For

example, when two tape recorders send to or receive

information from each other, that is not communica-

tion. They wrote:

We believe that communicators have to do

something nontrivial with the information

they send and receive. And … to interact

Page 4

with the richness of living information –

not merely in the passive way that we have

become accustomed to using books and

libraries, but as active participants in an

ongoing process, bringing something to it

through our interaction with it, and not sim-

ply receiving from it by our connection to

it … . We want to emphasize something

beyond its one-way transfer: the increasing

significance of the jointly constructive, the

mutually reinforcing aspect of communica-

tion – the part that transcends know we

both know a fact that only one of us knew

before. When minds interact, new ideas

emerge. We want to talk about the creative

aspect of communication.

Licklider and Taylor defined four principles for

computers to make a contribution toward human com-

munication:

1. Communication is defined as an interac-

tive creative process.

2. Response times need to be short to make

the “conversation” free and easy.

3. Larger networks form out of smaller

regional networks.

4. Communities 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. In a later paper Licklider cowrote with

Albert Vezza, “Applications of Information Net-

works,”

they explore the possible business applica-

tions of information networks. Licklider and Vezza’s

survey of business applications in 1978 falls 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 at the time focused on the

sharing of computing resources, Licklider and Taylor

kept an open mind:

The collection of people, hardware, and

software – the multi-access computer to-

gether with its local community of users –

will become a node in a geographically

distributed computer network. Let us as-

sume for a moment that such a network has

been formed … . Through the network of

message processors, therefore, all the large

computers can communicate with one

another. And through them, all the mem-

bers of the supercommunity can commu-

nicate – with other people, with programs,

with data, or with a selected combinations

of those resources.

Their concept of the sharing of both computing

and human resources matches the modern Net. The

network of various human connections quickly forms,

changes its goals, disbands, and reforms into new

collaborations. The fluidity of such group dynamics

leads to a quickening of the creation of new ideas.

Groups can form to discuss an idea, focus in or broad-

en out, and re-form to fit the new ideas that have been

worked out.

Netnews, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), mailing

lists, and mud/mush/moo/m** (various of the discus-

sion tools available on the Net) are extremely dynamic.

Most can be formed immediately for either short- or

long-term use. As interests form or events occur, dis-

cussion groups can be created. (for example, the

mailing list 9NOV89 – L was formed after the fall of

the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and continued in

order to discuss German unification.)

The virtual space created on noncommercial

computer networks is accessible universally. The con-

tent on commercial networks, such as Compuserve or

America Online, is only accessible to those who pay to

belong to that particular network. The space on non-

commercial networks is accessible from the connec-

tions that exist, whereas social networks in the physical

world generally are connected by limited gateways. So

the capability of networking on computer nets over-

comes limitations inherent in non-computer social net-

works. This is important because it reduces the prob-

lems of population 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 seeing the

intellectual contribution these individuals can make.

However, access to the Net will need to be universal

for the Net to fully utilize the contribution each person

can make. As long as access is limited, the Net and

Page 5

those on the Net lose the full advantages it can offer.

But also, 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 would allow for

people of common interests, who are otherwise strang-

ers, 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 peo-

ple would connect to others via this Net in ways that

had been much harder in the past. Licklider observed

as the ARPANET grew to span two continents that this

physical connection allowed for wider social collabora-

tions 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 re-

ceived 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 electronic

mail (e-mail). It is nice that there can be reminders of

how exciting this new form of communication really is

– 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 community. Most

people can now gain something from the Net, while at

the same time helping it out. There are enough people

online now that most anyone new coming online will

find something of interest. People are meshing intel-

lects and knowledge to form new ideas. Larry Press

made this clear by writing:

I now work on the Net at least 2 hours per

day. I’ve had an account since around 1975

but it has only become super important in

the last couple of years because a critical

mass of membership was reached. I no

longer work in LA, but in cyberspace.

Although the original users of the Net were from

technical and scientific communities, many of them

found it valuable to explore the Net for more than just

technical reasons. Today, many different kinds of peo-

ple 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 (the ARPANET in the United States, the

network of the National Physical Laboratory in the

United Kingdom, CYCLADES in France, and other

networks around the world) developed the necessary

physical infrastructure for a fertile social network to

develop. Einar Stefferud wrote of this social connec-

tion:

The ARPANET has produced several mon-

umental results. First, it provided the physi-

cal and electrical communications back-

bone for development of the latent social

infrastructure we now call “THE INTER-

NET COMMUNITY.”

Many different kinds of people comprise the Net.

The university community sponsors access for a broad

range of people (students, professors, staff, retired pro-

fessors, etc.). Many businesses are also connected. A

“K-12 Net” that invites younger people to be a part of

the online community exists. Special bulletin-board

software exists to connect personal computer users to

the Net. Various Unix bulletin-board systems exist to

connect other users. It is virtually impossible to tell

what kinds of people connect to public bulletin board

systems (BBSs), as only a computer (or terminal) and

modem are the prerequisites to connect. Many, if not

all, FIDOnet BBSs (a very common BBS type) have at

least e-mail, and many also participate in the larger Net

through a gateway to Netnews. Prototype community

network systems are forming around the world (for

example, Cleveland Free-Net, Wellington Citynet,

Santa Monica Public Electronic Network (PEN),

Amsterdam Digital City, Hawaii FYI, National Capital

Free-Net and others in Canada). Access via these

community systems can be as easy as visiting the

community library, and membership is open to all who

live in the community.

In addition to the living body of resources this

diversity of Netizens represents, there is also a continu-

ally growing body of digitized data that forms another

resource. Whether it is Netizens digitizing great liter-

ature of the past (for example, the Gutenberg Project or

Project Bartleby), people gathering otherwise obscure

or non-mainstream material (for example, on various

religions, unusual hobbies, gay lifestyle), or Netizens

contributing new and original material, the Net follows

in the great tradition of other public institutions, such

as the public library or the principles behind public

education. The Net shares with these institutions that it

Page 6

serves the general populace. The data available 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 on the principle of being available to

everyone. The best example is the method of connect-

ing to file repositories via FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

by logging in as an “anonymous” user. Most, if not all,

World Wide Web sites, Wide Area Information Sys-

tems (WAIS), and gopher sites are open to all users of

the Net. It is true that the Net community is smaller

than it will be eventually, but the Net has reached a

point of general usefulness no matter who you are.

This evidence is exactly why it is a problem for

the Net to come under the control of commercial

entities. Once commercial interests gain control, the

Net will be much less powerful for the ordinary person

than it is currently. The interests of commercial entities

are different from those of the common person. Those

pursuing commercial objectives are only interested in

making a profit. A user of Compuserve or a similar

commercial network pays for access by the hour. If this

were extended to the present-day Net, 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 is in the 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 connect-

ing with other people can be powerful. There is power

in numbers. The Net allows individuals to realize their

power. The Net, uncontrolled by commercial entities,

becomes the gathering, discussion, and planning center

for many people. The combined efforts of people inter-

ested in communication has led to the development and

expansion of the global communications system.

What’s on the Net? Usenet, Free-Net, e-mail, library

catalogs, FTP sites, free software, electronic newslet-

ters and journals, Multi-User Domain/Dungeon

(mud)/mush/moo, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the mult-

imedia World Wide Web (WWW) and many kinds of

data banks. Different servers, such as WWW, WAIS,

and gophers attempt to order and to make it easier to

utilize the vast variety of information. There are both

public and private services and sources of information.

The public and free services often have 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. The networks allow

much more open and public interaction over a much

larger body of people than possible before. The com-

mon people have a unique voice that is now being

aired in a new way.

This new communications system introduces

every single person as someone special and in posses-

sion of a useful resource. Several people described how

important is the ability to connect to others at a grass-

roots level:

Simple – by access to a vast amount of

information and an enormous number of

brains — Brian May

For a geographically sparse group as it is,

MU* allows people to get to know one

another, the relevant newsgroup gives a

sense that there’s a community out there

and things are happening, and an associated

FTP site allows art and writing to be dis-

tributed. — Simon Raboczi

In summary, nets have helped enormously

in the dissemination of information from

people knowledgeable in certain areas

which would be difficult to obtain other-

wise. — Brent Edwards

I get to communicate rapidly and cheaply

with zillions of people around the world. —

Rosemary Warren

The following examples show how this is possi-

ble. People are normally unprotected from the profit

desires of large companies. Steven Alexander from

California uses the Net to try to prevent overcharging

at gas stations, a good example of the power of con-

necting people to uphold what is fair and in the best

interest of the common person in society.

From: Steven Alexander

I have started compiling and distributing

Page 7

(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 consumers 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 [nonprofit

organization] … . Someone looked them up

in the [nonprofit] … Register … [and] they

did not exist there … . Another one said,

that he had contact with the person who

sent the letter … only [under] another com-

pany-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 communication with the rest of the world, the

Net helped defeat the attempted coup in the former

Soviet Union in 1990. The members of the coup either

did not know about or understand the role the Russian

RELCOM network could play. 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.

The Net has also proven its value by providing an

important medium for students. Students participating

in the Chinese pro-democracy movement have kept in

touch with others around the world via their fragile

connection to the Net. The Net provided an easy way

of evading government censors to get news around the

world about events in China and to receive encourag-

ing feedback. Such feedback is vital when fighting on

seems impossible or wrong. Similarly, students in

France used the French Minitel system to organize a

successful fight against plans by the French govern-

ment to restrict admission to government-subsidized

universities.

The information flow on the Net is controlled by

those who use the Net. Users actively provide the

information they and others want. There is much more

active participation than what is provided for by other

forms of mass media. Television, radio, and magazines

are all driven by those who own them and who deter-

mine who will write. The Net gives people a medium

they can control. This control of information is a great

power not available before to the common person. For

example, Declan McCreesh describes how this makes

possible access to the most up-to-date information.

From: Declan Mccreesh

You get the most up to date info. that peo-

ple around the world can get their hands on,

which is great. For instance, the media

report who wins a Grand Prix, what hap-

pened and not a great deal more. On the

net, however, you can get top speeds, latest

car and technology developments, latest

rumors, major debates as to whether For-

mula 1 or Indy cars are better, etc.

The Net helps to make the information available

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

cast and read and write capability. That new capability,

which is not normally prevalent in our society, allows

an actual participant or observer to report something.

This gives the power of the reporter to the individual,

allowing the source to report. This new medium allows

everyone online to make a contribution. The old media

instead controls who reports and what they say. The

possibility of eyewitness accounts via the Net can

make the information more accurate. This also opens

up the possibility of a grassroots network, where

information is passed from person to person around the

world. Thus, German citizens learned about the

Chernobyl explosion from the Net before the govern-

ment decided to release the information to the public

through traditional media. The connection is people to

people rather than government to government. Citizen

journalists can now distribute to more than those they

know personally. The distribution of the writings of

ordinary people is the second step after the advent of

the inexpensive personal computer in the early 1980s.

The personal computer and printer allowed anyone to

produce mass quantities of documents. Personal pub-

lishing is now joined by wide personal distribution.

Not only is grassroots reporting possible, 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

Page 8

skills.

From: Steve Welch

When you get more information from di-

verse 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 info-glut jungle

alive.

Governments that rule based on control of infor-

mation will succumb eventually to the tides of democ-

racy. As Dr. Sun Yat-Sen of the Chinese Democracy

Movement (c. 1919) once said, “The worldwide demo-

cratic 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 grass-

roots people power of Netizens. Governments can no

longer easily keep information from people.

Many groups that do not have an established

form of communications available to them have found

the Net to be a powerful tool. For example, 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 difficult to get infor-

mation about Ireland than you would ex-

pect. However a man called Liam Ferrie

who works in Digital in Galway, compiles

a newspaper on the weeks events in Ireland

and so I can now easily keep abreast of

most developments in Irish current affairs,

which helps me feel like I’m not losing

touch when I go home about twice a year.

It is also transmitted to about 2000 Irish

people all over the first and third worlds.

From: Madhur K. Limdi

I read your above posting and wanted to

share my experience with you. I have been

a frequent reader of news in usenet groups!

Such as soc.culture.indian misc.news

.southasia and both of these keep me rea-

sonably informed about the happenings in

my home country India.

Also in the United States, the Net has provided

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 communication.

From: Gregory G. Woodbury

We will be going to a march on Washing-

ton and are coordinating our plans and

travel with a large number of other folks

around the country via e-mail and conver-

sations on Usenet.

From: Jann Vanover

I’m a member of a Buddhist organization

and just found a man in Berkeley who

keeps a Mailing List that sends daily guid-

ance and discussions for this group. So I

get a little religious 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 communication. Al-

most every aspect of interpersonal commu-

nication on the network has a gay/les-

bian/bi aspect to it that forms a tight and

intimate acquaintanceship which some-

times even boils over into arguments and

enmities. This network of connections,

friends, enemies, lovers, etc. facilitates po-

litical goals that would not otherwise be

possible (organizing letter-writing cam-

paigns about the Gays in the Military Ban

via the ACT-UP list, being able to send e-

mail directly to the White House, finding

out about activism, bashing, etc. in other

states and around the world, etc.).

From: Robert Dean

As a member of the science fiction commu-

nity, I’ve met quite a few people 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 it valuable and ir-

replaceable in their lives. This is forming a group of

Page 9

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 in 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 intellectual coffee-

house, where strangers can connect without

the formalities of face to face rituals (hello,

how are you today …) to allow a direct-

connect style of communication that seems

to transcend the “how’s the weather” kind

of conversation to just let us connect with-

out the bullshit.

Strangers are no longer strange on the Net. Peo-

ple 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

others, often as a return for the help they had received.

Things have changed, and the welcome to newcomers

is not as universally friendly, but there are still many

online who are helpful to new users, and goodwill still

overpowers any unfriendly comments.

From: Jean-françois 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 im-

portant 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 ex-

pensive. I have to say that I’m not an ex-

pressive person. I’m not a great talker, nor

somebody who could make shows … . I’m

more an “introvert.”

Yet Jean-François wrote me. This is just one

example of the social power of the Net. Another Neti-

zen comments on how the Net helped her befriend

strangers.

From: Laura Goodin

Last summer I was traveling to Denver and

I used a listserv mailing list to find out

whether a particular running group I run

with had a branch there. They did, and I

had a wonderful time meeting people with

a common interest (and drinking beer with

them); I was no longer a stranger.

BROADENED AND WORLDLY

PERSPECTIVES

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 broad-

ening perspective. It is 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 a person the chance to consider multiple views

before settling on a specific opinion. Having access to

the “marketplace of ideas” allows a person to make a

reasoned judgment.

From: Jean-françois Messier

My attitudes to other peoples, races and

religions changed, since I had more

chances to talk with other peoples around

the world. When first exchanging mail with

people from Yellowknife, Yukon, I had a

real strange feeling: Getting messages and

chatting with people that far from me. I

noticed around me that a lot of people have

opinions and positions about politics that

are for themselves, without knowing others.

Because I have a much broader view of the

world now, I changed and am more concil-

iatory and peaceful with other people.

Writing to someone you never saw,

changes the way you write, also, the instan-

cy of the transmission makes the conversa-

tion much more “live” than waiting for the

damn slow paper mail. Telecommunica-

tions opened the world to me and changed

my visions of people and countries … .

From: Anthony Berno

I could not begin to tell you how different

my life would be without the Net. My life

would be short about a dozen people, some

Page 10

of them central, I would be wallowing in

ignorance on several significant subjects,

and my mind would be lacking many

broadening and enlightening influences.

From: Henry Choy

More things to look at. Increased perspec-

tive on life. The computer network brings

people closer together, and permits them to

speak at will to a large audience. I recom-

mend that the telecommunications and

computer industry make large scale com-

puter networking accessible to the general

public. It’s like making places accessible to

the handicapped. People brought closer to-

gether will release some existing social

tensions. People need to be heard, and they

need to hear.

From: Paul Ready

You don’t have to go to another country to

meet people from there. It is not the same

as personally knowing them, but I always

pay special attention to information from

people outside the States. They are likely to

have a different perspective on things.

From: Leandra Dean

I love to study people, and the Net has been

the best possible resource to this end. The

Net is truly a window to the world, and

without it we could only hope to physically

meet virtually thousands of people every

day to gain the same insights. I shudder to

think about how different and closed in my

life would be without the Net.

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 collab-

orations between times on and off line form an inter-

esting 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 also important. Often the material gains

are not financial. Rather, worthwhile goods can be re-

distributed – from those to whom the goods may have

lost personal value to those who would value them.

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.

Response Received via E-mail

When I started using ForumNet (a chat

program similar to IRC, but smaller –

[Now called icb]) back in January 1990, I

was fairly shy and insecure … . I had a few

close friends but was slow at making new

ones. Within a few weeks, on ForumNet, I

found myself able to be open, articulate,

and well-liked in this virtual environment.

Soon, this discovery began to affect my

behavior in “real” face-to-face interaction.

I met some of my computer friends in 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 inter-

action is not properly a crutch to substitute

for face-to-face encounters, but the ability

to converse via keyboard and modem with

real people at the other end of the line has

translated into the real-life ability for me to

reach out to people without the mediating

use of a computer. My life has improved. I

wouldn’t trade my experience with the Net

for anything.

From: Jack Frisch

I must begin my comments on the Internet

with one simple yet significant statement:

the availability and use of the Internet is

changing my life profoundly.

From: Carole E. Mah

I also used to facilitate a vegetarian list,

which radically altered many people’s

Page 11

lives, offering them access to mail-order

foods, recipes, and friendship via net-con-

tact with people who live in areas where

non-meat alternatives are readily available.

From: Jann Vanover

Well, the first thing I thought of is pur-

chases I’ve made through the Net which

have “changed my life.” I drove my Subaru

Station wagon until last fall when I ac-

quired a VW Camper van that I saw on a

local Net ad. I wasn’t looking for a van,

wasn’t even shopping for another vehicle,

but the second time this ad scrolled by me,

I looked into it and eventually bought it. I

will certainly say that driving a 23-year-old

VW camper van has changed my life! I

thought I would be ridiculed, but have

found that people have a lot of respect and

admiration for this car!

Through the Net, I heard that Roger Waters

was going to perform “The Wall” again, an

event I had promised myself not to miss, so

I made a trip to Berlin (East and West) in

1990 to see this concert. This was CER-

TAINLY 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, pick-

ing 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 connections, allowing

me to adjust my collection of games to

meet my current interests, and get games

that I no longer wanted to people who do

want them, whether they live down the

road from me in Maryland, or in Canada,

Austria, Finland, Germany or Israel. I have

also taken an Esperanto course via e-mail,

and correspond irregularly in Esperanto

with interested parties world wide.

From: Caryn K. Roberts

Usenet & Internet … are available to me at

work and by dial-up connection to work

from home. I have been materially enriched

by the use of the Net. I have managed to

sell items I no longer needed. I have been

able to purchase items from others for good

prices. I have saved money and am doing

my part to recycle technology instead of

adding burdens to the municipal waste dis-

posal service.

Using the Net I have also been enriched by

discussions and information found in nu-

merous newsgroups from sci.med to

sci.skeptic to many of the comp.* groups.

I have offered advice to solve problems and

have been able to solve problems I had by

using information in these forums.

THE NET AS A SOURCE OF

ENORMOUS RESOURCES

Before the Net was widely seen as an enormous

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 technical

information for my lectures, up-to-date pro-

duct information, and informed opinion. As

such I find that I am constantly better in-

formed than the people around me. (That

sounds vain, but it’s not meant to be. It’s

simply meant to emphasize how strongly I

feel that the Net is a superb information

resource.)

From: R. J. White

I used the Net to find parts for my 1971

Opel GT. I was living in North America at

the time, and going through the normal

channels, like GM, are no good. The Net

was like an untapped resource.

From: John Harper

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

a question about an obscure point in history

Page 12

of maths on the sci.math newsgroup and

got a useful answer from Exeter, U.K.

Beforehand I had no idea where anyone

knowing the answer might be. I had drawn

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

about a slightly less obscure point on

comp.lang.fortran which generated a long

(and helpful) discussion on the Net for a

week or two.

From: Paul Ready

Yes, it is a worldwide rapid distribution

center of information, on topics both popu-

lar and obscure. It may not make the infor-

mation more valuable, but it certainly in-

creases the information, and the propaga-

tion of information. To those connected, it

is a valuable resource. Flame wars aside, a

lot of generally inaccessible information is

readily available.

From: Lee Rothstein

Usenet and mailing lists create a group of

people who are motivated and capable of

talking about a specific topic. The software

allows deeply contextual conversations to

occur with a minimum of rehash. As expe-

rience develops with the medium, each user

realizes that the other that he talks to or

will talk to generally help him/her, and can

do him/her no harm because of the remote-

ness imposed by the cable.

From: Lu Ann Johnson

Hi! Usenet came to my rescue – I’m a

librarian and was working with a group of

students on a marketing project. They were

marketing a make-believe product – a com-

pact disc of “music hits of the 70's.” They

needed a source to tell them how much it

cost to produce a CD – without mastering,

etc. I exhausted all my print resources so I

posted the question in a business news-

group. Within hours I learned from several

companies that it cost about $1.50 to pro-

duce a CD. :) The students were very grate-

ful to get the information.

From: Laura Goodin

I teach self-defense, and in rec.martial-art

someone posted information about a study

on the effectiveness of Mace for self-de-

fense that I had been looking for years.

From: Cliff Roberts

I have been using Internet through a pro-

gram in New Jersey to bring the fields of

Science and Math to grammar school chil-

dren grades K-8. We have implemented a

system where the classrooms are equipped

with PC’s and are able to dial in to a UNIX

system. There they can send e-mail and

post questions to a KidsQuest ID. The ID

then routes the questions to volunteers with

accounts on UNIX. The scientists then

answer or give advice of where to find the

information they want. Another well ac-

cepted feature is to list out the soc.penpals

list and e-mail people in different countries

that are being studied in the schools.

From: Joe Farrenkopf

I think Usenet is a very interesting thing.

For me, it’s mostly just a way to pass …

time when bored. However, I have gotten

some very useful things from it. There is

one group in particular called

comp.lang.fortran, and on several occasions

when I’ve had a problem writing a pro-

gram, I was able to post to this group to get

some help to find out what I was doing

wrong. In these cases, it was an invaluable

resource.

COLLABORATIVE WORK

As new connections are made between people,

more ideas travel over greater distances. This allows

either like-minded people or complementary people to

come in touch with each other. The varied resources of

the networks allow these same people to keep in touch

even if they 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, communi-

cations can take place entirely electronically. This

medium allows for new forms of collaborative 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 hap-

Page 13

pened in 1977 … . Along with five other

“Net Folks” I wrote the following paper:

“The ARPANET TELNET Protocol: Its

Purpose, Principles, Implementation, and

Impact on Host Operating System Design,”

with Davidson, Postel, Mimno, Thomas,

and Walden: Fifth Data Communications

Symposium, Snowbird, UT; September 27-

29, 1977. What’s so unusual about a collab-

orative paper, you ask? Simply that the six

of us never even made a TELEPHONE call

about the paper, much less had a meeting or

anything. Literally EVERYTHING – from

the first ideas in a “broadcast” mail to the

distribution of the final “troff-ready” ver-

sion – was done with e-mail. These days

this might not be such a deal, but it was

interesting back then.

From: Paul Gillingwater

… in Vienna was an on-line computer

mediated art forum … with video confer-

encing between two cities, plus an on-line

discussion in a virtual MUD type confer-

ence later that evening.

Response Received via E-mail

In response to your question about having

fun on the net, and being creative, one

incident comes to mind. I had met a woman

on ForumNet (a system like IRC). She and

I talked and talked about all sorts of things.

One night, we felt especially artistic. We

co-wrote a poem over the computer. I’d

type a few words, she’d pick up where I

left off (in the middle of sentences or

wherever) and on and on. I don’t think we

had any idea what it was going to be in the

end, thematically or structurally. In the end,

we had a very good poem, one that I would

try to publish if I knew her whereabouts

anymore … .

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF EVERY-

DAY LIFE

Information flow can take various shapes. The

strangest and perhaps most interesting one is how

emotion can be attached to information flow, although

they often seem like two very different things. I re-

ceived a large number of responses that reported real-

life marriages arising from Net meetings. The Net

facilitates the meeting of people of like interests. The

newness of the Net means we cannot fully understand

its impact. However, it is worth noting that people have

also broken up online. So while it is a new social

medium, a range of dynamics 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 wed-

ding (in California).

From: Scott Kitchen

I think I can add something for your paper.

I met my fiancee 4 years ago over the net.

I was at Ohio State, and she was in Prince-

ton, and we started talking about an article

of hers I’d read in rec.games.frp. We got to

talking, eventually met, found we liked

each other, and the rest is history. We 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 wandering around that area if I

hadn’t been interested in the development

of the net.

From: Laura Goodin

And now, the BEST story: about eight

months ago I was browsing soc.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

e-mail, requesting the tune and just sort of

shooting the breeze. We began an e-mail

correspondence that soon incorporated

voice calls as well. One thing led inexora-

bly 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.cul-

ture.australia) and I accepted. Congratula-

tory messages came in from all over the

Page 14

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 e-mails a day

(we’re well over 1400 for eight months

now), and chatting using IRC. A long dis-

tance relationship is hellish, but the pain is

eased somewhat by the Internet.

From: Chuq von Rospach

Oh, and in the “how the Net made my non-

net life better” category, I met my wife via

the net. Does that count?

WORK

The fluid connections and the rapidly changing

nature of the networks make the Net a welcome

medium for those who are job hunting and for those

who have jobs to offer. The networks have a large

number of people who are looking for jobs. Placing job

announcements is easy, and they can be kept available

for as long as the job is offered. Résumés can be sent

quickly and easily by e-mail. Companies can respond

quickly and easily to such submissions, also by e-mail.

Besides finding work, the Net helps people who

are currently employed 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 high-

ly-qualified consultant (a Finn living in

Tasmania) to do some work for us; the ini-

tial announcement was over Usenet; sub-

sequent negotiations were through e-mail.

From: JJ

I’ve hired people off the net, and from

meeting them in muds, when I find some-

body 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 pro-

gramming) 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 computer field. Long live the Internet

(and make it possible for private citizens to

get access!)

From: Mark Gooley

I got my job by answering a posting to a

news-group.

From: Anthony Berno

I develop for NEXTSTEP, and the Net is

very useful in getting useful programming

hints, info on product releases, rumors, et

cetera.

From: Gregory G. Woodbury

Due to contacts made via Usenet and e-

mail, I got a job as a consultant at BTL in

1981 after I lost my job at Due. 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 e-mail is bringing back letter writing. How-

ever, the immediacy of e-mail means less care need be

taken in the process of writing. E-mail, IRC, and

Netnews 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 did-

n’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

Page 15

on the net, we started corresponding via e-

mail, 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. E-

mail is quick, easy and fun enough that we

don’t put it off.

From: Anthony Berno

Incidentally, it is also one of my primary

modes of communication with my sister

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

than a phone call, faster than a letter, and

cheaper than either of them.

From: 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 feel-

ings of loneliness and “I am the only one, I

must be a pervert” feelings among queer

people just coming out of the closet. They

have a whole world of like-minded people

to turn to on Usenet, on Bitnet lists, on

IRC, in personal e-mail, on BBSs and AOL

type conferences, etc.

From: Jann Vanover

Apart from purchases, I have been con-

tacted by: 1) a very good friend from col-

lege who I’d lost track of. She got married

to a man she met in a singles newsgroup

(they’ve been married 2 years+) 2) some-

one 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 bud-

dies” 3) an old girlfriend of my brothers.

They went out for eight years, but I learned

more about her from ONE e-mail letter

than I had ever learned when meeting her

in person.

From: Godfrey Nolan

Above all it helps me keep in touch with

friends who I would inevitably lose other-

wise. The Net helps those that move around

for economic reasons to lessen the worst

aspects of leaving your friends in the series

of places that you once called home. It’s

the best thing since sliced bread.

PROBLEMS

With all of the positive uses and advantages of

the Net, it is not perfect. The blind view of people on

the Net seems to shield most, but not everyone. For

example, there is a relatively large male-to-female

population ratio on the Net. Women online can feel the

effects of this difference. Women who have easily

identifiable user names or IDs are prone to be the

center of much attention. While that might be good,

much of that attention can be of a hostile or negative

nature. This attention may be detrimental to women

who try to be active on the Net. Net harassment can

spread against users for other reasons as well. People

with unpopular ideas need to be strong to withstand the

abuse they may receive from others.

The worst non-people problem seems to be in-

formation overflow. Information adds up very quickly,

and it can be hard to organize and sort through it all.

Technology is now being developed to handle this

problem.

From: Scott Hatton

There is a problem with this brave new

world in that a lot of people don’t appreci-

ate 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 discovered

that is really rather fascinating. People can

be incredibly rude when communicating

Page 16

through this medium. For example, some

time ago, I posted a question to lots of

different newsgroups, and many people felt

my question was inappropriate to their

particular group. They wrote to me and told

me so, using amazingly nasty words. I

guess it’s easier to be rude if you don’t

have to face a person, but can say whatever

you want over a computer.

From: Brad Kepley

I get a little irritated with people always

claiming someone else is “wasting band-

width” because they disagree with them.

About half the time it turns out that the

person being told to shut up was right after

all. Then again, when you look at things

like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica and other

“non-bandwidth-wasting” activities, it

seems almost comical to me when someone

says this. There is nothing more wasteful

than 95% of what Usenet is used for. it’s a

joke to say that a particular person is ‘wast-

ing’ 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 as-

sembly allows people to take control of 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 hold or gain

power is something special that has to be protected.

The Net has made a valuable impact on human

society. My research has demonstrated that people’s

lives have been substantially improved via their con-

nection to the Net. This sets the basis for providing

access to all in society. Using similar reasoning, 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 de-

pend on high connectivity. In their 1968 article, “The

Computer as a Communication Device,” they argued

that the network’s impact upon society will depend on

how available the network is to society as a whole.

Society will improve if Net access is made

available everyone. Only if access is universal will the

Net itself advance. Ubiquitous connection is necessary

for the Net to encompass all possible resources. One

Net visionary, Steve Welch, responded to my research

by calling for universal access:

If we can get to the point where anyone

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

information is as ubiquitous as access to

the phone system, all Hell will break loose.

Bet on it.

Steve is right. “All Hell will break loose” in the

most positive of ways imaginable. The philosophers

Thomas Paine and 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 fun-

damentally changed our lives. Licklider predicted that

the Net would fundamentally change the way people

live and work. It is important to try to understand the

Net’s impact, so as to help extend and reinforce this

achievement.

NOTES

1. See Internet Society News 2 (Spring 1993) inside back cover for

a map showing Net penetration around the world. Larry

Landweber maintains and posts updated connectivity maps and

tables. See, for example,

https://mappa.mundi.net/maps/maps_0

11/landweber_map2.html

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 (Palo Alto, Calif: Digital Systems Research

Center, 1990); originally published in Science and Technology,

April 1968. Available online at

http://memex.org/licklider.html

3. Ibid., 21.

4. Proceedings of IEEE 66 (November, 1978): 43-50.

5. Licklider and Taylor, 32.

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

ConneXions – The Interoperability Report 3 (10): 21.

7. See article by Larry Press posted on the comp.risks newsgroup,

September 6, 1991.

8. Licklider and Taylor, 40.

Much thanks is owed to the many who contributed Usenet

posts and e-mail 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.

The following people who were quoted indicated that their

e-mail addresses be included:

Page 17

Jim Carroll [email protected]

Kieran Clulow u103625[email protected].edu.au

Robert Dean [email protected]

Jack Frisch frischj@gbms01.uwgb.edu

Scott Hatton 10011[email protected]

Lu Ann Johnson [email protected]su.edu

Jean-François Messier messier@igs.net

Larry Press [email protected]

Clifford A. Roberts [email protected]

Chuq Von Rospach chuqui@plaidworks.com

Gregory G.Woodbury news@wolves.durham.nc.us

An early version of this chapter by Michael Hauben was

made available online in Summer 1993. A revised version was

printed in the Amateur Computerist 6 (Fall/Winter 1994-1995).

Appendix to Chapter 1

The Posts for the Research

1. Is the Net a Source of Social/Economic Wealth? & Other

Thoughts

2. The Magic of E-Mail – Beginnings

3. Does the Net Bring Real-Life Advantages?

4. Looking for Exciting Uses of the Net

5. Connecting Others to the Net

6. Looking for Stories of Net Harassment

7. Does the Net Help You Be Creative or Have Fun?

IS THE NET A SOURCE OF SOCIAL/ECONOMIC

WEALTH? & OTHER THOUGHTS

POST:

Newsgroups: news.misc, alt.culture.usenet, alt.amateur-comp,

sci.econ, comp.misc, soc.misc, comp.org.eff.talk

Subject: Is the Net a Source of Social/Economic Wealth? & Other

Thoughts.

There are some notes I have made in trying to form a

proposal for a paper I am writing for an Independent Project in

College. I would appreciate any ideas or suggestions in e-mail.

Please send e-mail to me at: hau[email protected]

The points I would most like some feedback on are 1-6.

However, it might be useful if anyone is interested in the

question of whether or not the Net (and its users) is a source of

creation of economic, social, or intellectual wealth. This might

make an interesting discussion via public follow-ups.

My Proposal

I want to understand this idea of Internetworking and

cooperative attitude. The social connections and collaborations

that the Internet and other parts of the global computer network

make possible are new and very important. This more widespread

communication brings the general populace of the world in better

intersection/global social intercourse.

Question about Battle for use and right to utilize. And peo-

ple have taken the battle up in order to keep access open and for

all. Forces for restriction and censorship. Only through battle that

net has stayed open. Net *inherently* allows people choice to

speak.

Is it secret that Usenet did restrict corporations/private from

abusing Net as it is research-oriented and developed only via

because it was an experiment? (NOT A FLAME)

*****1. What does communication over the networks mean? Is it

“value-added” somehow in that any response might bring some-

thing added into the amount of information or value. Does

communication via the Net represent the quicker building by peo-

ple on other people’s work thus representing advancements (in

ideas, products, production, etc.)

*****2. Does the Net represent intellectual wealth? Does the net

represent the growth and increase in Gross National Product

/Wealth or Wealth of Nations? (What if any theoretical back-

ground is there to this?) William Petty maybe Bacon, or Royal

Society.

*****3. What does the Net make possible? Is the “Communica-

tion” on the net different than normal/before modes of communi-

cation? Does the widespread of connections and zero-time (Ability

to turnaround information and/or publication or exchange of

information in almost no time) of producing things prove revolu-

tionary?

*****4. Provides a Forum that facilitates Intellectual Ferment.

*****5. Net makes knowing real conditions of society possible –

because you have a “direct” connection to “many” people – the

masses.

*****6. Accurate Information (similar to point 5)

7. How does the network make these “connections” possible easier

than before? (These connections being finding people in the world

to enjoy exchanging information, debating, connecting intellectu-

ally or whimsically – helping to find people who you can or want

to interact/communicate with.)

8. Who has access and can gain the advantage of this service/con-

nection/resource/revolution? Is this only an advantaged group of

people, or is it growing quickly? Or should it grow quicker? What

direction is access going toward for? What is Clinton/etc. doing?

(Business?) Is there a fight against the continued openness and/or

growing openness of letting the great body of people communicate

accurate information that is normally controlled in normal modes

of mass media.

Thanks,

– Michael Hauben

THE MAGIC OF E-MAIL – BEGINNINGS

POST:

Subject: The Magic of E-Mail – Beginnings

Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc, alt.amateur-comp, alt.folklore.com-

puters, soc.college, alt.culture.usenet, news.misc

Do you remember the first e-mail message you sent? Do

you remember the first e-mail you replied to? Do you remember

the first response you received in e-mail? Do you remember the

first e-mail response you received seemingly before you sent out

the original message? <chuckle> – Do you remember the magic?

Excitement is a key word, as is immense usefulness.

Whether you are a scientist, a student or a casual user, person-to-

person communication via the computer is *VERY* exciting.

Remember your first time and write it down. Keep your memory

and save it for posterity. You … We … are all part of what is a

relatively early period of the computer communications revolu-

tion. Save your experience in order to help recognize and remem-

ber this period of change – this beginning.

And if you do write down (or type in) your first (or first couple)

of real *exciting* e-mail beginnings please e-mail them to me. I

will try to post a summary to Usenet. And talk about e-mail from

Page 18

e-mail or e-mail in response to Usenet, or e-mail in connection

with something before the current e-mail or what you think might

come in the future.

Thanks,

– Michael

DOES THE NET BRING REAL-LIFE ADVANTAGES?

POST:

Article 891 of alt.amateur-comp:

Newsgroups: soc.singles, rec.autos, soc.college, alt.amateur-comp,

soc.culture.usa, comp.misc

From: hauben@cs.columbia.edu (Michael Hauben)

Subject: Does the Net Bring Real-Life Advantages?

Message – ID: <C5II5[email protected]lumbia.edu>

Summary: Has the Net improved or broadened your off-line

world?

Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1993 06:31:58 GMT

How has the Net changed your life? Has anyone who has

used the Net actually been able to add to their off-line life

successfully? I am doing research for a paper for college, and I am

interested in the material changes that the Net helps develop

through the increased communication.

Has access to the Net and your participation on it allowed

you to do something that you wouldn’t have done before – offline?

Anything would be interesting – meeting people/new friends,

marrying someone from on-line, joining groups, certain opportuni-

ties that were there because of the connection via the Net, etc.. I

am interested in hearing about actions caused by use of any part

of the Net (Usenet, talk, e-mail, etc.). The *KEY* point is that the

cause or facilitator of the event needs to be because of the Net

somehow. If you have any interesting, or useful stories, or ideas

please either e-mail them to me, or post a follow-up to this

message!

Thanks,

– Michael

LOOKING FOR EXCITING USES OF THE NET

POST:

Subject: Looking for Exciting Uses of the Net

I am doing research for a paper for a college independent

study about the net and communications. I would appreciate hear-

ing about using any part of the net: Usenet News/Netnews, IRC,

e-mail, mailing-lists, Freenets, FTP, WAIS, gopher, etc.

I would like to know about people’s uses of the network(s)

that have been especially interesting, valuable and/or exciting. I

want to hear about people’s delights and also about disappoint-

ments using the Net. Please do NOT send me information about

use by businesses or corporations for commercial purposes. I am

NOT interested in commercial or proprietary uses. I AM interested

in uses that serve the public, that are open, that serve science,

research, education, and social aims and objectives. I am also

interested in uses that serve to help people personally on their

work (programming, et al.) or hobbies.

Either e-mail me at [email protected]bia.edu or post a

public follow-up. Both if possible.

Thanks,

– Michael Hauben

CONNECTING OTHERS TO THE NET

Subject: Connecting Others to the Net

Newsgroups: news.misc, alt.culture, Usenet, alt.amateur-comp,

comp.misc, soc.misc

Hi,

I would like to hear from people the various ways in how

they have introduced others to Usenet and the Internet. What ways

have been successful and relatively inexpensive in getting family,

friends, and other associates connected?

I am interested because I am interested in people’s attempts

(consciously or unconsciously) to further the expansion of the Net.

To the further expansion of the Net! : )

– Michael Hauben

LOOKING FOR STORIES OF NET HARASSMENT

POST:

Subject: Looking for Stories of Net Harassment

Newsgroups: alt.censorship, news.misc, comp.mail.misc, alt.am-

ateur-comp

Have you ever experienced harassment on the net? Have

you tried to utilize the communicative aspects of Usenet, E-mail

or other computer networking capabilities but wound up discour-

aged? Please let me know if you have been the victim of censor-

ship, harassment or some kind of blocking at some point in your

usage of computer-facilitated communication. If so, do you think

this “discouragement” was wrong or vicious, or malicious.

Thank you,

– Michael

And lastly maybe it would be helpful to find out why you

thought you were treated such.

DOES THE NET HELP YOU BE CREATIVE OR HAVE

FUN?

POST:

Subject: Does the Net Help You Be Creative or Have Fun?

Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa, talk.bizarre, alt.mud, alt.irc,

news.misc, alt.culture.usenet, alt.amateur-comp, rec.music.misc,

rec.arts.misc

I am conducting research for an independent study about

computer and communication for college. So far I have asked and

received many “serious” answers and replies dealing with work,

keeping in touch with friends around the world, etc. However I am

also interested in what effect the Net (Netnews, the Internet, other

Nets, FTP, IRC, gopher, etc.) has on either creative endeavors you

might have, or just plain silly or fun things. Has access to the Net

helped you in any creative hobbies you might have, or just given

you a chance to have fun?

For example. have your music tastes expanded, or do you

know about more plays happening, have you learned about other

who are musicians, or artists or writers? And if so, have you

gotten a chance to jam, paint, write, or somehow help each other?

Have there been any on-going creative collaborative music/art/lit-

erary experiments? How has the computer assisted communication

helped you be creative or expanded your boundaries?

The other side is, have you found more ways to just have

fun, or of new ways of having fun.

As I am not exactly sure where to post this message, I

would appreciate any suggestions as to other groups to post the

message to.

Thanks!

– Michael Hauben

Page 19

[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared

online on November 30, 1992. It had been prepared for a Com-

puter and Society class at Columbia University. A version

appeared online as Chapter 3 of the net book, The Netizens and the

Wonderful World of the Net: An Anthology on January, 12, 1994.

A later version appears as Chapter 3 of Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and

Ronda Hauben published in 1997 by the IEEE Computer Society

Press, pp. 48-58.]

The Social Forces Behind the

Development of Usenet

by Michael Hauben

Right at this moment, somewhere in the world,

someone is being helpful (or someone is being helped).

At the same time, others are participating in online

discussions and debates. A new communications medi-

um is currently in its infancy. Over the past two de-

cades a global computer telecommunications network

has been developing. One element of this network is

called Usenet (also known as Netnews). The original

carrier of this news was called UUCPnet (or just

UUCP).

The basic element of Usenet is a post. Each indi-

vidual post consists of a unique contribution from a

user, placed in a subject area called a newsgroup. In

Usenet’s beginning (and still to some extent today),

posts were transferred using the UUCP utility distrib-

uted with Unix. This utility allows the use of phone

lines to transmit computer data among separate com-

puters.

Usenet grew from the ground up in a grassroots

manner. Originally, there was no official structure.

What began as two or three sites on the network in

1979 expanded to 15 in 1980, to 150 in 1981, to 400 in

1982. The very nature of Usenet is communication.

Usenet greatly facilitates inter-human communication

among a large group of users. The rawest principle of

Usenet is its importance. In its simplest form, Usenet

represents democracy.

Inherent in most mass media is central control of

content. Many people are influenced by the decisions

of a few. Television programming, for example, is

controlled by a small group of people compared to the

size of the audience. The audience has very little

choice over what is emphasized by most mass media.

Usenet, however, is controlled by its audience. Usenet

should be seen as a promising successor to other peo-

ple’s presses, such as broadsides at the time of the

American Revolution and the penny presses in England

at the turn of the nineteenth century. Most of the

material written to Usenet is contributed by the same

people who actively read Usenet. Thus, the audience of

Usenet decides the content and subject matter to be

thought about, presented, and debated. The ideas that

exist on Usenet come from the mass of people who

participate in it. In this way, Usenet is an uncensored

forum for debate where many sides of an issue come

into view. Instead of being force-fed by an uncontrolla-

ble source of information, the participants set the tone

and emphasis on Usenet. People control what happens

on Usenet. In this rare situation, issues and concerns

that are of interest, and thus important to the partici-

pants, are brought up. In the tradition of amateur radio

and Citizen’s Band radio, Usenet is the product of the

users’ ideas and will. Amateur radio and CB, however,

are more restricted than Usenet. The range of Usenet

connectivity is international and quickly expanding

into every nook and cranny around the world. This

explosive expansion allows growing communication

among people around the world.

In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects

Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense funded

research of fundamental importance to the develop-

ment and testing of computer communications net-

works. ARPA sponsored research laid the groundwork

for the development of other net works such as

UUCPnet. ARPA funded an experiment to attempt to

connect incompatible mainframe computers.

This ex-

perimental connection of computers was called the

ARPA Computer Network or the ARPANET. ARPA’s

stated objectives were:

1. To develop techniques and obtain experi-

ence on interconnecting computers in such

a way that a very broad class of interac-

tions were possible and

2. To improve and increase computer re-

search productivity through resource shar-

ing.

ARPA was sponsoring both communications

research and the study of how to conserve funds by

avoiding duplication of computer resources.

Bolt

Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Cambridge, Massa-

chusetts company, was chosen to construct the IMP

subnetwork, and AT&T was chosen to provide the

communications lines. The ARPANET was needed

because it was found that a data connection over

existing telephone voice lines was too slow and not

reliable enough to make a useful connection.

Packet

Page 20

switching was developed for use as the protocol for

exchanging information over the lines. Packet switch-

ing is a communications process in which all messages

are broken up into small data packets which are trans-

mitted interspersed and reassembled. In this way, short,

medium and long messages get transferred with

minimum delay.

The ARPANET was a success. It contributed

several advances to communications research. ARPA-

NET researchers were surprised at the enthusiastic

adoption of electronic mail (e-mail) as the primary

source of communication early on. E-mail was a source

of increased productivity through the use of the ARPA-

NET.

By 1983, the ARPANET officially shifted from

using NCP (Network Control Program) to TCP/IP

(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.) A

key part of TCP/IP’s success lies in its simplicity. It is

easy to implement over various platforms, and this

simplicity has accounted for its continued existence as

a defacto Internet standard up to the present. The

ARPANET’s lasting contribution was demonstrating

how a backbone infrastructure can serve as a connec-

tion between gateways. A gateway is a computer or

part of a computer programmed to receive messages

from one network and transfer them onto another

network.

The ARPANET quickly grew to more than 50

nodes between Hawaii and Norway.

However, it did

not extend to all who could utilize it. Computer scien-

tists at universities without Department of Defense

contracts noticed the advantages and petitioned the

National Science Foundation (NSF) for similar connec-

tivity. CSnet was formed to service these computer

scientists. CSnet was initially financed by the NSF.

Very quickly, the desire for interconnection spread to

other members of the university community. Soon

CSnet grew to serve other scientists in addition to

computer scientists at universities and came to mean

“Computer and Science Network” rather than just

“Computer Science Network.”

By the mid-1980s, the ARPANET was phased

out by the Department of Defense and was replaced by

various internal networks (such as MILNET). The role

of connecting university communities and regional

networks was taken over by the NSF-funded NSFnet,

which originated as a connection for university re-

searchers to the five National Supercomputer Centers.

CSnet and NSFnet were made possible by the research

on the ARPANET. The NSFnet became the U.S. back-

bone for the global network known as the Internet.

ARPANET research was pioneering communica-

tions research.

Researchers discovered the link be-

tween computer interconnection and increased produc-

tivity from human communication. The sharing of re-

sources was proven as a way to save money and to

increase computer use and productivity. The develop-

ment of packet switching revolutionized the basic

methodology of connecting computers.

The source of these discoveries were the people

involved. The people involved in the ARPANET pro-

ject were very intelligent and forward looking. They

recognized that they were developing future technolo-

gies, and thus did not develop products that commer-

cial industry could (and would) develop. Instead, they

understood that the communications technologies they

were developing had to come from a not-for-profit

body. ARPA researchers had no proprietary products

to support and no commercial deadlines to meet. Either

requirement would have made developing networks of

incompatible computers impossible or limited. Current

users of international computer networks are in debt to

the pioneers of the ARPANET.

The ARPANET was successful in its attempt to

connect various spatially remote computers, and, thus,

more importantly, the people who used those comput-

ers. However, these people were either professors at

universities with Department of Defense research con-

tracts or employees of a limited number of defense

industry companies. There were still many people who

wanted a connection but were not in a position to gain

one. Duke University and the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill were two such locations. In

these underprivileged fertile grounds the grassroots

computer communications breakthrough, Usenet, orig-

inated and developed.

The Unix operating system provides the basic

tools needed to share information between computers.

Unix

was developed as “a system around which a

fellowship would form.”

One of the programmers of

Unix, Dennis Ritchie, wrote that the intended purpose

of Unix was to “encourage close communication.”

Unix’s general principles thus conceptually foreshad-

owed the basic tenet of Usenet. How else should one

go about designing communications programs but on

an operating system designed with the basic principle

of encouraging communication? The Unix utility

UUCP was created at Bell Labs in 1976 by Mike Lesk.

It was further developed by David Nowitz and later by

Nowitz, Peter Honeyman, and Brian Redman. UUCP

provided a simple way of passing files between any

Page 21

two computers running Unix and UUCP. One of

AT&T’s motivations in developing Unix was to make

software production cheaper in order to bring down the

cost of telephone service. Unix’s popularity also arose

from AT&T’s prohibition from profiting from sources

other than its main business, phone services, under the

terms of the 1956 Consent Decree. Unix was thus

available on a “no cost” (or very low cost) basis. The

operating system was seen as an “in-house” tool on

DEC and other computers and was in use throughout

Bell Labs. Many universities used the same type of

computer and were licensed by AT&T to utilize Unix.

It thus spread widely. Schools picked it up, and com-

puter science students used it to learn about operating

systems, as Unix was a model of elegance and simplic-

ity compared to most operating systems of the time.

Unix became a widely used operating system in the

academic world, paving the way for an international

public communications system.

When Usenet was developed in 1979, it was

created as a “Unix Users Network.” The developers

thought Usenet would provide a forum for people to

solve problems they had in using Unix, as AT&T init-

ially provided little external support for Unix. In an

early handout, Usenet was referred to as a “poor man’s

ARPANET.”

In an e-mail message, Stephen Daniel

explained that people who didn’t have access to the

ARPANET were hungry for similar opportunities to

communicate.

Usenet has been full of surprises from the be-

ginning. The originators of Usenet underestimated the

hunger of people for meaningful communication. As

Usenet was originally intended to provide an easy

method of communicating with other users at the same

site, the programmers thought people would want to

have local bulletin boards.

However, people were

attracted by the possibility of communicating with

others outside the local community as well. Even

today, the global communication it makes possible is

part of what makes Usenet so enticing. It was also

thought Netnews would be useful as a method of

communication at individual locations, and between

sites close to each other.

Usenet grew as a grassroots

connection of people. The people who utilized Net-

news wanted to communicate, and communicate they

did! People have a fundamental need to communicate

and Usenet aptly fills the bill.

By early 1981, the gap between the ARPANET

and Usenet was bridged. The University of California

at Berkeley had connections to both the ARPANET

and Usenet. This allowed Usenet pioneer Mark Horton

to bring mailing-list discussions from ARPANET mail-

ing lists into Usenet news groups.

This was a sig-

nificant achievement. Communities other than ARPA

sponsored researchers were finally able to see what the

ARPANET had made possible. The gatewaying of

ARPANET mailing lists into Usenet attracted a wave

of people when two ARPANET mailing lists (SF-

Lovers and Human Nets) began to appear on Usenet.

These lists provided interesting material and discus-

sions. The size of the news feed (that is, the raw data of

Usenet) thus became larger and provided more for

people to read. Later, other sites would serve as gate-

ways to even more discussion lists from the ARPA-

NET. Netnews was also seen as a superior method of

holding discussions. Gatewaying these FA (From

ARPANET) newsgroups proved to be politically

courageous. The ARPANET had been accessible to

only a certain group of people, and these gateways

challenged that notion. The effect on the ARPANET

was important, as Steve Bellovin, another of the Use-

net pioneers, wrote:

The impact of Usenet on the ARPANET

was more as a (strong) catalyst to force

reexamination (and benign neglect) on the

strict policies against interconnection.

UUCP mail into the ARPANET became a

major force long before it was legit. And it

was obviously known to, and ignored by,

many of the Powers that Were.

Usenet, a network made possible by UUCP,

expanded to connect people between two countries

when the University of Toronto Zoology Department

joined the Net in May 1981.

Two companies, AT&T

and DEC, proved helpful by distributing Netnews and

electronic mail long distance. Each UUCP site had to

either pay the phone bill to connect to the next system,

or arrange for the other system to make the phone call.

System administrators at AT&T and DEC did the leg-

work necessary to take e-mail and news where it might

not have reached. However, easy connections were not

always available. In one instance, Case Western Re-

serve University graduate students had to route mail

across the continent twice in order to send mail through

UUCP to reach their professors who were connected to

the ARPANET next door.

Usenet encouraged con-

nectivity to the ARPANET. Gradually, the ARPANET

was interconnected with other networks, eventually

functioning more as a backbone to other networks than

as a self-contained network.

Page 22

Contributed effort is the crucial foundation of

UUCPnet and Usenet. There are those who donate time

and energy by contributing to Usenet’s content – writ-

ing messages and answering messages or participating

in debate. Without the time and effort put in by its

users, Usenet would not be what it is today. Also im-

portant to Usenet’s success are the system administra-

tors who make the functioning of Usenet possible.

Netnews takes up disk space on computers throughout

Usenet, and in some cases phone calls must be made to

transfer the raw data of the news. In particular, system

administrators at AT&T and DEC found it worthwhile

to transport Netnews across the country. Certain sites

emerged as clearing houses for Usenet and UUCP e-

mail.

These computers served as major relay stations

of both news and e-mail. A structure grew that became

the “backbone” of “the Net.” Backbone sites formed

the trunk of the circulatory system of news and e-mail.

A backbone site would connect to other central distri-

bution computers and to numerous smaller sites. These

central backbone sites provided a crucial organization

to the Usenet communications skeleton, but people

formed the center of these connections. For example,

ihnp4 at AT&T existed mainly because of [AT&T

Research Engineer] Gary Murakami’s effort and only

partially because of management support. Usenet

services and support were not officially part of

Murakami’s job description. After Murakami left the

Bell Labs Indian Hill Laboratory in Naperville, Illi-

nois, Doug Price put in the time and effort to keep

things running smoothly. Certain system administrators

in universities also picked up the responsibility for

distributing Netnews and e-mail widely. Often these

individuals would find ways of having their site pick

up the phone bill. Sometimes sites would bill the recip-

ients. Also, those who received a free connection were

expected to provide the same to others.

At the beginning, expansion of the number of

sites receiving Usenet was slow.

Why was this? Init-

ially, Usenet was only transported via UUCP connec-

tions. Soon other resources were used, such as the

airmailing of magnetic tape data to provide connectiv-

ity.

Today, Usenet travels over all types of connec-

tions. The evolving ARPANET (and now the Internet)

provided a faster way of transporting Netnews. How-

ever, a large number of Usenet recipients still only

have connectivity via UUCP. Universities and certain

businesses can afford to connect to the Internet, but

many individuals also want a connection. Even as late

as 1992, when 60 percent of Usenet traffic was carried

over the Internet via the instantaneous Network News

Transport Protocol (NNTP), 40 percent of Usenet was

still carried via the slower UUCP connections. There

are still many examples of various types of connections

using UUCP. These representatives of the “fringe”

provide a clue as to what the early days of this commu-

nication were like.

The number of sites receiving Usenet is continu-

ally increasing, demonstrating its popularity. People

are attracted to Usenet because of what it makes pos-

sible. People want to communicate and enjoy the thrill

of finding others across the country (or across the

world) who share a common interest or with whom to

be in contact. Besides the common thrill, it is possible

to form serious relationships online. Usenet makes this

discovery possible because it is a public forum. People

expose their ideas broadly, making it possible to find

compatriots in thought. The same physical connections

which carry Usenet often also transport private elec-

tronic mail. However, the interactions and discoveries

are only made possible by the public aspect of Usenet.

Mailing lists have as wide a range of discussion, but

are available to much smaller groups. Being on Usenet

can become tiresome at times,

but it is rare that any-

one leaves it permanently. Unless, of course, a person’s

life changes and this change means that time once

spent online is no longer available. As more universi-

ties, schools, libraries, businesses, and individuals con-

nect, the value of Usenet grows. Each new person can

eventually add his or her unique opinion to the collec-

tion of thoughts and information that Usenet already

has. Each new connection also increases the area where

new connections can be made through cheap local

phone calls. The potential for inexpensive expansion is

limited only by the oceans, other natural barriers, or

perhaps by mistaken government policies.

The ARPANET was supplemented by CSnet and

eventually replaced by U.S. government funding of its

successor, NSFnet. Both CSnet and NSFnet were

created by the U.S. government in response to research

scientists’ and professors’ pleas to have a network sim-

ilar to the ARPANET. The NSFnet was also created to

provide access to the five supercomputer computing

centers around the country. The NSFnet, as the back-

bone of the U.S. portion of the Internet, provided

another route for the distribution of Usenet. Similar to

the ARPANET, NSFnet was a constant connection run

over leased lines. One of the ways Netnews is distrib-

uted is using the NNTP protocol over connections.

This allows for Netnews and e-mail to be distributed

Page 23

quickly over a large area. Internet connections also

assist in carrying Usenet and e-mail internationally.

The Internet-class networks and connections include

the established government and university sponsored

connections. However individuals at home are often

connected by phone lines using SLIP, PPP, and various

versions of UUCP There are also commercial services

that, for a fee, provide connections for electronic mail

and Usenet access, as well as access to the Internet.

Much of the development of Usenet owes a big

thanks to the early restrictions on commercial uses.

Where else in our society has the commercial element

been so clearly separated from any entity? Forums of

discussion and communication become clogged and

congested when advertisements use space. Because of

the voluntary actions of those who use and redistribute

Netnews and e-mail, many people on Usenet feel it

wrong to assist commercial ventures. When people feel

someone is abusing the nature of Usenet, they let the

offender know through e-mail and in public messages.

In this manner, users work to keep Usenet a forum free

from commercial exploitation. Usenet has not been

allowed to be abused as a profit-making venture for

any one individual or group. Rather, people are fight-

ing to keep it a resource that is helpful to society as a

whole.

On what was the ARPANET and afterward the

NSFnet portion of the Internet, there were Acceptable

Use Policies (AUP) that existed because these net-

works were initially founded and financed by public

money. On these networks, commercial usage was pro-

hibited, which meant it was also discouraged on other

networks that gatewayed into the NSFnet. Unfortu-

nately, the NSF encouraged privatization of the NSF-

net backbone.

However, the discouragement of com-

mercial usage of the global Usenet is separate and

developed differently from the AUP.

The social network that Usenet represents super-

sedes the physical connection it rides on. The current

Netnews rides on many of the physical networks that

exist today. However, if ever there were the need, Use-

net could reestablish itself outside of the current phys-

ically organized networks. The essence of Usenet

means it will survive because of its users’ determina-

tion. Usenet draws its strength from being a peer-to-

peer network. People who use Usenet do so because

they wish to communicate with others. This communal

wish means that people on Usenet find it in their own

and in the community’s interest to be helpful. In this

way, Usenet exists as a worldwide community of re-

sources ready to be shared. Where else today is there

so much knowledge that is freely available? Usenet

represents a living library and is an important part of

the worldwide computer network.

The very nature of Usenet promotes change.

Usenet was born outside of established “networks” and

transcends any one physical network. It exists of itself

and through other networks. It makes possible the

distribution of information that might otherwise not be

heard through “official channels.” This role makes

Usenet a herald for social change. Because of the

inherent will to communicate, people who do not have

access to Usenet will want access when they become

exposed to it, and people who currently have access

will want Usenet to expand its reach so as to further

even more communication. Usenet could grow to

provide a forum through which people influence their

governments, allowing for the discussion and debate of

issues in a mode that facilitates mass participation.

This discussion becomes a source of independent infor-

mation. An independent source is helpful in the search

for the truth.

Administrators and individuals who handle the

flow of information have been predicting the “immi-

nent death of the Net” since 1982.

The software that

handles the distribution of Netnews has gone through

several versions to handle the ever-increasing amount

of information. People who receive Netnews have

either had to decrease the number of days individual

messages stay at the site or the number of newsgroups

they receive; or they have had to allocate more disk

space for the storage of Netnews. Despite all predic-

tions and worries, the desire for communication has

helped this social network develop and expand. Brad

Templeton once wrote, “If there is a gigabit network

with bandwidth to spare that is willing to carry Usenet,

it has plenty more growth left.”

Various research labs

have been working on producing usable gigabit net-

works.

Usenet is a democratic and technological break-

through. The computer networks and Usenet are still

developing. People need to work toward keeping con-

nections available and inexpensive, if not free, so as to

encourage the body of users to grow. There is a grow-

ing number of cities across the world where the public

has access to computer networks as a civic service.

This direction should be encouraged. Exclusive ar-

rangements for access are to be discouraged. The very

nature of Usenet means people are going to be working

for its expansion. Others will be working for the ex-

Page 24

pansion for their own gain, and some forces will be an

active force against expansion of Usenet. I can only

ask that people attempt to popularize and encourage

the use of and fight for Usenet.

Notes

1. “In September 1969, the embryonic (one-node!) ARPANET

came to life when the first packet-switching computer was

connected to the Sigma 7 computer at UCLA. Shortly thereafter

began the interconnection of many main processors (referred to as

HOSTS) at various university, industrial, and government research

centers across the United States.” (Leonard Kleinrock, “On

Communications and Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Comput-

ers C-25 (December 1976): p. 1328).

2. F. Heart, A. McKenzie, J. McQuillan, and D. Walden, ARPA-

NET Completion Report. Washington, D.C.: DARPA and BBN,

1978, pp. II-2.

3. Alexander McKenzie and David C. Walden, “ARPANET, the

Defense Data Network, and Internet” in The Encyclopedia of

Telecommunications, Volume 1, Fritz E. Froehlich, Allen Kent

and Carolyn M. Hall, eds. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1991), p.

346.

4. Lawrence G. Roberts, “The ARPANET and Computer Net-

works “ in A History of Personal Workstations, Adele Goldberg,

ed. (New York: ACM Press, 1988), p. 145.

5. Kleinrock, p. 1327.

6. McKenzie and Walden, p. 357.

7. Heart et al., pp. II-25.

8. McKenzie and Walden, p. 369.

9. “For many of the people in government, at the major co-

ntractors, and in the participating universities and research centers

the development of the ARPANET has been an exciting time

which will rank as a high point in their professional careers. In

1969 the ARPANET project represented a high risk, potentially

high impact research effort. The existence of the net in practical

useful form has not only provided communications technology to

meet any short term needs, but it represents a formidable commu-

nications technology and experience base on which the Defense

Department as well as the entire public and private sectors will

depend for advanced communications needs. The strong and

diverse experience base generated by the ARPANET project has

placed this country ahead of all others in advanced digital

communications science and technology.”ARPANET Completion

Report, pp. III-109.

10. Unix was born in 1969, the same year as the ARPANET.

11. Dennis. M. Ritchie, “The Evolution of the UNIX Time-

Sharing System,” Bell Systems Technical Journal, Volume 63,

number 8, part 2 (October 1984): p. 1578.

12. Ibid.

13. Stephen Daniel, James Ellis, and Tom Truscott, “USENET –

A General Access UNIX Network,” unpublished leaflet, Durham,

North Carolina, Summer 1980.

14. Stephen Daniel, personal communication, November 1992.

15. Steve M. Bellovin and Mark Horton, “USENET – A Distrib-

uted Decentralized News System,” unpublished manuscript, 1985.

16. Ibid.

17. See, for example, Gregory G. Woodbury’s “Net Cultural

Assumptions,” reprinted in Amateur Computerist, Volume 6

(Winter/Spring 1994-1995), p. 7.

18. “Correct. The original concept was that most of the traffic

would be the form now known as UNIX wizards (or whatever it’s

called this week). Growth was slow until Mark started feeding the

mailing lists in because there was nothing to offer prospective

customers. Given a ready source of material, people were at-

tracted.” Comment from Steve Bellovin, October 10, 1990, Usenet

History Archive,

http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet.hist/nethist.901010.Z (no longer

available)

19. Steve Bellovin, October 10, 1990, Usenet History Archives,

http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet.hist/nethist.901010.Z (no longer

available)

20. Henry Spencer, Usenet History Archives,

http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet.hist/history.Z (no longer avail-

able)

21. Amanda Walker, Oct.16, 1990, Usenet History Archives,

http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet.hist/nethist.901016.Z (no longer

available)

22. “Indeed, during a typical measurement period in June 1988,

over 50% of the active ARPANET hosts were gateways, and they

accounted for over 80% of the traffic.” McKenzie and Walden, p.

369.

23. At AT&T, the computers research, then allegra, then ihnp4

served as major mail and/or news distribution sites. At DEC,

decvax gradually increased its role (for example, decvax in New

Hampshire would call long distance to San Diego, California.)

24. For example, Duke University fed Usenet data to Greg Wood-

bury who in turn gave “feeds” to others who requested them from

him. See “Net Cultural Assumptions.”

25.

Year Number of Sites Articles/Day Megabytes/Day

1979 3 ~2 -

1980 15 ~10 -

1981 150 ~20 -

1982 400 ~50 -

1983 600 ~120 -

1984 900 ~225 -

1985 1,00 ~375 1+

1986 2,500 ~500 2+

1987 5,000 ~1,000 2.5+

1988 11,000 ~1,800 4+

26. Andy Tannenbaum is quoted as saying something similar to

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of

nine-track tape (or magnetic tape).”

27. Usenet began with a spirit that still exists today. On several

newsgroups I posted asking how users were connected to Usenet.

In return I received numerous wonderful answers. One new

pioneer was going to use packet radio to send e-mail up to the

CIS’s orbiting Mir Space Station. Others around the world sent me

information about their connection. These responses show how the

world is still in the infancy of this communications interconnectiv-

ity!

28. “Flame wars” (highly emotional attacks) can become annoy-

ing. There are ebbs and flows of interesting posts. Even though

Usenet is addictive, it can also be overwhelming.

29. See, for example, the U.S. Office of Inspector General’s

Report “Review of NSFNET” (March 1993) for documentation of

the process set in motion to implement the privatization of the

NSFnet.

30. Usenet History Archives,

Page 25

http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet.hist/ (no longer available)

31. Usenet History Archives, http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet

.hist/posthist.Z (no longer available)

Special thanks to Bruce Jones for establishing and archiving the

Usenet History Archives at ftp://weber.ucsd.edu/pub/usenet.hist/

Also thanks to the Usenet pioneers for getting Usenet off to the

right start.

[Editor’s Note: An early version of the following article appeared

online in Spring 1993. A later version appears as Chapter 5 of

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

Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben published in 1997 by the

IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 69-75.]

The Vision of Interactive

Computing And the Future

by Michael Hauben

What is the reality behind all the talk about the so

called “Information Superhighway”? This is an impor-

tant question which U.S. government policy makers

seem to be ignoring. However, understanding the his-

tory of the current global computer networks is a

crucial step toward building the network of the future.

There is a vision that guided the origin and develop-

ment of the Internet, Usenet and other associated phys-

ical and logical networks. What is that vision?

While the global computer networks are basically

young – the ARPANET started in 1969 – their 25 plus

years of growth has been substantial. The ARPANET

was the experimental network connecting the main-

frame computers of universities and other contractors

funded and encouraged by the Advanced Research

Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The ARPANET started out as a research test-bed for

computer networking, communication protocols, com-

puter and data resource sharing, etc. However, what it

developed into was something surprising. The widest

use of the ARPANET was for computer facilitated

human-human communication using electronic mail

(e-mail) and discussion lists. (Popular lists included

Human-Nets, Wine-Tasters and Sci-Fi Lovers lists.)

The human communications achievements of ARPA-

NET research continue to be today’s most popular

usage of the Net by a growing number and variety of

people through e-mail, Usenet discussion groups, mail-

ing lists, internet relay chat, and so on. The ARPANET

was the product of previous U.S. government funded

research in interactive computing and time-sharing of

computers.

Until the 1960s, computers operated almost ex-

clusively in batch mode. Programmers punched or had

their programs punched onto cards. Then the stack of

punched cards was provided to the local computer

center. The computer operator assembled stacks of

cards into batches to be feed to the computer for con-

tinuous processing. Often a programmer had to wait

over a day in order to see the results from his or her

input. In addition, if there were any mistakes in the

creation of the punched cards, the stack or part of it

had to be punched again and resubmitted, which would

take another day. Bugs in the code could only be dis-

covered after an attempt to compile the code and

therefore “debugging” was a slow process. This batch

processing mode was a very inefficient way of utilizing

the power of the computer. People began thinking of

ways to alter the interface between people and comput-

ers. The idea of time-sharing developed among some

in computer research communities. Time-sharing

makes it possible for people to utilize a computer (then

predominately the IBM mainframe) simultaneously.

Time-sharing operates by giving the impression that

the each user is the only one using the computer. This

is executed by having the computer divvy out slices of

CPU time to all the users in a rapid, sequential manner.

Crucial to the development of today’s global

computer networks was the vision of researchers in-

terested in time-sharing. These researchers began to

think about social issues related to time-sharing. They

observed the communities that formed from the people

who used time-sharing systems and considered the

social significance of these communities. Two of the

pioneers involved in research in time-sharing at MIT,

Fernando Corbato and Robert Fano, wrote:

The time-sharing computer system can

unite a group of investigators in a coopera-

tive search for the solution to a common

problem, or it can serve as a community

pool of knowledge and skill on which

anyone can draw according to his needs.

Projecting the concept on a large scale, one

can conceive of such a facility as an ex-

traordinarily powerful library serving an

entire community in short, an intellectual

public utility.

Research in time-sharing started in the early

1960s around the country at different research centers.

Page 26

Some examples were CTSS (Compatible Time-sharing

System) at MIT, DTSS (Dartmouth Time-sharing

System) at Dartmouth, a system at BBN, Project

GENIE at the University of California at Berkeley, and

so on. J. C. R. Licklider, the founding director of

ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office

(IPTO) thought of time-sharing as interactive comput-

ing. Interactive computing meant the user could com-

municate and respond to the computer’s responses in

a way that batch processing did not allow.

Licklider was one of the first users of the new

time-sharing systems, and took the time to play around

with them. Examining the uses of this new way of

communicating with the computer enabled Licklider to

think about the future possibilities. This was helpful

because Licklider went on to establish the priorities

and direction for ARPA’s IPTO research monies.

Many of the interviewees in a series of interviews

conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) said

that ARPA's money was given in those days under

Licklider’s guidance to seed research which would be

helpful to society in general and only secondarily

helpful to the military.

Both Robert Taylor and Larry Roberts, future

successors of Licklider as director of IPTO, pinpoint

Licklider as the originator of the vision which set

ARPA’s priorities and goals and basically drove ARPA

to help develop the concept and practice of networking

computers.

In one of the CBI interviews, Roberts said:

What I concluded was that we had to do

something about communications, and that

really, the idea of the galactic network that

Lick talked about, probably more than any-

body, was something that we had to start

seriously thinking about. So in a way net-

working grew out of Lick’s talking about

that, although Lick himself could not make

anything happen because it was too early

when he talked about it. But he did con-

vince me it was important.

Taylor, also in a CBI conducted interview,

pointed out the importance of Licklider’s vision to

future network development:

I don’t think anyone who’s been in that

DARPA position since [Licklider] has had

the vision that Licklider had. His being at

that place at that time is a testament to the

tenuousness of it all. It was really a fortu-

nate circumstance. I think most of the

significant advances in computer technol-

ogy, especially in the systems part of com-

puter science were simply extrapolations of

Licklider’s vision. They were not really

new visions of their own. So he’s really the

father of it all.

Taylor also described how research in time-

sharing led to surprising results. He was one of the

Directors who succeeded Licklider of the IPTO at

ARPA. A phrase that J. C. R. Licklider frequently used

to express his vision was “an Intergalactic Network.”

Taylor explains that Licklider used this phrase to

describe the potential community that he realized

would emerge from the interconnection of the local

communities of Net users that develop from time-

sharing. At first, Taylor notes ARPA supported re-

search had as its goal achieving compatibility and

resource sharing across different computer systems.

However, he explains:

They were just talking about a network

where they could have a compatibility

across these systems, and at least do some

load sharing, and some program sharing,

data sharing that sort of thing. Whereas, the

thing that struck me about the time-sharing

experience was that before there was a

time-sharing system, let’s say at MIT, then

there were a lot of individual people who

didn’t know each other who were interested

in computing in one way or another, and

who were doing whatever they could,

however they could. As soon as the time-

sharing system became usable, these people

began to know one another, share a lot of

information, and ask of one another, ‘How

do I use this? Where do I find that?’ It was

really phenomenal to see this computer

become a medium that stimulated the for-

mation of a human community. And so,

here ARPA had a number of sites by this

time, each of which had its own sense of

community and was digitally isolated from

the other one. I saw a phrase in the

Licklider memo. The phrase was in a to-

tally different context something that he re-

ferred to as an ‘intergalactic network.’ I

asked him about this … in fact I said, ‘Did

you have a networking of the ARPANET

sort in mind when you used that phrase?’

He said, ‘No, I was thinking about a single

Page 27

time-sharing system that was intergalactic’

As Taylor explains, the users of the time-sharing

systems would form, usually unexpectedly, a new com-

munity. People were connected to others who were

also interested in these new computing systems.

The vision driving ARPA inspired bright re-

searchers working on computer related topics. Roberts

explains that Licklider’s work (and that of the IPTO’s

directors after him) educated people who were to

become the future leaders in the computer industry.

Roberts describes the impact that Licklider and his

vision made on ARPA and future IPTO directors:

Well, I think that the one influence is the

production of people in the computer field

that are trained, and knowledgeable, and

capable, and that form the basis for the

progress the United States has made in the

computer field. That production of people

started with Lick, when he started the IPTO

program and started the big university

programs. It was really due to Lick, in large

part, because I think it was that early set of

activities that I continued with that pro-

duced the most people with the big univer-

sity contracts. That produced a base for

them to expand their whole department,

and produced excitement in the university.

Roberts describes how ARPA-supported univer-

sity research had a significant impact on the computer

industry as well.

So it was clear that that was a big impact

on the universities and therefore, in the

industry. You can almost track all those

people and see what effect that has had.

The people from those projects are in large

part the leaders throughout the industry.

Licklider’s vision was of an “Intergalactic Net-

work,” a time-sharing utility that would serve the

entire galaxy. This early vision of time-sharing spawn-

ed the idea of interconnecting different time-sharing

systems by networking them together. This network

would allow those on geographically separated time-

sharing systems to share data, programs, research, and

later other ideas and anything that could be typed out.

In the article, “The Computer as a Communications

Device,” Licklider and Taylor predicted the creation of

a global computer network. They wrote:

We have seen the beginnings of communi-

cation through a computer – communica-

tion among people at consoles located in

the same room or on the same university

campus or even at distantly separated lab-

oratories of the same research and develop-

ment organization. This kind of communi-

cation – through a single multiaccess com-

puter with the aid of telephone lines – is

beginning to foster cooperation and pro-

mote coherence more effectively than do

present arrangements for sharing computer

programs by exchanging magnetic tape by

messenger or mail.

They point out how the interconnection of com-

puters leads to a much broader class of connections

than might have been expected. A new form of com-

munity is generated:

The collection of people, hardware, and

software the multiaccess computer together

with its local community of users will

become a node in a geographically distrib-

uted computer network. Let us assume for

a moment that such a network has been

formed. Through the network of message

processors, therefore, all the large comput-

ers can communicate with one another.

And through them, all the members of the

super community can communicate with

other people, with programs, with data, or

with a selected combinations of those

resources.

Licklider and Taylor consider more than just

hardware and software when they write about the new

social dynamics that the connections of dispersed com-

puters and people will create. They explain:

[These communities] will be communities

not of common location, but of common

interest. In each field, the overall commu-

nity of interest will be large enough to sup-

port a comprehensive system of field-ori-

ented programs and data.

In exploring this community of common affinity,

they describe the main advantages that come from

connecting to and being part of these new computer

facilitated communities. Life will be enriched for those

people who can communicate on-line with others who

have similar goals and interests, as they won’t be

limited by geography. Communication will be more

productive and thus more enjoyable. And the kind of

programs that those on-line will have access to will be

customized to one's interests and abilities, and thus

more satisfying. And they describe the advantages to

Page 28

society that the increased opportunities and resources

made possible by the Net can provide for everyone.

Since the advantages that computer networks

make possible for society will only happen if these

advantages are available to all who want to make use

of them, Licklider and Taylor realize there is a crucial

challenge put on the agenda of our times by the devel-

opment of the Net. They conclude their article with a

prophetic question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a privilege

or a right?”

They argue that it must be a right. Other-

wise, instead of providing all the many benefits it

makes possible, it will only increase the inequities of

intellectual opportunity that currently exist.

The challenge they raise is one of access. The

authors point out that the positive effects of computer

networking will only come about if the networks are

made easy to use and available to all. They argue that

access should be made available because of the global

benefits that would ensue. They conclude by describ-

ing how humankind can benefit immeasurably from the

educational opportunities the Net makes possible, “if

the network idea should prove to do for education what

a few have envisioned in hope … surely the boon to

humankind would be beyond measure.”

Licklider and Taylor raise the important point

that access should be made available to all who want to

use the computer networks. Therefore it is important to

ask if the National Information Infrastructure is being

designed with the principle of equality of access. The

vision of the interconnection and interaction of diverse

communities guided the creation of the original ARPA-

NET. In the design of the expansion of the Net, it is

important to keep the original vision in mind to con-

sider if the vision was correct, or if it was just impor-

tant in the initial development of networking technolo-

gies and techniques. However, very little emphasis has

been placed on either the study of Licklider’s vision or

the role and advantages of the Net up to this point. In

addition, the public has not been allowed to play a role

in the planning process for the new initiatives which

the U.S. government is currently undertaking. This is

a plea to you to demand more of a part in the develop-

ment of the future of the Net!

Notes for Chapter 5

1. “Time-sharing on Computers,” in Information, A Scientific

American Book, San Francisco, 1966, p. 76.

2. Lawrence G. Roberts, Interview by Arthur L. Norberg, 4 April

1989, San Mateo, California, Charles Babbage Institute, The

Center for the History of Information Processing, University of

Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, p. 29.

3. Robert W. Taylor, Interview by William Aspray, 28 February

1989, Palo Alto, California, Charles Babbage Institute, The Center

for the History of Information Processing, University of Minne-

sota. Minneapolis, Minnesota, p. 8.

4. Ibid., p. 24.

5. Lawrence G. Roberts Interview, p. 29.

6. Ibid., p. 30.

7. “The Computer as a Communication Device,” in: In

Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider: 1915-1990, p. 28.

8. Ibid., p. 32.

9. Ibid., p. 38.

10. Ibid., p. 40.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

[Editor’s Note: A draft of the following article appeared in three

parts on Usenet in the alt.amateur.computerist newsgroup on Dec

28, 1993. A version appeared online as Chapter 6 of the net book,

The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net: An Anthology

on Jan, 12, 1994. The article also appears as Chapter 7 of Neti-

zens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by

Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben published in 1997 by the

IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 96-114.]

Behind the Net: The Untold

Story of the ARPANET and

Computer Science

by Michael Hauben

The global Internet’s progenitor was the Ad-

vanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPA-

NET), financed and encouraged by the U. S. Depart-

ment of Defense. This is important to remember, be-

cause the support and style of management by ARPA

of its contractors was crucial to the success of the

ARPANET. As the Internet develops and the struggle

over the role it plays unfolds, it will be important to

remember how the network developed and the culture

with which it was connected. The culture of the Net as

a facilitator of communication is an important feature

to understand.

The ARPANET Completion Report, published

jointly in 1978 by BBN of Cambridge, Massachusetts,

and ARPA, concludes by stating:

… it is somewhat fitting to end on the note

that the ARPANET program has had a

strong and direct feedback into the support

and strength of computer science, from

which the network itself sprung.

Page 29

In order to understand the wonder that the Inter-

net and various other components of the Net represent,

we need to understand why the ARPANET Completion

Report ends with the suggestion that the ARPANET is

fundamentally connected to and born of computer

science rather than of the military.

The History of ARPA Leading Up to the

ARPANET

A climate of scientific research surrounded the

entire history of the ARPANET. ARPA was formed to

fund basic research, and thus was not oriented toward

military products. The formation of this agency was

part of the U.S. government’s response to the then

Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957.

One area of

ARPA-supported research concerned the question of

how to utilize the military’s investment in computers

to do Command and Control Research (CCR). J. C. R.

Licklider was chosen to head this effort. Licklider

came to ARPA from BBN in October 1962.

His edu-

cational background was a combination of engineering

studies and physiological psychology. His multi-disci-

plinary experiences provided Licklider with a perspec-

tive uncommon among engineers.

As a result of Licklider’s arrival, the Agency’s

contracts were shifted from nonacademic contractors

toward “the best academic computer centers.”

The

then-current method of computing was batch process-

ing. Licklider saw that improvements could be made in

CCR only from work that would advance the current

state of computing technology. He particularly wanted

to move forward into the age of interactive computing,

and Defense Department contractors were not moving

in that direction. In an interview, Licklider described

how at one of the contractors, System Development

Corporation (SDC), the computing research being done

“was based on batch processing, and while I was

interested in a new way of doing things, they [SDC]

were studying how to make improvements in the ways

things were done already.”

To reflect the changed

direction Licklider was bringing to ARPA-supported

research, his division of ARPA was renamed the Infor-

mation Processing Techniques Office (IPT or IPTO).

The office “developed into a far-reaching basic re-

search program in advanced technology.”

The Completion Report Draft states that “Pro-

phetically, Licklider nicknamed the group of computer

specialists he gathered the ‘Intergalactic Network.’”

Before work on the ARPANET began, the foundation

had been established by the creation of the Information

Processing Techniques Office of ARPA. Robert

Taylor, Licklider’s successor at the IPTO, reflects on

how this foundation was based on Licklider’s interest

in interconnecting communities:

Lick was among the first to perceive the

spirit of community created among the

users of the first time-sharing systems … .

In pointing out the community phenomena

created, in part, by the sharing of resources

in one time-sharing system, Lick made it

easy to think about interconnecting the

communities[,] the interconnection of inter-

active, on-line communities of people… .

The “spirit of community” was related to

Licklider’s interest in having computers help people

communicate with other people.

Licklider’s vision of

an “intergalactic network” connecting people repre-

sented an important conceptual shift in computer

science, This vision guided the researchers who created

the ARPANET. After the ARPANET was functioning,

the computer scientists using it realized that assisting

human communication was a major fundamental

advance that the ARPANET made possible.

As early as 1963, a commonly asked question of

the IPTO directors by the ARPA directors about IPTO

projects was “‘Why don’t we rely on the computer

industry to do that?’, or occasionally more strongly,

‘We should not support that effort because ABC (read,

‘computer industry’) will do it – if it’s worth doing!’”

This question leads to an important distinction: ARPA

research was different from what the computer industry

had in mind to do, or was likely to undertake. Since

Licklider’s creation of the IPTO, the work supported

by ARPA/IPTO continued his explicit emphasis on

communications. The Completion Report Draft ex-

plains:

The ARPA/IPTO theme … is that the

promise offered by the computer … a

communication medium between people,

dwarfs into relative insignificance the

historical beginnings of the computer as an

arithmetic engine.

The Completion Report Draft goes on to differen-

tiate the research ARPA supported from the research

done by the computer industry:

The computer industry, in the main, still

thinks of the computer as an arithmetic

engine. Their heritage is reflected even in

current designs of “their communication

Page 30

systems.” They have an economic and psy-

chological commitment to the arithmetic

engine model, and it can die only slow-

ly….

The Completion Report Draft further analyzes this

problem by tracing it back to the nation’s universities:

… furthermore, it is a view that is still rein-

forced by most of the nation’s computer

science programs. Even universities, or at

least parts of them, are held in the grasp of

the arithmetic engine concept … .

ARPA’s IPTO was responsible for the research

and development which led to the success of first the

ARPANET, and later the Internet. Without this support

and commitment, such a development might never

have happened. One of ARPA’s criterion for support-

ing research was that the research had to offer an order

of magnitude of advance over the current state of

development. Such research is never immediately pro-

fitable. In society, therefore, there is the need for

organizations that do not pursue profit as their goal, but

rather work on furthering the state of the art. Computer

networking was developed and spread widely in an

environment outside of commercial and profit consid-

erations, an environment that supported such research.

Others understood the communications promise

of computers. For example, in RFC-1336, David Clark,

a senior research scientist at MIT’s Laboratory for

Computer Science, describes the impact of the Internet

in making possible new means of human-to-human

communication:

It is not proper to think of networks as

connecting computers. Rather, they connect

people using computers to mediate. The

great success of the Internet is not tech-

nical, but in human impact. Electronic mail

may not be a wonderful advance in Com-

puter Science, but it is a whole new way for

people to communicate. The continued

growth of the Internet is a technical chal-

lenge to all of us, but we must never lose

sight of where we came from, the great

change we have worked on the larger com-

puter community, and the great potential

we have for future change.

Research predating the ARPANET had been

done by Paul Baran, Thomas Marill and others.

This

led Lawrence Roberts and other IPTO staff to formally

introduce the topic of networking computers of differ-

ing types (that is, incompatible hardware and software)

together in order to make it possible for ARPA’s Prin-

cipal Investigators (PI) to share resources. The ARPA

Principal Investigators meeting was held annually for

university and other contractors to summarize results

of the previous year and discuss future research. In the

Spring of 1967 it was held at the University of Michi-

gan in Ann Arbor. Networking was one of the topics

brought up at this meeting. As a result of discussion at

this meeting, it was decided that there had to be agree-

ment on conventions for character and block transmis-

sion, error checking and re-transmission, and computer

and user identification. These specifications became

the contents of the inter-host communication’s “proto-

col.” Frank Westervelt was chosen to write about this

protocol, and a communication group was formed to

study the questions.

In order to develop a network of varied comput-

ers, two main problems had to be solved:

1. To construct a “subnetwork” consisting

of telephone circuits and switching nodes

whose reliability, delay characteristics, ca-

pacity, and cost would facilitate resource

sharing among the computers on the net-

work.

2. To understand, design, and implement

the protocols and procedures within the

operating systems of each connected com-

puter, in order to allow the use of the new

subnetwork by those computers in sharing

resources.

After one draft and additional work on this

communications position paper were completed, a

meeting was scheduled in early October 1967 by

ARPA at which the protocol paper and specifications

for the Interface Message Processor (IMP) were

discussed. A subnetwork of IMPs, dedicated minicom-

puters connected to each of the participant’s comput-

ers, was the method chosen to connect the computers

(hosts) to each other via phone lines. This standardized

the subnet to which the hosts connected. Researchers

at each site would have to write the software necessary

to connect their local host computer to the IMP at their

site. ARPA picked 19 possible participants in what was

now known as the “ARPA Network.”

From the time of the 1967 PI meeting, various

computer scientists who were ARPA contractors were

busy thinking about the planning and development of

the ARPANET. Part of that work was a document out-

lining a beginning design for the IMP subnetwork. This

specification led to a competitive procurement for the

Page 31

design of the IMP subnetwork.

By late 1967 ARPA had given a contract to the

Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to write specifica-

tions for the communications network they were

developing. In December of 1968, SRI issued the

report, “A Study of Computer Network Design Parame-

ters.” Elmer Shapiro played an important role in the

research for this report. Based on this work, Lawrence

Roberts and Barry Wessler of ARPA wrote the final

ARPA version of the IMP specification.

This specifi-

cation was ready to be discussed at the June 1968 PI

meeting.

The Program Plan, “Resource Sharing Computer

Networks,” was submitted June 3, 1968 by the IPTO to

the ARPA Director, who, with unusual speed, ap-

proved it on June 21, 1968. It outlined the objectives of

the research and how the objectives would be fulfilled.

The proposed network was impressive, as it would

prove useful to both the computing research centers

that connected to the network and to the military. The

proposed research requirements would provide imme-

diate benefits to the computer centers the network

would connect. ARPA’s stated objectives were to

experiment with varied interconnections of computers

and the sharing of resources in an attempt to improve

productivity of computer research. Justification was

drawn from technical needs in both the scientific and

military environments. The Program Plan developed

into a set of specifications. These specifications were

connected to a competitive Request for Quotation

(RFQ) to find an organization that would design and

build the IMP subnetwork.

Following the approval of the Program Plan, 140

potential bidders were mailed the Request for Quota-

tion. After a bidders conference, 12 proposals were

received and from them ARPA narrowed the field to

four bidders. BBN was the eventual recipient of the

contract.

The second technical problem, as defined by the

ad hoc Communications Group, still remained to be

solved. The set of agreed upon communications

settings (known as a protocol), which would allow the

hosts to communicate with each other over the subnet-

work, had to be developed. This work was left “for

host sites to work out among themselves.”

This meant

that the software necessary to connect the hosts to the

IMP subnetwork had to be developed. ARPA assigned

this duty to the initially designated ARPANET sites.

Each of the first sites had a different type of computer

to connect. ARPA trusted that the programmers at each

site would be capable of modifying their operating

systems in order to connect their systems to the subnet-

work. In addition, the sites needed to develop the

software necessary to utilize the other hosts on the

network. By assigning them responsibilities, ARPA

made the academic computer science community an

active part of the ARPANET development team.

Stephen Crocker, one of graduate students in-

volved with the development of the earliest ARPANET

protocols, associates the placement of the initial AR-

PANET sites at research institutions with the fact that

the ARPANET was ground-breaking research. He

wrote in a message responding to questions on the

com-priv mailing list:

During the initial development of the AR-

PANET, there was simply a limit as to how

far ahead anyone could see and manage.

The IMPs were placed in cooperative

ARPA R&D sites with the hope that these

research sites would figure out how to ex-

ploit this new communication medium.

The first sites of the ARPANET were picked to

provide either network support services or unique

resources. The key services the first four sites provided

were:

SITE SERVICE OR RESOURCE

UCLA Network Measurement Center

SRI Network Information Center

UCSB Culler-Fried interactive mathemat

ics

Utah graphics (hidden line removal)

Crocker recounts that these four sites were selected

because they were “existing ARPA computer science

research contractors.” This was important because “the

research community could be counted on to take some

initiative.”

The very first site to receive an IMP was UCLA.

Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA was involved

with much of the early development of the ARPANET.

His work in queuing theory gave him a basis to de-

velop measurement techniques used to monitor the

ARPANET’S performance. This made it natural that

UCLA received one of the first nodes, as it would be

important to measure the network’s activity from early

on – one of the first two or three sites had to be the

measurement site in order for the statistics to be based

on correct data for analysis purposes and UCLA

accordingly came to be the Network Measurement

Center (NMC).

Page 32

The Network Working Group

Once the initial sites were chosen, representatives

from each site gathered together to talk about how to

solve the technical problem of getting the hosts to

communicate with each other. The Completion Report

Draft tells us about this beginning:

To provide the hosts with a little impetus to

work on the host-to-host problems, ARPA

assigned Elmer Shapiro of SRI “to make

something happen,” a typically vague AR-

PA assignment. Shapiro called a meeting in

the summer of 1968 which was attended by

programmers from several of the first hosts

to be connected to the network. Individuals

who were present have said that it was

clear from the meeting at that time, no one

had even any clear notions of what the

fundamental host-to-host issues might be.

This group, which came to be known as the

Network Working Group (NWG), was exploring new

territory. The first meeting took place several months

before the first IMP was configured. The group had to

begin with a blank slate. In Crocker’s recollections of

the important developments produced by the NWG

which were provided as the introduction to RFC-1000,

the reader is reminded that the thinking involved was

ground-breaking and thus exciting. Crocker remembers

that the first meeting was chaired by Elmer Shapiro of

SRI, who initiated the conversation with a list of ques-

tions.

Also present at this first meeting were Steve

Carr from the University of Utah, Crocker from

UCLA, Jeff Rulifson from SRI, and Ron Stoughton

from UCSB. These attendees, most of them graduate

students, were the programmers described in the

Completion Report Draft.

According to Crocker, this was a seminal meet-

ing. The attendees could only be theoretical, as none of

the lowest levels of communication had been devel-

oped yet. They needed a transport layer or low-level

communications platform to build upon. BBN would

not deliver the first IMP until August 30, 1969. It was

important to meet before this date, as the NWG

“imagined all sorts of possibilities.”

Only once they

started thinking together could this working group

actually develop anything. These fresh thoughts from

fresh minds helped to incubate new ideas. The Comple-

tion Report Draft properly acknowledges what this

early group helped accomplish. “Their early thinking

was at a very high level.”

A concrete decision made

at the first meeting was to continue holding meetings

similar to the first one. This set the precedent of hold-

ing exchange meetings at each of their sites.

Crocker, describing the problems facing these

networking pioneers, writes:

With no specific service definition in place

for what the IMPs were providing to the

hosts, there wasn’t any clear idea of what

work the hosts had to do. Only later did we

articulate the notion of building a layered

set of protocols with general transport ser-

vices on the bottom and multiple applica-

tion-specific protocols on the top. More

precisely, we understood quite early that

we wanted quite a bit of generality, but we

didn’t have a clear idea how to achieve it.

We struggled between a grand design and

getting something working quickly.

The initial protocol development led to DEL

(Decode-Encode Language) and NIL (Network Inter-

change Language). These languages were more ad-

vanced than what was needed and could not be imple-

mented at the time. The basic purpose was to form an

on-the-fly description that would tell the receiving end

how to understand the information that would be sent.

The discussion at this first set of meetings was ex-

tremely abstract as neither ARPA nor the universities

had conceived of an official charter. However, the lack

of a specific charter allowed the group to think broadly

and openly.

BBN had provided details about the host-IMP

interface specifications from the IMP side. This infor-

mation gave the group some definite starting points to

build from. Soon after BBN provided more informa-

tion, members of the NWG, of BBN, and of the

Network Analysis Corporation (NAC) met for the first

time on Valentine’s Day, 1969. The NAC had been

invited because it had been contracted by ARPA to

specify the topological design of the ARPANET and to

analyze its cost, performance, and reliability character-

istics.

As all the parties had different priorities, the

meeting was a difficult one. BBN was interested in the

lowest level of making a reliable connection. The

programmers from the host sites were interested in

getting the hosts to communicate with each other

either via various higher-level programs. Even when

the crew from BBN did not turn out to be the “experts

from the East,” members of the NWG still expected

that “a professional crew would show up eventually to

take over the problems we were dealing with.”

A step of great importance that began the open

Page 33

documentation process occurred as a result of a “par-

ticularly delightful” meeting a month later in Utah. The

participants decided it was time to start recording their

meetings in a consistent fashion. What resulted was a

set of informal notes titled “Request for Comments”

(RFC). Crocker writes about their formation:

I remember having great fear that we would

offend whomever the official protocol

designers were, and I spent a sleepless

night composing humble words for our

notes. The basic ground rules were that

anyone could say anything and that nothing

was official. And to emphasize the point, I

labeled the notes “Request for Comments.”

I never dreamed these notes would be dis-

tributed through the very medium we were

discussing in these notes. Talk about Sor-

cerer’s Apprentice!

Crocker replaced Shapiro as the Chairman of the

NWG soon after the initial meeting. He describes how

they wrestled with the creation of the host-host proto-

cols:

Over the spring and summer of 1969 we

grappled with the detailed problems of

protocol design. Although we had a vision

of the vast potential for intercomputer com-

munication, designing usable protocols was

another matter. A custom hardware inter-

face and custom intrusion into the operat-

ing system was going to be required for

anything we designed, and we anticipated

serious difficulty at each of the sites. We

looked for existing abstractions to use. It

would have been convenient if we could

have made the network simply look like a

tape drive to each host, but we knew that

wouldn’t do.

The first IMP was delivered to UCLA in late

August, 1969. The next was delivered to SRI a month

later in October.

As soon as more than one IMP

existed, the NWG had to implement a working com-

munications protocol. The first set of pairwise host

protocols included remote login for interactive use

(Telnet), and a way to copy files between remote hosts

(FTP). Crocker writes:

In particular, only asymmetric, user-server

relationships were supported. In December

1969, we met with Larry Roberts in Utah,

[and he] made it abundantly clear that our

first step was not big enough, and we went

back to the drawing board. Over the next

few months we designed a symmetric host-

host protocol, and we defined an abstract

implementation of the protocol known as

the Network Control Program. (“NCP”

later came to be used as the name for the

protocol, but it originally meant the pro-

gram within the operating system that man-

aged connections. The protocol itself was

known blandly only as the host-host proto-

col.) Along with the basic host-host proto-

col, we also envisioned a hierarchy of

protocols, with Telnet, FTP and some

splinter protocols as the first examples. If

we had only consulted the ancient mystics,

we would have seen immediately that

seven layers were required.

The NWG went on to develop the protocols

necessary to make the network viable. The group grew

as more and more sites connected to the ARPANET.

The group became large enough (around 100 people)

that one meeting was held in conjunction with the

1971 Spring Joint Computer Conference in Atlantic

City. A major test of the NWG’s work came in Octo-

ber 1971, when a meeting was held at MIT. Crocker

continues the story:

[A] major protocol “fly-off” – Representa-

tives from each site were on hand, and

everyone tried to log in to everyone else’s

site. With the exception of one site that was

completely down, the matrix was almost

completely filled in, and we had reached a

major milestone in connectivity.

The NWG was creating what was called the

“host to host protocol.” Explaining why this was

important, the authors of the Completion Report Draft

wrote:

… [T]he problem is to design a host proto-

col which is sufficiently powerful for the

kinds of communication that will occur and

yet can be implemented in all of the vari-

ous different host computer systems. The

initial approach taken involved an entity

called a “Network Control Program” which

would typically reside in the executive of a

host, such that processes within a host

would communicate with the network

through this Network Control Program.

The primary function of the NCP is to

establish connections, break connections,

Page 34

switch connections, and control flow. A

layered approach was taken such that more

complex procedures (such as File Transfer

Procedures) were built on top of similar

procedures in the host Network Control

Program.

As the ARPANET grew, the number of users

bypassed the number of developers, signaling the

success of these networking pioneers. Crocker ap-

pointed Alex McKenzie and Jon Postel to replace him

as chairmen of the Network Working Group. The

Completion Report Draft details how this role changed:

McKenzie and Postel interpreted their task

to be one of codification and coordination

primarily, and after a few more spurts of

activity the protocol definition process

settled for the most part into a status of a

maintenance effort.

ARPA was a management body which funded

academic computer scientists. ARPA’s funding paved

the way for these scientists to create the ARPANET.

BBN helped by developing the packet switching

techniques which served as the bottom level of trans-

mitting information between sites. The NWG provided

an important development in its “Request for Com-

ments” documentation which made possible develop-

ing the new protocols.

RFCs as “Open” Documentation

The open exchange of ideas initiated from the

very first meeting of the Network Working Group was

continued in the Request For Comments. As meeting

notes, the RFCs were meant to keep members updated

on the status of various developments and ideas. They

were also meant to gather responses from people. RFC-

3, “Documentation Conventions,” documents the

“rules” governing the production of these notes begin-

ning with the open distribution rule:

Documentation of the NWG’s effort is

through notes such as this. Notes may be

produced at any site by anybody and in-

cluded in this series.

These opening sentences invite anyone willing to

be helpful into the protocol definition process. This is

important because all restrictions are lifted by these

words, allowing for the open process aimed for. (RFC-

3 is reproduced in the appendix at the end of this

chapter.) The guide goes on to describe the rules

concerning the content of the RFCs:

The content of a NWG note may be any

thought, suggestion, etc. related to the

HOST software or other aspect of the

network. Notes are encouraged to be timely

rather than polished. Philosophical posi-

tions without examples or other specifics,

specific suggestions or implementation

techniques without introductory or back-

ground explication, and explicit questions

without any attempted answers are all

acceptable. The minimum length for a

NWG note is one sentence.

In RFC-3, Crocker continues to explain the

philosophy behind the perhaps unprecedented open-

ness represented:

These standards (or lack of them) are stated

explicitly for two reasons. First, there is a

tendency to view a written statement as

ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to

promote the exchange and discussion of

considerably less than authoritative ideas.

Second, there is a natural hesitancy to pub-

lish something unpolished, and we hope to

ease this inhibition.

This open process encouraged and led to the exchange

of information. Technical development is only suc-

cessful when information is allowed to flow freely and

easily between the parties involved. Encouraging par-

ticipation is the main principle that made the develop-

ment of the Net possible.

Statements like the ones contained in RFC-3 are

democratic in their support of a process of openness.

They were written during the late 1960s, a time of

popular protest for freedom of speech. People were

demanding more of a say in how their countries were

run. The open environment needed to develop new

technologies is consistent with the cry for more de-

mocracy that students and others raised throughout the

world during the 1960s. What is amazing is the collab-

oration of the NWG (mostly graduate students) and

ARPA (a component of the military) during the 1960s

and 1970s. This seems unusual given the active student

anti-war movement. Robert Braden of the Internet

Activities Board reflects on this collaboration:

For me, participation in the development of

the ARPANET and the Internet protocols

has been very exciting. One important rea-

son it worked, I believe, is that there were

a lot of very bright people all working

more or less in the same direction, led by

some very wise people in the funding

Page 35

agency. The result was to create a commu-

nity of network researchers who believed

strongly that collaboration is more power-

ful than competition among researchers. I

don’t think any other model would have

gotten us where we are today.

Such collaboration is why the work of these computer

scientists led to such amazing and democratic achieve-

ments, the Net and the cooperative culture of the Net.

Calling their notes a “Request for Comment”

established a significant tradition. It predates the Use-

net post, which in a fashion could also be called a

“request for comment.” Both are the presentation of a

particular person’s ideas, questions, or comments to

the general public for comments, criticism, or sugges-

tions. Early RFCs established this tradition. Many

RFCs are in fact comments on previous RFCs.

Conclusion

How were the developments of the ARPANET

made possible? None of the participants had previous

solutions to any of the problems they faced in estab-

lishing a working packet-switched test bed with host-

to-host connectivity. They had to put much thought and

work into their research. As the resulting ARPANET

was tremendously successful and fulfilled ARPA’s

project objectives, it is important to see what can be

learned from the research and research methods from

which it emerged. Bernie Cosell, who worked at BBN

during this early period, describes the importance of an

open process in a developmental situation:

*no *one* had the necessary expertise [and

vision] to figure any of this out on their

own. The cultures among the early groups

were VERY different [–] multics, sigma-7,

IBM … at Rand … PDP-IOs at BBN and

SRI … [and possibly] UCSB and Utah had

pdp-1O’s, too. The pie-in-the-sky appli-

cations ranged over a WIDE landscape,

with no one knowing quite where it would

lead. Some kind of free, cross-cultural

info/idea exchange *had* to happen.

The computer scientists and others involved were

encouraged in their work by ARPA’s philosophy of

gathering the best computer scientists working in the

field and supporting them.

IPT usually does little day-to-day manage-

ment of its contractors. Especially with its

research contracts, IPT would not be pro-

ducing faster results with such management

– research must progress at its own pace.

IPT has generally adopted a mode of man-

agement which entails finding highly moti-

vated, highly skilled contractors, giving

them a task, and allowing them to proceed

by themselves.

The work of the Network Working Group was

vital to the development of the ARPANET. Vinton

Cerf, another of the graduate students involved with

the early protocol development and still closely

connected to the Internet, echoed this sentiment in his

paper “An Assessment of ARPANET Protocols”:

The history of the Advanced Research

Project Agency resource sharing computer

network (ARPANET) is in many ways a

history of the study, development, and im-

plementation of protocols.

Cerf supports Cosell’s opinion about the uncertainty

and newness of the entire project:

The tasks facing the ARPANET design

teams were often unclear, and frequently

required agreements which had never been

contemplated before (e.g., common proto-

cols to permit different operating systems

and hardware to communicate). The suc-

cess of the effort, seen in retrospect, is

astonishing, and much credit is due to those

who were willing to commit themselves to

the job of putting the ARPANET to-

gether.

The NWG’s work blazed the trail which the

developers of the TCP/IP suite of protocols (Transmis-

sion Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) successfully

followed when the need to expand and include other

networks based on technologies other than NCP arose.

The principles embodied in RFC-3 and the open RFC

documentation process provided a strong foundation

which began with NCP and was continued by the work

on TCP/IP. NCP was developed in the field, and ver-

sions of it were released early in its development so

various programmers could work on implementing and

improving the protocol. In addition, all specifications

were free and easily available for people to examine

and comment on. Through this principle of early

release, problems and kinks were found and worked

out in a timely manner. The future developers of

TCP/IP learned from the developers of NCP a practice

of developing from the bottom up. The bottom-up

model allows for a wide range of people and experi-

ences to join in and perfect the protocol and make it

Page 36

the best possible.

The public funding of the ARPANET project

meant that the documentation could be made public

and freely available. The documentation was neither

restricted nor classified. This open process encourag-

ing communication was necessary for these pioneers to

succeed. Research in new fields of study requires that

researchers cooperate and communicate in order to

share their expertise. Such openness is especially crit-

ical when no one person has the answers in advance. In

his article, “The Evolution of Packet Switching,” Larry

Roberts described the public nature of the process:

Since the ARPANET was a public project

connecting many major universities and

research institutions, the implementation

and performance details were widely pub-

lished.

The people at the forefront of development of

these protocols were the members of the Network

Working Group, many of whom came from academic

institutions, and who therefore had the support and

time needed for the research. In summing up the

achievements of the process that developed the

ARPANET, the Completion Report Draft explains:

The ARPANET development was an ex-

tremely intense activity in which contribu-

tions were made by many of the best com-

puter scientists in the United States. Thus,

almost all of the “major technical prob-

lems” already mentioned received continu-

ing attention and the detailed approach to

those problems changed several times

during the early years of the ARPANET

effort.

Fundamental to the ARPANET, as explained by

the Completion Report, was the discovery of a new

way of looking at computers. The developers of the

ARPANET viewed the computer as a communications

device rather than only as an arithmetic device.

This

new view, which came from research conducted by

those in academic computer science, made the building

of the ARPANET possible. Such a shift in under-

standing the role of the computer was fundamental in

advancing computer science. The ARPANET research

has provided a rich legacy for the further advancement

of computer science, and it is important that the

significant lessons learned be studied and used to

further advance the study of computer science.

Notes

1. F. Heart, A. McKenzie, J. McQuillan, and D. Walden,

ARPANET Completion Report (Washington, D. C.: DARPA and

BBN, 1978) III-132 (hereafter, Completion Report).

2. ARPANET Completion Report Draft, September 9, 1977,

unpublished manuscript, III-6. (Hereafter, Completion Report

Draft).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., III-7.

5. “Interview with J.C.R. Licklider” conducted by William Aspray

and Arthur L. Norberg, tape recording, Cambridge, Massachu-

setts, 28 October 1988, OH 150, Charles Babbage Institute,

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107436/o

h150jcl.pdf

6. Completion Report Draft, III-7.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., III-21.

9. See, for example, J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, “The

Computer as a Communication Device,” in In Memoriam: J.C.R.

Licklider 1915-1990 (Palo Alto, CA.: Digital Systems Research

Center, 1990), originally published in Science and Technology,

April 1968.

10. Completion Report Draft, III-23.

11. Ibid., III-24.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. RFC-1336, “Who’s Who in the Internet,” G. Malkin, May

1992, 15.

15. Completion Report, section 1.1.2, starting on III-9.

16. Completion Report Draft, III-25, III-26.

17. Completion Report, II-7-II-8.

18. Completion Report Draft, III-3-III-33.

19. Ibid., 1III-35 and Completion Report, II-2.

20. Completion Report Draft, III-35, III-36.

21. Ibid., III-67.

22. Ibid., III-39 and personal discussion with Alex McKenzie,

November 1, 1993.

23. E-mail message to com-priv mailing list (com-[email protected]).

Subject: “Re: RFC-1000 (Partial response to part 1).” Date: Nov.

27, 1993.

24. Vinton G. Cerf, private e-mail correspondence, dated Nov. 27,

1993. Subject: “Re: Early Days of the ARPANET and the NWG.”

25. “The Origins of RFCs” by Stephen D. Crocker is contained in

J. Reynolds and J. Postel, RFC-1000, 1.

26. The following quotes show some of the reasoning that went

into the choice of the initial ARPANET sites:

“CCN’s (The Campus Computing Network of UCLA] chance to

obtain a connection to the ARPANET was a result of the presence

at UCLA of Professor L. Kleinrock and his students, including S.

Crocker, J. Postel, and V. Cerf. This group was not only involved

in the original design of the network and the Host protocols, but

also was to operate the Network Measurement Center (NMC). For

these reasons the first delivered IMP was installed at UCLA, and

ARPA was thus able to easily offer CCN the opportunity for

connection (Completion Report Draft, III-689).

UCLA was specifically asked to take on the task of a ‘Network

Measurement Center’ with the objective of studying the perfor-

mance of the network as it was built, grown, and modified; SRI

was specifically asked to take on the task of a ‘Network Informa-

Page 37

tion Center’ with the objective of collecting information about the

network, about host resources, and at the same time generating

computer based tools for storing and accessing that collected

information (Completion Report Draft, II-16).

The accessibility of distributed resources carries with it the need

for an information service (either centralized or distributed) that

enables users to learn about those resources. This was recognized

at the P1 meeting in Michigan in the spring of 1967. At the time,

Doug Engelbart and his group at the Stanford Research Institute

were already involved in research and development to provide a

computer-based facility to augment human interaction. Thus, it

was decided that Stanford Research Institute would be a suitable

place for a ‘Network Information Center’ (NIC) to be established

for the ARPANET. With the beginning of implementation of the

network in 1969, construction also began on the NIC at SRI”

(Completion Report Draft, III-60).

27. Completion Report Draft, III-67.

28. E-mail message to com-priv mailing list. Subject: “Re: RFC-

1000 (End of response to part 1),” Date: Nov. 27, 1993.

29. RFC-1000.

30. Completion Report Draft, III-67.

31. E-mail message to com-priv mailing list. Subject: “Re: RFC-

1000 (Response to part 2),” Date: Nov. 27, 1993.

32. Completion Report, III-30.

33. RFC-1000, 3.

34. Ibid.

35. In RFC-1000, Stephen Crocker reports on the process of the

installation of the first IMP:

“[T]ime was pressing: The first IMP was due to be delivered to

UCLA September 1, 1969, and the rest were scheduled at monthly

intervals.

At UCLA we scrambled to build a host-IMP interface. SDS, the

builder of the Sigma 7, wanted many months and many dollars to

do the job.

Mike Wingfield, another grad student at UCLA, stepped in and

offered to get the interface built in six weeks for a few thousand

dollars. He had a gorgeous, fully instrumented interface working

in five and one-half weeks. I was in charge of the software, and

we were naturally running a bit late. September 1 was Labor Day,

so I knew I had a couple of extra days to debug the software.

Moreover, I had heard BBN was having some timing troubles with

the software, so I had some hope they’d miss the ship date. And

I figured that first some Honeywell people would install the

hardware – IMPs were built out of Honeywell 516s in those days

– and then BBN people would come in a few days later to shake

down the software. An easy couple of weeks of grace.

BBN fixed their timing trouble, air shipped the IMP, and it arrived

on our loading dock on Saturday, August 30. They arrived with

the IMP, wheeled it into our computer room, plugged it in and the

software restarted from where it had been when the plug was

pulled in Cambridge. Still Saturday August 30. Panic time at

UCLA.

The second IMP was delivered to SRI at the beginning of October,

and ARPA’s interest was intense. Larry Roberts and Barry

Wessler came by for a visit on November 21, and we actually

managed to demonstrate a Telnet-like connection to SRI.”

36. RFC-1000, 4.

37. Ibid.

38. Completion Report Draft, II-24.

39. Ibid., III-69.

40. RFC-3, “Documentation Conventions,” Stephen Crocker,

April 1969, 1.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. RFC-1336, 5.

44. This democratic community is in danger of being fundamen-

tally altered. This study of the history of the development of the

ARPANET is meant to help people understand where the Net has

come from, in order to defend it, and try to fight to keep it open

and democratic – “the eighth wonder of the world,” as some call

the Internet.

45. Some examples of comments upon comments include:

RFC-1 Crocker, S. Host software, 1969 April 7

RFC-65 Walden, D. Comments on Host/Host Protocol document

RFC-36 Crocker, S. Protocol notes, 1970 March 16

RFC-38 Wolfr, S. Comments on network protocol from

NWG/RFC-36

RFC-39 Harslem, E.; Heaftier,J. Comments on protocol re:

NWG/RFC-36

RFC-33 Crocker, S. New Host-Host Protocol, 1970 February 12

RFC-47 Crowther,W. BBN’s comments on NWG/RFC-33 1970

April 20

46. Bernie Cosell, “Re: RFC-1000 – Questions about the Origins

of ARPANET Protocols 2/2,” alt.folklore.computers, Nov. 23,

1993.

47. Completion Report Draft, III-47.

48. Vinton Cerf, “An Assessment of ARPANET Protocols,”

Infotech Education Ltd., Stanford University, California, (n.d.), 1.

49. Ibid.

50. Lawrence Roberts, “The Evolution of Packet Switching,”

Proceedings of the IEEE 66 (November 1978): 267.

http://dx.doi

.org/10.1109/PROC.1978.11141

51. Completion Report Draft, II-24-II-25.

52. Ibid., III-24.

Special thanks to Alexander McKenzie of BBN, Stephen

Crocker of TIS, and Vinton Cerf of MCI for making research

materials available.

Appendix

Network Working Group 4689

RFC-3 April 1969

Steve Crocker

, UCLA

DOCUMENTATION CONVENTIONS

The Network Working Group seems to consist of Steve

Carr of Utah, Jeff Rulifson and Bill Duvall at SRIand Steve

Crocker and Gerard Deloche at UCLA. Membership is not closed.

The Network Working Group (NWG) is concerned with the

HOST software, the strategies for using the network, and initial

experiments with the network.

Documentation of the NWG’s effort is through notes such

as this. Notes may be produced at any site by anybody and

included in this series.

CONTENT

Page 38

The content of a NWG note may be any thought, sugges-

tion, etc. related to the HOST software or other aspect of the

network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished.

Philosophical positions without examples or other specifics,

specific suggestions or implementation techniques without intro-

ductory or background explication, and explicit questions without

any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for

a NWG note is one sentence.

These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for

two reasons. First, there is a tendency to view a written statement

as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange

and discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas.

Second, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpol-

ished, and we hope to ease this inhibition.

FORM

Every NWG note should bear the following information:

1. “Network Working Group”

“Request for Comments:” x, where x is a serial number.

Serial numbers are assigned by Bill Duvall at SRI

2. Author and affiliation

3. Date

4. Title. The title need not be unique.

DISTRIBUTION

One copy only will be sent from the author’s site to:

1. Bob Kahn, BB&N

2. Larry Roberts, ARPA

3. Steve Carr, UCLA

4. Jeff Rulifson, UTAH

5. Ron Stoughton, UCSB

6. Steve Crocker, UCLA

Reproduction if desired may be handled locally.

OTHER NOTES

Two notes (1 & 2) have been written so far. These are both

titled HOST Software and are by Steve Crocker and Bill Duvall,

separately.

Other notes planned are on:

1. Network Timetable

2. The Philosophy of NIL

3. Specifications for NIL

4. Deeper Documentation of HOST Software.

Note: This document is available at:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3

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