The Amateur

Computerist

Spring 2023 Toward 25 Years of the Netizen Book (Part 6) Volume 35 No. 6

Table of Contents

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

Page 1

Special Interview: “Netizen” Michael Hauben. . . . . Page 2

First Internet History Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 4

Appendix: The OHI Project: 50 Yrs of the Internet . . Page 5

Then, Now and Into the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 6

Context for the China-CSNET Link . . . . . . . . . . . Page 12

What the Internet Can Do for People. . . . . . . . . . Page 16

Introduction

The year 2022 marked the 25

Anniversary of

the 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 Anniversary. The

articles here grew out of Ronda Hauben’s efforts in

2022 concerning this anniversary, in particular her

contact with the Oral History of the Internet (OHI)

Project directed by Dr. Fang Xingdong.

The first article is a translated blog post that tells

some of the story of Michael Hauben’s life. It resulted

from an interview of Ronda and Jay that Dr. Fang and

his colleagues did about Michael for the Oral History

of the Internet Project. On the blog, Dr. Fang wrote

that doing an oral history interview of Ronda and Jay

about Michael “fits perfectly with the original inten-

tion of the Oral History of the Internet Project.” At the

bottom of the blog, Dr. Fang explained about the inter-

viewees that, “Through their stories and their lives, the

true meaning of the Internet spirit will be more mani-

fested, and the brilliance of the Internet spirit will be

further reflected.”

The second article is an announcement by the

Chinese think tank Cyberlabs of an Internet history

workshop to be held in Fall 2022 in Hangzhou,

Zhejiang Province, China. The organizers realize that,

“the development and spread of the Internet have been

deeply integrated into the daily lives, cultures, and

societies of people around the world.” They set the

goal of the workshop to contribute to the construction

of an academic community for research of more

aspects than just Internet technology including social

changes such as those foreseen in the Netizens book

over 25 years ago. The organizers emphasize “the

urgent need to look back at the way we came, revisit

the original intention, … and mission [to] let the

Internet back on the right track of the road for the

benefit of mankind.” Included in this article is an

appendix about the OHI Project, its process, signifi-

cance and guidelines for its interviews.

The next two articles are presentations made for

the First International Internet History Workshop that

resulted from the announcement described above. The

first, “Then, Now and Into the Future – Thoughts on

the 25

Anniversary of the Print Edition of Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet”

summarizes online experiences, questions and research

out of which the book emerged. In particular, Usenet

was a system where the communication was interac-

tive and dynamic. Also, when asking users of Usenet

what the net meant for them, Michael Hauben realized

many were citizens of the net. He contracted the two

words ‘net’ and ‘citizens’ into netizens.

That article traces the theory of interactive com-

munication and community building back to JCR

Licklider who saw a choice, “It’s either mere access to

information or interaction with information. And for

mankind it implies either an enmeshment in the silent

gears of the great electronic machine or mastery of a

marvelous new and truly plastic medium for formulat-

ing ideas and for exploring, expressing, and communi-

cating them.” The article then demonstrates that the

wrong choice may have been made when the U.S.

government privatized and commercialized the U.S.

Internet backbone in the mid 1990s. But the future is

not lost. The author points to Ancient Society by Lewis

Morgan for examples how new technologies have in

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

Page 1

the past led to major social changes. She writes, “Even

as old forms of citizenship continue, new forms like

netizens and netizenship are developing side by side.”

The next article was another keynote speech at

the workshop. It traced the tradition of international

computer and networking cooperation and sharing as

the historical context of the collaboration in 1983 to

1987 which led to the first email message from China

to the world over the CSNET. The speech began with

John Von Neumann in the 1940s, who saw a potential

conflict between scientific and commercial develop-

ment of computers. Van Neumann put all his computer

connected work into the public domain. The speech

presented many examples of an international or world

spirit in the early and later computer science and

informatics communities. Collaboration and sharing

drove computer and then later network development.

International conferences and organizations ignored

cold war boundaries and rivalries. Interestingly, the

technology was also based on sharing and facilitated

collaboration. The role of CSNET is emphasized as

preparing for the wide spreading of the Internet in the

1990s. The German-Chinese collaboration in the 1980s

was a fine example of this tradition. As Madam Hu

Qiheng wrote in 2007, “The international collaboration

in science and technology is the driving force for com-

puter networking across the country borders and facil-

itating the early Internet development in China.”

The last article is an excerpt from Chapter 14 of

the Netizens book. It is testimony given at a national

virtual conference in 1994. Some of the participants in

the conference were active in defining their interest in

keeping the Internet protected from dominance by

commercial interests. Much of the testimony quoted in

the excerpt argued for maintaining the internet as a

“two way street for all Americans. Not only should

they be able to receive from the net, but they also must

be able to provide their unique information.” This was

part of an argument that the Internet makes available

an alternative to the corporate owned mass media and

allows a grass-roots communication from the many to

the many. The policy implication was that for Internet

communication to be interactive the bandwidth must

be balanced, as much for going out from a user as

coming in.

[Editor’s Note: On March 14, 2022, Dr. Fang Xingdong, head of

the OHI (Oral History of the Internet) project in China posted

about Michael Hauben and his family on the blogchina website in

Chinese. Earlier that day, Ronda and Jay Hauben had a zoom

session with Dr. Fang and his colleagues introducing themselves

and answering questions about Michael. The following is a

machine translation into English of Dr. Fang’s blog post. The

original can be seen at:

https://fxd.blogchina.com/794986680

.html.]

Oral History of the Internet A

Special Interview: “Netizen”

Michael Hauben

On February 27, I received an email from Ronda

Hauben, saying that she had seen books published of

Internet oral history interviews and that she had

learned about the Oral History of the Internet project

during a WeChat video with Academician Hu Qiheng.

Later, I also received an email from Academician Hu

Qiheng. Of course I am no stranger to them. I knew

about them since the 1990s. Ronda Hauben’s son,

Michael Hauben, coined the term “Netizen,” and in

1997 the two co-authored a splendid Internet history

book, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet.

Michael, who was born on May 1, 1973, pro-

posed to study computing at the age of 5; in the first

grade of primary school took his work to participate in

the science exhibition only for senior students, and

became the only junior student to participate in the ex-

hibition. At the age of 10, he used a TV as a monitor

and a Timex Sinclair computer with 3K memory, and

wrote games on this computer together with his father

Jay Hauben. He became active in major BBSs in the

early 1980s and was in one of the earliest computer

user groups. In 1993, the term “Netizen” was coined

during his undergraduate studies. The term was coined

in his article titled “The Net and Netizens: The Impact

the Net has on People’s Lives,” which quickly spread.

He was not yet 20 years old then.

At the university level, although Michael Hauben

was a computer major, he preferred courses such as

philosophy and ethics, and was a music lover, rather

than courses such as economics. In the late 1990s, with

the rise of the Internet wave, the whole world was in a

frenzy for the commercialization of the Internet. As an

important capital market, New York is undoubtedly the

center of the myth that the Internet benefits. However,

Michael Hauben has always focused on the spirit of

Page 2

openness and sharing of the Internet, rather than the

commercialization opportunities brought by the Inter-

net. His speeches and writings adhere to the pure

Internet spirit. The evolution of his mother, Ronda

Hauben, also reflects this rare purity. In an article titled

“What the Net Means to Me,” Michael firmly believes

that the Internet will remain public, open, and non-

commercial. “The Internet means personal power in a

world where there is little or no personal power.” “The

Internet is, by its very nature, communication between

individuals … a vehicle for the dissemination of peo-

ple’s ideas and aspirations.”

He entered Columbia University in 1991, major-

ing in computer science, graduating in 1995. He

obtained his master’s degree in 1997, and also pub-

lished the book “Netizen” in the same year. Michael

Hauben, or his family of three, is not only the creator

of the word “netizen,” but also endows the word with

a soul, which is the best embodiment of the Internet

spirit of openness, sharing, freedom and equality or the

spirit of “netizen.” Their love for the Internet, their

enthusiasm and passion for spreading the Internet to

the world, is very contagious. However, it is very

deplorable that in 1999 Michael Hauben was involved

in a car accident and passed away in June 2001 at the

age of 28. After the tragic loss of their only child,

Ronda Hauben and Jay Hauben took up the unfinished

mission of their son and continued to work hard to

promote the spirit of “Netizen” around the world.

The story of Ronda Hauben’s family of three fits

perfectly with the original intention of the Oral History

of the Internet Project. Therefore, this video interview

is of special significance. Zhong Bu said that our

project will publish a book for the story of their family

of three. Today’s interview is the first, Ronda Hauben

and Jay Hauben share the story of the three of them.

This interview method is also the first time. When they

talked about the story of their beloved son, the two

complemented each other, and many vivid stories

emerged, which made us deeply infected. Their parent-

child relationship is so harmonious, the parents are

willing to give Mike all the assistance they can.

Doing the oral history of the Internet is indeed a

very hard job, but at this time, our inner harvest is

unparalleled. I hope that our work is for the Internet

and the world, and we can dig out more wonderful

people and things. Through their stories and their lives,

the true meaning of the Internet spirit will be more

manifested, and the brilliance of the Internet spirit will

be further reflected.

This year, the Internet Oral History Project turns

15 years old, and this harvest is undoubtedly our great-

est motivation. The first interview, was in the morning

in China, an hour and a half passed quickly, and it was

already late at night in New York. It can’t be too late,

so, we look forward to the second time for further in-

depth chat.

[At the bottom of the blog post was this statement about Internet

Oral History by Dr. Fang Xingdong.]

Whether history is created by the masses or

heroes of the times, it is always created by people.

Whether it is the times that create heroes, or the heroes

who create the times, create history and change the

course of history, it is often a part of individuals who

stand out. At an important juncture in the historical

process, they did not miss the critical moment en-

trusted by the times, relying on their own personal

characteristics and unique effort and made unique

contributions and impossible miracles. They are the

representatives of the historical process, and they are

the models that condense the changes of the times.

Focusing on and deeply penetrating them can better

restore the splendor of history and show the unique

creativity of human beings. It is no exaggeration to say

that these people are the instigators and leaders who

pushed China from a semi-agricultural and semi-

industrial society into an information society. It is the

hero and heroine who promotes the entire human race

from industrial civilization to higher information civi-

lization. Their personal achievements and significance

of the times will continue to be highlighted and recog-

nized over time.

Page 3

Editor’s Note: The following is an announcement by CyberLabs

(http://cyberlabs.org/), a think tank in China specifically focusing

on cyber affairs. It appeared online on Sept. 24, 2022 at:

http://

www.cyberlabs.org/articles/8Kkx8The internet history workshop

it announced took place on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8, 2022 in Hangzhou

China and online via Zoom. Also, the announcement here is

followed by an Appendix in which Cyberlabs describes its Oral

History of the Internet (OHI) project.]

The First Internet History

Workshop “The Latest

History, the Farthest Future”

by Cyberlabs

Background

The development and spread of the Internet have

been deeply integrated into the daily lives, cultures,

and societies of people around the world. It is neces-

sary to learn more about the Internet to make a better

world. Understanding the innovations and changes

involved in the evolution of the Internet from techno-

logical, social, scientific, political, and economic, is

prompting the history of the Internet to become an

interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary emerging field

is a good way to go.

The Internet, born in 1969,* has entered a his-

toric turning point. Several important collections of

essays, special issues of journals, scholarly papers, and

monographs have been published, marking significant

progress in the discipline of Internet history. At the

same time, the growing number of digital resources,

Internet history websites, and databases marked pro-

gress in the field of Internet history studies. However,

in general, apart from the history of the Internet in-

dustry and business, the truly in-depth research on the

history of Internet technologies, ideas, social changes,

and global history remains relatively barren, which

greatly affects our understanding and judgment of the

current situation and future trends of the Internet. The

in-depth study of the history of the Internet and the

construction of an academic community have become

a matter of urgency.

The Internet and digital technology will continue

to play an increasingly important role in the future, but

due to the lag in digital governance and digital legisla-

tion, the Internet and digital technology have produced

different degrees of negative impacts and deviations in

the process of social application, causing a certain

degree of shock to social progress. There are also pro-

blems in cyberspace such as over-reliance of govern-

ment digital governance on the convenience of gover-

nance brought by digital technology, excessive pursuit

of commercial interests by Internet enterprises in

social applications, as well as digital legislation, digital

security, digital civilization, digital divide, and digital

barriers, etc. There is an urgent need to look back at

the way we came, revisit the original intention, stand

at the height of the community of destiny of human

cyberspace and the construction of digital civilization

to study the law of Internet development in depth and

thoroughly, and summarize the painful lessons that

have occurred in infrastructure construction, R&D, and

social applications. Remembering the original inten-

tion and mission, let the Internet back on the right

track of the road for the benefit of mankind.

“We observe the present through the rear-view

mirror, we walk back towards the future.” Standing in

the “present” node of Internet development, sorting out

and analyzing its development, looking at the past and

present through the “rear-view mirror,” exploring

those laws and trends that have sustained influence in

the profound changes of Internet development, it is

important to know the past and guide the present.

The workshop will be held in Hangzhou,

Zhejiang Province, on the 24

and 25

[the workshop

was postponed and actually happened on Nov 7-8,

2022] before the opening of the World Internet Confer-

ence in Wuzhen. The annual conference will bring

together representative Internet pioneers from Europe,

America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, important

experts in Internet history research, and interdisciplin-

ary experts and scholars in Internet history research to

deliver keynote speeches, publish research results,

share research experiences, and work together to build

a globally linked Internet history academic commu-

nity.

The outstanding papers and speeches delivered at

the annual conference will be published and recom-

mended to partner academic journals.

Time: September 24-25, 2022

Venue: Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China

Organizers:

College of Media and International Culture,

Zhejiang University

Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication Re-

search Center, Zhejiang University

Co-organizers:

Digital Civilization Research Center, Tsinghua Yang-

tze River Delta Research Institute

Page 4

Consortium of Internet and Society, Communication

University of Zhejiang

CyberLabs

Research Committee on the History of Internet Com-

munication, Chinese Association for the History of

Journalism and Communication

* 1969 was the year that the ARPANET experiments

started. The ARPANET was a single network not an

inter network or internet. A better year to cite for the

birth of the Internet would be 1972 when the Interna-

tional Networking Working Group was formed at the

International Conference on Computer Communica-

tions. See the article in this issue by Jay Hauben.

Appendix

The OHI Project

50 Years of the Internet

Introduction

To celebrate the first 50 years of the Internet,

CyberLabs has launched the Oral History of the

Internet (OHI), recording and preserving the personal

narratives of global Internet Pioneers’ extraordinary

contribution to the internet development. By 2019,

OHI should have interviewed 500 Internet Pioneers

around the world. A 50-episode TV series, documenta-

ries and books will be produced based on the video

interviews. The OHI, which started first in China in

2007, has interviewed nearly 200 Internet Pioneers

who mostly come from Asia, Europe and the United

States. The OHI will also go to interview those from

Africa, Mid-East and Oceania.

The mission of OHI is “Recording the first 50

years of the internet so to embrace its next 50 years.”

The OHI will thus build a virtual monument that

is committed to documenting personal narratives from

the Internet Pioneers who have made extraordinary

contributions to the development of the internet around

the world. OHI was launched by CyberLabs, a think

tank devoted to recording and preserving the internet

history, which has started the project first in China

since 2007. As the internet is facilitating unprece-

dented, multi-faceted interactions around the world,

OHI goes global by video recording oral testimonies

from the worldwide Internet Pioneers about their

extraordinary contributions to the development of the

internet in their own countries or fields.

The Process

The Internet Pioneers were selected by the

international Academic Board of CyberLabs by

consulting its Board of Consultants based on their

personal contributions to the internet development at

different stages, and in particular, the social impact of

their contributions. Each Internet Pioneer’s oral test-

imony starts with a video recording of a first-person

account with an interviewer from CyberLabs, who

share the conscious intention of creating permanent

oral history in the purpose of better understanding the

internet’s past and future. All the interviews will be

posted online so that they are available to the public

around the world through the internet. The oral history

made out of the due process is then preserved and

made available in various forms to internet researchers

and members of the public.

The Significance

OHI records and preserves diverse historical

perspectives of the internet history from global Internet

Pioneers in the hope of advocating the collaborative

effort of building up the internet. The oral history

produced could be used as a powerful tool for bridging

divides, improving engagement, and facilitating his-

torical understanding in terms of internet governance,

policy making, and cybersecurity. OHI thus welcomes

individuals and institutions who share the values of

creating and preserving the oral history of the internet

to join us to in promoting excellence in the collection,

preservation, dissemination and uses of the oral test-

imonies for current and future users. In this sense, OHI

should help foster better communication among global

communities who increasingly interact on the internet.

Guidelines for OHI Interviews

The OHI interviews seek an in-depth account of

Internet Pioneers’ personal contribution and reflections

on the internet development at different stages. An

OHI interview is different from most interviews con-

ducted by news media organizations as the former

offers sufficient time to our invited Internet Pioneers

to tell their stories the fullness they desire. The content

of oral history interviews is grounded in reflections on

the past as opposed to commentary on purely contem-

porary events.

In the OHI interviews, Internet Pioneers are re-

minded that they must voluntarily give their consent to

be interviewed and understand that they can withdraw

Page 5

from the interview or refuse to answer any question at

any time. Before the interview, they may choose to

give the consent by signing a consent form or record-

ing an oral statement of consent. All interviews are

conducted in accord with the stated aims and within

the parameters of the consent.

Interviewees hold the copyright to their inter-

views until and unless they transfer those rights to

OHI. This is done by the interviewee signing a release

form or recording an oral statement to the same effect.

The invited Internet Pioneers also have the right to put

restrictions on the use of their interviews. All use and

dissemination of the interview content must follow any

restrictions they place upon it.

OHI respects its invited Internet Pioneers as well

as the integrity of the research. Interviewers are ob-

liged to ask historically significant questions, reflect-

ing careful preparation for the interview and under-

standing of the issues to be addressed. Interviewers

respect the Internet Pioneers’ equal authority in the

interviews and honor their right to respond to questions

in their own style and language. During the OHI inter-

views, both interviewers and interviewees (Internet

Pioneers) should strive for intellectual honesty and the

best application of the skills of their discipline, while

avoiding stereotypes, misrepresentations, or manipula-

tions of the narrators’ words.

In keeping with the goal of long term preserva-

tion and access, OHI should use the best recording

equipment available within the limits of their financial

resources to reproduce the voice accurately and, if

appropriate, other sounds as well as visual images. The

OHI interviewers must avoid making any promises

that cannot be met, such as guarantees of control over

interpretation and presentation of the interviews

beyond the scope of restrictions stated in informed

consent forms, or suggestions of material benefit

outside the control of the interviewer.

Contacts

Dr. Fang Xingdong

President and CEO, CyberLabs

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Bu Zhong

Senior Research Fellow, CyberLabs

Email: [email protected]

Ms. Yuanyuan Fan

Director of International Cooperation, CyberLabs

Email: fanyuany[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: The following was the author’s prepared keynote

speech at the first International Internet History Workshop held in

Hangzhou, China. The workshop was sponsored by the Cyber-

labs’ Oral History of the Internet (OHI) project. It was presented

on zoom on Nov 6, 2022 from NYC, which was Nov 7 in China.

The actual presentation which differs a bit from this prepared

speech can be seen at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/OHI/R-

OHI-Video.mp4. In the video you will see the slides that accom-

panied the presentation. You can also see the slides at: http://www

.colum bia.edu/~jrh29/OHI/R-OHI-Slides.pptx.]

Then, Now and Into the

Future – Thoughts on the 25

Anniversary of the

Print Edition of Netizens:

On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

The year 2022 marked the 25

Anniversary of

the print edition of the book Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. As a coauthor

of this book, I marked this occasion by reviewing some

of what was learned in the course of the research and

writing of the book. What are the implications of these

lessons 25 years later?

This has been a difficult process but an insightful

one. Dr. Fang Xingdong and OHI provided an impor-

tant incentive for a direction with a History of the

Internet Conference. In the introduction to the confer-

ence they wrote, “There is an urgent need to look back

at the way we came, revisit the original intention … .

Remembering the original intention and mission, let

the Internet back on the right track of the road for the

benefit of mankind.”

I found this perspective helpful because it brings

me back to the original questions raised in the process

of writing the book. So I want to share an account of

this situation with you today to consider what direction

to support for a desirable future for the Internet.

First a bit of a summary.

In January 1992, I was able to get a connection to

a grassroots network called Usenet and make my first

post.

Page 6

Usenet was created by graduate students in 1979

using features of the UNIX operating system created

by Bell Labs researchers. Usenet was described as a

“public access network.” Participants included univer-

sities, corporations, research centers, etc. The com-

puter users on Usenet were eager to discuss many

topics. Also, users helped each other with computers,

technology in general, and other problems.

Michael, my coauthor, had gotten on Usenet a bit

earlier and he helped me to get on. Probably at that

time I was using the Internet via the NSFNET to get

access to Usenet.

When I wrote my first Usenet post, which was

about the study of the history of economics, I put it in

a newsgroup called misc.books.technical, a newsgroup

for discussion of technical books.

A number of users of Usenet sent me email

complaining about what I had done. A few of the

emails I received explained which newsgroup I should

have used to put my post on Usenet. A few users even

welcomed me and encouraged me to repost it in the

appropriate Usenet newsgroup, sci.econ, telling me

“Start discussing on sci.econ. We’re all ears.”

Subsequently I learned how to read Usenet and

contribute posts to what we might now describe as an

online social network.

Through my experiences on Usenet I became

fascinated with the online discussions it made possible.

And I began to wonder how it had been created.

Similarly my coauthor Michael Hauben had

heard of Usenet and done some study about the online

developments that had taken place in the U.S. and

elsewhere around the world. He had had seven years of

experience on local BBS’s and was eager to learn more

about the international activity.

Michael was then a sophomore at Columbia

University and had access to the Internet and various

other online resources available to Columbia students,

such as email, Usenet, mailing lists and various pro-

gramming resources.

At the time, Michael was taking computer

science classes. In response to an assignment in one of

his classes, he did a post summing up some of the

study he was doing about the social impact of the

Internet. In the post, he asked for suggestions how to

study what was happening in Internet development.

This was in the early 1990s. The post was titled:

‘The Largest Machine’: Where it came

from and its importance to Society

He explained:

I propose to write a paper concerning the

development of ‘The Net.’ I am interested

in exploring the forces behind its develop-

ment and the fundamental change it repre-

sents over previous communications me-

dia. I will consult with people who have

been involved with Usenet from its begin-

nings, and the various networks that com-

prise the Computer Network around the

world. I wish to come to some understand-

ing of where the Net has come from, so as

to be helpful in figuring out where it is

going to.

Michael Hauben

In response he got a number of interesting

emails. He summed up the responses online as was the

custom at the time. So both Michael and I were begin-

ning to have some very interesting experiences on

Usenet.

Subsequently, Michael followed up his post with

a post asking how far and what kind of unusual Net

connections people had. He wrote:

I want to hear from the four corners of the

Net – That means YOU!

Howdy!

I would like to hear from EVERYONE on

the Net-Frontier. If you think you are weird

or abnormal (or special) in terms of net-

connections or usenet connection, please

tell me all about it. I am doing research for

a paper about the “largest machine” – the

Net. So, I’m looking for people on “the

fringe,” or who are at obscure connections

or who believe they are connected to some

kind of interesting makeshift connection.

To the further expansion of the Net!:)

– Michael Hauben

He received answers from over 50 people around

the world from Japan to France to India and Africa.

One of his responses included someone planning

to send email up to the MIR Space Station.

By this time both Michael and I had gotten

interested in how these online developments had come

about. Michael raised the question in online posts.

Some pioneers who had happened to be part of early

developments were online and responded to Michael

telling him the important person for him to learn about

was JCR Licklider who had had the vision for the Net.

Page 7

And one of the pioneers sent me a copy of a journal

article by Licklider and Robert Taylor titled “The

Computer As A Communications Device” which had

been published in 1968.

The article turned out to be of great importance

and I have read it many times and always learn some-

thing new when I read it. And Michael quoted from it

referring people to it in various posts.

The authors define communication as a creative

process differentiating between communication versus

the sending and receiving of information. They argue

when two tape recorders send or receive information to

each other that is not communication. They explain:

We believe that communicators have to do

something non-trivial with the information

they send and receive. And … to interact

with the richness of living information –

not merely in the passive way that we have

become accustomed to using books and

libraries, but as active participants in an

ongoing process, bringing something to it

through our interaction with it, and not

simply receiving from it by our 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 ‘now we

both know a fact that only one of us knew

before.’ When minds interact, new ideas

emerge. We want to talk about the creative

aspect of communication.

Subsequently Michael was in a computer ethics

class and the professor wanted students to do a re-

search paper. But they were not to use books. Michael

was interested in what the impact of the Net was and

would be. So he made up several questions and posted

them on Usenet and on mailing lists available at the

time.

He received many responses which he summa-

rized and which became part of a paper he wrote and

posted. A surprising aspect of the responses he re-

ceived was that many of those who wrote him not only

recounted interesting experiences or activities that they

had or were having because of their access to the

Internet. But also they expressed the desire that every-

one who wanted to be online have the ability to do so.

They were using the empowerment they were finding

possible because of the Internet to help make the Net

better in the ways they could.

Michael realized there was significance to the

responses he was receiving as well as the nature of

what he was seeing the Net made possible. Online

there was a newsgroup naming convention using

net.xxx for the names of different newsgroups like

net.general, net.news, net.cooks, net.space, net.chess.

Also, users who were acting like citizens online were

referred to as net.citizen. Michael changed this con-

ventional term net.citizen to netizen to describe the

users he found who were doing what they could to

contribute to the Net and spread it.

Following up on the recommendation to learn

about Licklider, Michael and I began to do research to

understand Licklider’s contribution.

Until the early 1960s computers were mainly

operated in what was called batch mode. Programmers

had to type their programs on punch cards, bring the

stack of cards to a computer center and then come back

later to get the results of their program.

In 1959, Christopher Strachey in a talk at a

UNESCO conference and, independently, John Mc-

Carthy in a memo at MIT, proposed a form of comput-

ing that would give users direct access to the computer.

They called this time-sharing because the memory and

processing time of the computer could be divided up to

make it seem that each individual user had the com-

puter all to his or herself.

In 1962, JCR Licklider was invited to head a

research office at the Advanced Research Projects

Agency. ARPA agreed to allow him to promote inter-

active computing, a form of computing where the

researchers could interact with the computer, typing

their program directly into the computer and receiving

the results directly.

Licklider was not an engineer. He was a psychol-

ogist. ARPA was a U.S. government effort begun in

response to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of

Sputnik on Oct 4, 1957. ARPA was created as a civil-

ian office within the U.S. Department of Defense.

At ARPA, Licklider began a research program

that would fundamentally change the mode of operat-

ing computers. As head of the computer research

office at ARPA, Licklider funded several different

research proposals to develop time-sharing projects at

different universities and research sites. Among these

were University of California at Berkeley, MIT,

UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, and SDC. He

changed the name of the office he headed from

“Command and Control” to the “Information Process-

ing Techniques Office” (IPTO) to reflect the work

Page 8

being done by this office.

Not only did the research done under Licklider’s

leadership make a great impact on the type of comput-

ing available in the world, but also he identified the

need for computer networking and put forward a vision

that would inspire computer scientists to develop

interactive computing, time-sharing, packet switching

and the ARPANET.

The IPTO funded researchers and encouraged

them to develop projects that came to be known as

Centers of Excellence. IPTO funded a program at MIT

known as Project MAC.

It funded a project at Stanford in Artificial Intel-

ligence. At Carnegie Mellon University, Alan Newell

and Herb Simon headed a project also in Artificial

Intelligence. Other projects were funded at other

universities. Part of the research program was for the

researchers to use different computer and software

systems but to collaborate and share the problems and

work they were doing to find the questions they had in

common, so as to identify what were the generic issues

of computer science.

The essence of Licklider’s quest was to gain an

understanding of the computer as a communication

device. Along with the effort to form a community of

researchers who would collaborate and work together,

was the commitment to disseminate widely the results

of the research so there was support for the publication

of research. Licklider’s first term as director of IPTO

put the office on a firm foundation.

Robert Taylor was one of the subsequent heads

of the IPTO. In a Charles Babbage Institute conducted

interview of Taylor, he pointed out the importance of

Licklider’s vision to future networking development.

He explained: “A phrase that J.C.R. Licklider fre-

quently used to express his vision was ‘an intergalactic

network.’” Licklider used this phrase to describe the

potential community he realized would emerge from

the interconnection of the local communities of com-

puter users that developed from time-sharing.

At first, Taylor notes, ARPA supported research

toward its goal achieving compatibility and resource

sharing across different computer systems. However

he explains:

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

useable, these people begin 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 com-

puter become a medium that stimulated the

formation of a human community … .

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 spawned 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,

ideas – anything that could be typed out. In their

article, “The Computer as a Communication Device,”

Licklider and Taylor predicted the creation of a global

computer network they wrote:

We have seen the beginnings of communi-

cation through a console – Communication

among people and consoles located in the

same room or in the same university cam-

pus or even at distantly separate separated

laboratories of the same research and de-

velopment organization. This kind of com-

munication – through a single multi access

computer with the aid of telephone lines is

beginning to foster cooperation and pro-

mote coherence more effectively then do

present arrangements for sharing computer

programs by exchanging magnetic tape, by

messenger or Mail.

They point out how the interconnection of

computers leads to a much broader class of connec-

tions than might have been expected. A new form of

community is generated:

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 super community can communi-

Page 9

cate – with other people, with programs,

with data, or with 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 to diverse com-

puters and people would create. Licklider’s vision of

an ‘intergalactic network’ connecting people repre-

sented an important conceptual shift in computer

science.

When Michael and I got online in 1992 and

1993, Licklider’s vision still seemed to be influencing

what was happening online.

The experience Michael and I were having on

Usenet was made possible by the Internet.

In an article he wrote during this period, Michael

notes that much of the activity computer users were

able to take part in has to do with discussion related

communication. That included the kind of discussion

oriented online activity Licklider advocated, electronic

mail and discussion lists.

Popular lists included Human-nets, Wine-tasters,

and SF-lovers. The ARPA sponsored research had

made possible the popular use of the Net by a growing

number of people through e-mail, Usenet discussion

groups, mailing lists, and Internet relay chats. Also the

ARPANET was the product of previous U.S. Govern-

ment funded research in interactive computing and

time-sharing of computers and the Internet.

Though we didn’t realize what had led to the

capability that we and others found enticing about

being online in these early years of the 1990s, we did

know that something very special was going on that

we could participate in.

Even after Licklider left the IPTO that he had

created and set its principles, “the work supported by

ARPA/IPTO continued his explicit emphasis on com-

munication.”

Demonstrating this understanding of the commu-

nications potential of computers, 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-

human communication. He wrote:

It is not proper to think of networks as

connecting computers. Rather, they con-

nect people using computers to mediate.

The great success of the Internet is not

technical, but in human impact. Electronic

mail may not be a wonderful advance in

Computer Science, but it is a whole new

way for people to communicate. The con-

tinued growth of the Internet is a technical

challenge to all of us, but we must never

lose sight of where we came from, the

great change we have worked on the larger

computer community, and the great poten-

tial we have for future change.

Early on, Licklider had recognized the kind of

changes Clark was referring to. In 1970, at a confer-

ence about information utilities, Licklider gave the

keynote. In the keynote he argued that what he called

the advent of information utilities would be a turning-

point for our civilization. He differentiated between

“access to information” versus “interaction with infor-

mation.”

It’s either mere access to information or

interaction with information.

Licklider explained:

And for mankind it implies either an en-

meshment in the silent gears of the great

electronic machine or mastery of a marvel-

ous new and truly plastic medium for for-

mulating ideas and for exploring, express-

ing, and communicating them.

Licklider posed this dichotomy as presenting a signifi-

cant challenge for society.

Part of Licklider’s vision was the promise of a

more active participatory role for the human made

possible by the communication capability of the com-

puter. This vision included recognizing that informa-

tion utilities would be an institutional form to provide

the public with the computer and information utility of

the future.

Research however was needed to sort out how to

create such an information utility.

In November 1994, the National Telecommuni-

cations Information Administration (NTIA), a public

agency under the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, organized

a national online conference raising the question of

what should be the future of the Internet.

Maintaining a public Internet was a major thread

of many of the participants who defended the Internet

as a public good. During the discussion the distinction

was raised between the Net encouraging interactive

forms of communication versus the passive transfer of

information and the importance of this distinction to

the future of the Net.

There were many valuable ideas raised and dis-

cussed during this online conference.

Page 10

Among views emphasized was the importance of

the Internet for making it possible to hear diverse

voices and to transform the nature of the communica-

tion made possible in our society.

In an analysis that Michael Hauben did of the

transcript from this conference, he documented how he

and others who spoke, challenged the narrow view of

the Internet presented by the U.S. government restrict-

ing the meaning of communication to the sharing of

information.

In the view presented by Michael and others at

the conference, communication meant “universal inter-

connection rather than universal access. As Michael

explains:

‘access’ stresses the status-quo understand-

ing of one-way communication, the user

accesses information that other ‘autho-

rized’ information providers make avail-

able. This is the old model. The new model

is of the interconnection of many different

types of people, information and ideas. The

new model stresses the breakdown of old

definitions of communication and informa-

tion. Diversity allows for both the increas-

ing speed in the formation of new ideas and

the ability for previously unauthorized

ideas to have the airing and consideration

they rightly deserve … .

Michael concludes that,

It would be best to explore and develop the

new forms of communication which this

new media facilitates, and which was less

possible and present in the past.

By the 1990s, however, it was no longer the

concept of how to create the computer and an informa-

tion utility for the intergalactic network that was being

explored. Instead a plan had been created and was

being implemented to commercialize and privatize the

U.S. portion of the Internet.

While the plan to privatize and commercialize

the Internet had been created with various parts being

worked on for years, on September 15, 1994 the U.S.

government officially announced a plan to privatize

the NSF backbone of the Internet. And on May 1, 1995

the privatization decision was implemented.

The implementation of the privatization plan had

been set in motion years earlier at a by-invitation-only

meeting held on March 1 to March 3, 1990 at Harvard

University which discussed how to implement the pri-

vatization plan. This meeting is described in RFC

1192, November 1990.

The NTIA held its nation-wide online conference

only shortly before the privatization was carried out.

But the discussion of the vision that Licklider

and other pioneers had to create and develop interac-

tive computing, time-sharing, and building the ARPA-

NET, Usenet and the Internet, was the kind of discus-

sion needed early on before the decision to privatize

and commercialize the Internet was made.

Instead on May 1, 1995, the transfer was made of

the NSFNET from a publicly subsidized U.S. Internet

backbone to a commercial backbone, just six months

after the NTIA online conference.

What then for the future? In the Unix chapter of

the Netizen book, there are some references to the book

Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human

Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civili-

zation by Lewis Henry Morgan. The book explores the

role of changes of technology in understanding the

transition from savagery to barbarism and then to

civilization. One chapter points to the fact that master-

ing the smelting of iron was a substantial change of

technology helping to lead to our current civilization.

Also Morgan points to the importance of the invention

of writing in making possible documenting the level of

development so society can build on the advances

made thus far. Understanding the advances in com-

munications that the computer makes possible can help

to understand how to build on those advances.

To move to a digital civilization requires study-

ing what advances have been made and learning how

to appreciate and recognize new modes of develop-

ment like the communication advances Usenet and

email and the ARPANET and Internet have made

possible.

Along with changes in technology, there are also

changes in political forms and social customs. Even as

old forms of citizenship continue, new forms like

netizens and netizenship are developing side by side.

Morgan’s book helps to demonstrate why recognizing

the importance of such developments is needed along

with recognizing the importance of changes in tech-

nology.

Page 11

[Editor’s Note: The following was one of the keynote speeches

given at the first International Internet History Workshop held in

Hangzhou China. The workshop was sponsored by the Cyberlabs’

Oral History of the Internet (OHI) project. It was presented on

zoom on Nov 6, 2022 from NYC, which was Nov 7 in China. The

speech was accompanied by slides which can be seen at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29 /OHI/J-OHI-Slides.ppt. A video

recording of the presentation can be seen at: http://www.colum

bia.edu/~jrh29/OHI/J-OHI-Video .mp4.]

Across the Great Wall

Historical Context for the

China-CSNET Link in the

Tradition of International

Cooperation and Sharing

by Jay Hauben

[email protected]

Hello, I feel honored to be a participant in this

international workshop. I want to use my talk today to

put the collaboration in 1983 to 1987 which led to the

first email message from China to the world over the

CSNET into an historical context. That context is the

tradition of international computer and networking

cooperation and sharing.

A clue to that context is what Madam Hu Qiheng

said in 2007:

The international collaboration in science

and technology is the driving force for

computer networking across the country

borders and facilitating the early Internet

development in China.

The first message on the China-Germany link

went across a supposed ideological and many geo-

graphic and technical borders. The crude graphic

shows the path.

As an historian and a journalist I want to go back

in time and trace a tradition of sharing and crossing

borders that is a characteristic of computer develop-

ment and computer science and science in general. I

will start with the Hungarian-born scientist and mathe-

matician John von Neumann in the 1940s.

Von Neumann had set a very solid scientific

foundation for computer development in his work for

the U.S. government during the Second World War.

He wrote a report presenting detailed arguments for the

axiomatic features that have characterized computers

ever since.

When the war ended there began to be a battle

over who would get the patent for the basic ideas that

were embodied in the ENIAC, one of the first success-

ful electronic digital computers. Von Neumann saw a

potential conflict between scientific and commercial

development of computers.

Von Neumann argued that the foundation of

computing should be scientific and that a prototype

computer be built at the Institute for Advanced Study

at Princeton University to ensure that a general pur-

pose computer be build by scientists. He wrote: “It is

…, very important to be able to plan such a machine

without any inhibitions and to run it quite freely and

governed by scientific considerations.” The computer

became known as the Institute for Advanced Studies or

IAS computer.

Von Neumann also set the pattern in the very

beginning that the fundamental principles of comput-

ing should not be patented but should be put in the

public domain. He wrote:

… [W]e are hardly interested in exclusive

patents but rather in seeing that anything

that we contributed to the subject, directly

or indirectly, remains accessible to the

general public … . [O]ur main interest is to

see that the government and the scientific

public have full rights to the free use of any

information connected with this subject.

He was here placing his contributions to com-

puter development into the long tradition of the public

nature of science, the norm of sharing scientific results.

That norm had been interrupted by the world war.

Von Neumann gathered a team of scientists and

engineers at the Institute for Advanced Studies to

design and construct the IAS computer. He and his

team documented their theoretical reasoning and

logical and design features in a series of reports. They

submitted the reports to the U.S. Patent Office and the

U.S. Library of Congress with affidavits requesting

that the material be put in the public domain. And, they

sent out these reports – 175 copies of them by land and

sea mail – to institutions and individual colleagues in

the U.S. and several other countries. The reports

included full details how the computer was to be

constructed and how to code the solution to problems.

Aided by the IAS reports, computers were

designed and constructed at many institutions in the

U.S., and in Russia, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Den-

mark, and Australia. Also, scientific and technical

journals began to contain articles describing computer

developments in many of these countries. Visits were

Page 12

exchanged so the researchers could learn from each

other’s projects. This open collaborative process in the

late 1940s laid a solid foundation for computer devel-

opment. It was upon that scientific foundation that

commercial interests were able to begin their computer

projects starting by the early 1950s.

The end of the Second World War unleashed a

general interest in the scientific and engineering

communities for computer development. Many re-

searchers had to be patient while their countries

recovered from the devastation of the war before they

could fully participate. Still computer development

was international from its early days.

Scientific and technical computer advances

continued in the 1950s. A new field of study and

practice, Information Processing, was emerging. Today

the field is called Informatics or Computer Science.

What may have been the first major international

electronic digital computer conference was organized

in 1955 by Alwin Walther, a German mathematician.

It was in Darmstadt Germany. There were 560 atten-

dees. One of the sixty speakers at the meeting was

Herman Goldstine, von Neumann’s partner in the IAS

Computer Project and one of the signatories of the

affidavit putting all his work into the public domain.

The paper abstracts were all published in both German

and English. This conference and others held during

the time of the division of Germany were partly the

result of efforts by German scientists on both sides of

the divide to keep in touch with each other’s work.

In China, also computer development was on the

agenda. In 1956, the Twelve-Year Plan for the Devel-

opment of Sciences and Technology included com-

puter technology as one of the 57 priority fields.

Describing the mid 1950s, Isaac Auerbach, an

American engineer active organizing joint conferences,

reports that “In those days we were constantly talking

about the state of the art of computers … . I suggested

then that an international meeting at which computer

scientists and engineers from many nations of the

world might exchange information about the state of

the computer art would be interesting and potentially

valuable. I expressed the hope that we could benefit

from knowledge of what was happening in other parts

of the world … . The idea was strongly endorsed … .”

Auerbach projected such a conference would be a

“major contribution to a more stable world.” This line

of thought helped suggest approaching the United

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza-

tion (UNESCO) to sponsor such a conference.

UNESCO was receiving proposals from other

countries as well. The result was the first World

Computer Conference, held in 1959 in Paris. Nearly

1800 participants from 38 countries and 13 interna-

tional organizations attended. Auerbach wrote that “by

far, the most important success of the conference was

the co-mingling of people from all parts of the world,

their making new acquaintances, and their willingness

to share their knowledge with one another.” Computers

and computing knowledge was treated at this confer-

ence as an international public good. The sharing was

in all directions.

During the UNESCO conference many attendees

expressed an interest in the holding of such meetings

regularly. A charter was proposed. By January 1960

the International Federation for Information Processing

(IFIP) was founded. IFIP’s mission was to be “an

apolitical world organization to encourage and assist in

the development, exploitation and application of

Information Technology for the benefit of all people.”

Eventually, IFIP technical and work subgroups annu-

ally sponsored hundreds of international conferences

on the science, education and impact of computers and

information processing.

The success of IFIP in fulfilling its mission is

attested to by the fact that all during the Cold War,

IFIP conferences helped researchers from East and

West meet together as equals to report about their

computing research and eventually about their com-

puter networking research and activities.

The sharing among researchers by postal mail

and at conferences was also being built directly into

the computer technology itself. The 1960s were

ushered in by the beginning of development of the

time-sharing mode of computer operations. Before

time-sharing, computers were used mostly in batch

processing mode. Users punched their programs on

cards and left the cards at the computer center which

ran them in batches. Sometime later the user received

back the results. In contrast to batch processing,

computer time-sharing technology made possible the

simultaneous real-time use of a single computer by

many users, each at a terminal having the illusion he or

she was the sole user. In this way each user could

interact with the computer directly and see results in

real time.

The human-computer interactivity made possible

by time-sharing suggested the possibility of human-

computer thinking centers. A computer and the people

using it forming a collaborative work team. JCR

Page 13

Licklider envisioned the interconnection of these

centers “into a network of such centers, connected to

one another by wide-band communication lines.” All

people at terminals everywhere connected via a com-

puter communications system. Licklider also foresaw

that all human knowledge would be digitized and

somehow made available via computer networks for

all possible human uses.

In 1962, Licklider was offered the opportunity to

start the Information Processing Techniques Office

(IPTO), a civilian office within the U.S. Department of

Defense. As its director, he gave leadership insuring

the development and spread of time-sharing interactive

computing which gave raise to a community of time-

sharing researchers across the U.S.

Computer time-sharing on separate computers

led to the idea of connecting such computers and even

how to connect them.

In 1965, Donald Davies, a British computer

scientist, attended a IFIP congress in NYC and visited

U.S. time-sharing research sites. Later, he invited time-

sharing researchers to give a workshop at his institu-

tion in London. Davies reports that after the workshop

he realized that the principle of sharing could be

applied to data communication. The communication

lines could be shared by many users if the messages

were broken up into packets and the packets inter-

spersed. This Packet switching technology treated each

packet equally. By sharing the communication system

in this way a major efficiency and cost savings was

achieved over telephone circuit technology.

By 1968, Licklider foresaw that packet switching

networking among geographically separated people

would lead to many communities based on common

interest rather than restricted to common location.

Licklider and his co-author Robert Taylor also

realized that there would be political and social ques-

tions to be solved. They raised the question of access,

of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. They were predicting that

the technology would have built into it the capacity to

connect everyone. But spreading the connectivity

would encounter many obstacles.

Von Neumann’s putting his computer design in

the public domain was repeated. In 1969, mathemati-

cians at the U.S. telephone company AT&T's Bell

Telephone Laboratories started to build a computer

time-sharing operating system for their own use. They

called it UNIX. It was simple and powerful. As a

regulated monopoly, AT&T was forbidden to sell

UNIX because computer software was not part of its

core business. The developers made UNIX available

on tapes for the cost of the tapes. They also made the

entire software code available as well. Being inexpen-

sive and powerful and open for change and improve-

ment by its users, UNIX spread around the world.

UNIX user organizations united these people into self-

help communities.

Also in 1969, the computer time-sharing scien-

tists that IPTO supported began an experiment to

connect their time-sharing centers across the U.S.

Their project resulted in the first large scale network of

dissimilar computers. Its success was based on packet

switching technology. That network became known as

the ARPANET, named after the parent agency that

sponsored the project, the Advanced Research Project

Agency (ARPA), a civilian agency within the U.S.

Department of Defense. The ARPANET was a scien-

tific experiment among academic researchers not, as is

often stated, a military project.

The goal of the ARPANET project was “to

facilitate resource sharing.” The biggest surprise was

that the ARPANET was often used for the exchange of

text messages among the researchers about their

common work or unrelated to work. Such message

exchanges occurred in every time sharing community.

The ARPANET only increased the range and number

of users who could be reached. Thus was born network

email, an effective and convenient added means of

human communication.

The ARPANET started with four nodes in early

1970 and grew monthly. Early technical work on it

was reported at the Joint Computer Conferences in the

U.S. and in the open technical literature. Similar

packet switching experiments took place elsewhere

especially France and the U.K. The ARPANET was

not an internet. It was a single network, as were the

Cyclades network in France and the National Physical

Laboratory network in U.K.

The thought of interconnecting such single

networks seemed a natural next step. Again the tech-

nology itself invited sharing and connecting, all of

which requires collaboration.

A seminal step toward what we know today as

the Internet emerged in October 1972 at the first

International Conference on Computer Communica-

tions (ICCC) in Washington, DC. The conference was

organized by a committee including representatives

from 12 countries; the program included papers

reporting the state of computer telecommunication

usage from most of these, with 800 computer commu-

Page 14

nication professionals from at least 38 countries

attending. At this conference researchers from projects

around the world discussed the need to begin work

establishing agreed upon standards and protocols so

their projects might interconnect. The International

Networking Working Group (INWG) was created with

the idea to “take the lead in creating an international

network of networks” by fostering the exchange of

ideas and lessons. Consistent with IFIP purposes, this

group became IFIP Working Group 6.1. The Internet

was international from its very beginning.

The problem to be solved was how to provide

computer communication among technically different

computer networks in countries with different political

systems and laws. From the very beginning the solu-

tion had to be sought via international collaborations.

One collaboration that made possible the TCP/IP

foundation of the internet included a test bed collabo-

ration by U.S., Norwegian and U.K. researchers.

Throughout the 1970s the ARPANET grew as

did computing and computer centers in many coun-

tries. Schemes were proposed to connect national

computer centers across geographic boundaries. In

Europe, a European Informatics Network (EIN) was

proposed for Western Europe. A similar networked

called IIASANET was proposed for Eastern Europe.

The hope was to connect the two computer networks

with Vienna as the East-West connection point.

IIASANET got its name from the International Insti-

tute for Advanced System Analysis which was an East-

West institute started in the early 1970s for joint

scientific work. When the researchers met for joint

work in the IIASA Computer Project or at IFIP confer-

ences, they were pointed to or had already read the

journal articles describing the details of the ARPA-

NET. The literature had crossed the Iron Curtain and

now the researchers tried to get networks to cross too.

At this they failed. The reason seemed both commer-

cial and political. The networks depended on telephone

lines and the telephone companies were reluctant to

welcome new technology. Also, with the coming of

Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Presidency, hard line

politics derailed East-West cooperative projects.

Efforts in the 1970s to exchange visits among

computer scientists also included China. In 1972 six

substantial U.S. computer scientists on their own

initiative were able to arrange a three week visit to tour

computer facilities and discuss computer science in

Shanghai and Beijing. They reported that the Chinese

computer scientists they met were experienced and

well read in western technical literature. The discus-

sions and sharing were at a high level. They felt their

trip was a useful beginning to reestablish “channels of

communication between Chinese and American com-

puter scientists.” A few months after their visit, a tour

of seven Chinese scientists of the U.S. included Li Fu-

sheng, a computer scientist.

In the U.S., the advantage of being on the ARPA-

NET especially network email and file transfer at-

tracted the attention of computer scientists and their

graduate students. But most universities could not

afford the estimated $100,000 annual cost nor had the

influence to get connected. A common feeling was that

those not on the ARPANET missed out on the collabo-

ration it made possible.

To remedy the situation some graduate students

developed a way to use the Unix to Unix CoPy

(UUCP) function built into the UNIX operating system

to pass messages on from computer to computer over

telephone lines. The messages could be commented on

and the comments would then be passed on with the

messages. In that way the messages became a discus-

sion. They called the system USENET, short for UNIX

Users Network. Since UNIX was wide spread on

computers in many countries, USENET spread around

the world. Based at first on telephone connections

between computers, the costs could be substantial.

Computer tapes containing a set of messages were

sometimes mailed or carried across the oceans as a less

expensive means of sharing the discussions.

At the same time, Larry Landweber, a computer

scientist in the U.S., gathered other computer scientists

who lacked ARPANET connectivity. The ARPANET

connected universities were pulling ahead of the others

in terms of research collaboration and contribution.

Landweber and his colleagues made a proposal to the

U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding

for a research computer network for the entire com-

puter science community.

In 1981, they received management and financial

support from the U.S. NSF for a Computer Science

Research Network (CSNET) project which would

allow for connection with the ARPANET, telephone

dial-up connections and what was called public data

transmission over telephone lines. Soon, a gateway

was established between CSNET and the ARPANET

and CSNET spread throughout U.S. academia.

In the tradition I have been documenting,

Landweber created a series of International Academic

NetWorkshops throughout the 1980s at which re-

Page 15

searchers and engineers from many countries shared

and learned from one another. Landweber and his co-

workers supported researchers in Israel, Germany,

Korea, Australia, Canada, France, and Japan to join at

least the CSNET email system.

“It was a very exciting time. There were all these

lively discussions and debates about technical ap-

proaches and implementation strategies,” Landweber

wrote. “These people were to become the worldwide

leaders in the spread of the Internet.”

In 1984, computer scientists at Karlsruhe Univer-

sity succeeded in setting up a node for Germany to be

on the CSNET system. These scientists wanted to

spread this connectivity in Europe and further. It was

via that node that they conceived of the possibility that

computer scientists in China could have email connec-

tivity with the rest of the international computer

science community. By Sept 1987, a collaboration

between a team in Germany led by Werner Zorn and

one in China led by Wang Yunfeng succeeded in

making China part of the international email portion of

CSNET.

In the 1980s, CSNET flourished spreading inter-

national cooperation and collaboration and functioning

internetworking. In many way, in the 1980s, CSNET

was the internet. And international computer scientists

ensured China was part of it.

To sum up, there is a solid tradition associated

with computers and computer networks. The technol-

ogy and the people involved tend to support sharing

and spreading of the advantages computing and net-

working bring. That tradition has been international

from the very beginning. When von Neumann sent out

his reports or the UNIX developers sent out the tapes,

they were not making a selfish or a local or a national

judgment. They acted as citizens of the world. The

internet itself serves to give more people the chance to

be part of a larger world identity.

We are searching for a framework to see what

direction the future should take. There are people who

actively contributed towards the development of the

internet and the networked society that is emerging.

These people understood the value to all of public

goods and of collective work. In the 1990s, Michael

Hauben realized these peoples were citizens of the

networked society. He contracted net.citizen to

netizens. The people and events I have described are a

small subset of such netizens. The netizen model may

scientifically describe the emerging internet-impacted

society and thus help society to evolve from the

current nation centered society to an interconnected

world society.

I feel we today are celebrating and supporting a

long tradition of international sharing and collabora-

tion and seeking a better future

Thank you for your attention.

[Editor’s Note: The following article is an excerpt from Chapter

14 (pages 253-256) in Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben.

The title of the full article by Michael Hauben is “The Net and the

Future of Politics: The Ascendancy of the Commons.” The ex-

cerpt is online testimony given at the 1994 Virtual Conference on

Universal Service and Open Access to the Telecommunications

Network sponsored by the U.S. National Telecommunications

Information Administration (NTIA). There were over 800 partic-

ipants across the U.S. and abroad who contributed a wide spec-

trum of thoughtful opinions.]

What the Internet Can

Do for People

The significance of Internet access for all in

society is not obvious because it is a new way to think

about communication between people. Before the

Internet and Usenet, most broadcast forms of commu-

nication were owned and operated by large companies.

Other more democratic forms of broadcast which pro-

vide one-to-many communication exist for small seg-

ments of the population in particular regions: public

access cable, various self-produced newsletters or

zines, “pirate” radio and so on. The Internet makes

available an alternative to the corporate owned mass

media and allows a grass-roots communication from

the many to the many. As it has taken a struggle for an

individual to be seen as an information provider, it is

not immediately obvious to all that it is possible to

speak out and have your voice heard by many people.

It is also important that people could express their

views and be in contact with others around the world

who are expressing their views. Participants in the

virtual conference were active in defining their interest

in keeping the Internet protected from dominance by

commercial interests. Commercial information and

communication is vastly different from personal

information and communication. Participants recog-

nized this difference, and voiced their opinion on how

it is important to keep the Net as an open channel for

non-commercial voices.

Page 16

The picture of the Internet painted by the U.S.

government has been one of an “information superhigh-

way” or “information infrastructure” where people

could connect, download some data or purchase some

goods and then disconnect. This vision is one that is

very different from the current cooperative communi-

cations forums on Usenet where everyone can contrib-

ute. Even worse has been the description by much of

the news media where people’s contributions are

misportrayed as pornography or otherwise vice-related,

such as bomb production or drug-related. The impor-

tant aspect of the Internet and Usenet is that they

provide a place where people can share ideas, observa-

tions and questions. The transfer of information is

secondary.

FROM: R. M

Overlooked in the current free market vs regu-

lated access debate is any argument convincing me

why the average American will want access to the net.

Apart from the “information elite” (most already on

the net), I don’t know too many people interested in

communications capability not already available using

existing infrastructures. How many people do you

know, not associated with research or education, who

care about access to government information reposito-

ries? Or virtual conferences?

FROM: Dr. Robert LaRose

In response to Woody Dowling’s comment that

the average American is not interested in advanced

communications infrastructure, at least not those who

don’t already have it.

Not so. We did a national survey a couple of

years ago and asked about interest in videotex, ISDN,

etc., found interest levels far beyond those of then-

current penetration levels. Found the most intense

interest among low income homes, in fact, suggesting

that it is cost and not interest that holds them back.

Want a killer application for low income households?

Email. Many can’t afford long distance rates, some

move too often or have no home, can’t keep a phone

line … . The applications already exist, but the people

who need them most can’t afford them – or don’t

constitute an attractive enough market.

FROM: Curt Howland

While the inverse relation between cost and

pervasiveness is certainly true, I must take issue with

comparing the Net to TV. Such comparisons allow for

the taking of information, but not for the tremendous

possibilities involved with ease of *providing* info.

There is no reason to think that a future Stephen

Hawkings isn’t sitting right now in front of a boob-

tube sucking down Mighty Morhpin Power Rangers

because there is no way for his ideas to be expressed.

Without the facility to put ideas out, with each person

acting as a information provider assumed from the

outset, we are doing ourselves a great disservice.

FROM: Don Evans

A two way street for all Americans. not only

should they be able to receive from the net, but they

also must be able to provide their unique information.

FROM: Michael Hauben

I. Universal Access Basic Principles

In order for communications networks to be as

useful as possible, it is necessary for it both to:

A) Connect every possible resource and opinion,

B) Make this connection available to all who desire

it.

A and B call for Universal Interconnection,

rather than Universal Access. The usage of “intercon-

nection” highlights the importance and role of every

user also being an information provider. The term

“access” stresses the status-quo understanding of one-

way communication, the user accesses information that

other “authorized” information providers make avail-

able. This is the old model. The new model is of

interconnection of many different types of people,

information, and ideas. The new model stresses the

breakdown of old definitions of communication and

information. Diversity allows for both the increasing

speed in the formation of new ideas, and the ability for

previously unauthorized ideas to have the airing and

consideration they rightfully deserve.

II. Definition of “Services” to be available on this

Universal Interconnection

The new era of interconnection and many-to-

many communication afforded by Netnews and Mail-

ing lists (among other technologies) brings to the

forefront a model of bottom-up rather than top-down

communication and information. It is time to reexam-

ine society and welcome the democratizing trends of

many-to-many communication over the one-to-many

models as represented by broadcast television, radio,

newspapers and other media.

As such, I would say it would be important to

Page 17

highlight, discuss and make available interactive

modes of communication instead of the passive trans-

fer of information. Thus I am suggesting emphasizing

forms of multiple ways of communication and broad-

casting. Forms currently defined by newsgroups,

mailing lists, talk sessions, IRC sessions, MOO experi-

ences, and other forms of sharing and collaboration.

These types of forums are where this new technology

excels. Plenty of media exist which facilitates the

passive transfer of information and goods. (Such as

mail-order, stores, telephone orders, etc) It would be

best to explore and develop the new forms of commu-

nication which this new media facilitates, and which

was less possible and present in the past

From: B. Harris

Summary of the Affordability and Availability Confer-

ence

The Internet and the Global Computer Network

are providing a very important means for the people of

our society to have an ability to speak for themselves

and to fight their own battles to better the society.

FROM: Eric Rehm

… [C]onception of access, I would posit, de-

mands a much more interactive use of the medium and

perhaps the bandwidth needs are more balanced: This

example can then be extended to any number of

community organizations with members as avid

information producers

In other words, basic service based on enabling

“many producers” might actually prompt a larger share

to be allocated to bandwidth OUT of the home than

that envisaged by the Baby Bells and cable companies.

It seems to me, in rural America, there would be

even more fear of not having ample “basic” bandwidth

to be a producer because the distance to such an

“access point” might be enough to effectively deny

community production.

Notes

1. From: <[email protected]>

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 94 14:00:16 EST

Subject: universal access but not ubiquitous use

Message-Id: <199411172209.OAA20275@virtconf.digex.net>

2. From: Dr. Robert LaRose <LA[email protected]>

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 15:03:37 EST

Subject: Re: [REDEFUS:123] universal access but not ubiqui-

tous use

Message-ID: <224FE63[email protected]su.edu>

3. From: howland@nsipo.nasa.gov

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 19:19:23 -0800

Subject: Re: [REDEFUS:67] Re: Public Access

Message-Id: <199411170319.T[email protected]>

4. From: Don Evans <[email protected]m>

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 13:25:42 -500 (EST)

Subject: Universal Access...

Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9411141352.G26106-0100000@dcez

.dcez.com>

5. From: Michael Hauben <hauben@columbia.edu>

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 01:54:36 -0500

Subject: Need to stress concept of active communication and

interconnection

Message-Id: <199411220654.AA[email protected]

bia.edu>

6. From: [email protected]

Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 16:04:59 -0500

Subject: Interim Summary for Availability List

7. From: rehm@zso.dec.com

Date: Mon, 14 Nov 94 13:50:03 -0800

Subject: Re: [REDEFUS:22] Re: Pilot Projects

Message-Id: <94111[email protected]m>

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

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