The Amateur

Computerist

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

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 4

First Internet History Workshop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 7

Appendix: The OHI Project: 50 Yrs of the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 10

Then, Now and Into the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Context for the China-CSNET Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 24

What the Internet Can Do for People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 34

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

intention of the Oral History of the Internet Project.” At the bottom of the

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blog, Dr. Fang explained about the interviewees that, “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 re-

flected.”

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, significance and guidelines for its interviews.

The next two articles are presentations made for the First Interna-

tional 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 interactive 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 communication 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 formulating ideas and for exploring, expressing, and

communicating 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

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future is not lost. The author points to Ancient Society by Lewis Morgan

for examples how new technologies have in 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 development

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 computer networking across the country borders and facilitating 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.

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[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 blog-

china 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, proposed to study comput-

ing 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 exhibition. 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

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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 openness

and sharing of the Internet, rather than the commercialization opportuni-

ties brought by the Internet. 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

people’s ideas and aspirations.”

He entered Columbia University in 1991, majoring in computer

science, graduating in 1995. He obtained his master’s degree in 1997, and

also published 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.

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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 greatest 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

entrusted 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 civilization. Their personal achieve-

ments and significance of the times will continue to be highlighted and

recognized over time.

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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 necessary to learn more about the Internet to make a better

world. Understanding the innovations and changes involved in the

evolution of the Internet from technological, 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 historic 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 progress in the field of Internet history studies.

However, in general, apart from the history of the Internet industry and

business, the truly in-depth research on the history of Internet technolo-

gies, 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

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governance and digital legislation, 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 problems in cyberspace such as over-reliance of

government digital governance on the convenience of governance 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 intention 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 develop-

ment, 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

and 25

[the workshop was postponed and actually happened on Nov

7-8, 2022] before the opening of the World Internet Conference 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 interdisciplinary 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 community.

The outstanding papers and speeches delivered at the annual

conference will be published and recommended to partner academic

journals.

Time: September 24-25, 2022

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Venue: Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China

Organizers:

College of Media and International Culture,

Zhejiang University

Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication Research Center,

Zhejiang University

Co-organizers:

Digital Civilization Research Center, Tsinghua Yangtze River Delta

Research Institute

Consortium of Internet and Society, Communication University of

Zhejiang

CyberLabs

Research Committee on the History of Internet Communication, 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 Communications. 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, documentaries and books will be produced based on the video

interviews. The OHI, which started first in China in 2007, has interviewed

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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 testimony 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 under-

standing 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 engage-

ment, and facilitating historical understanding in terms of internet

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governance, policy making, and cybersecurity. OHI thus welcomes

individuals and institutions who share the values of creating and preserv-

ing the oral history of the internet to join us to in promoting excellence in

the collection, preservation, dissemination and uses of the oral testimonies

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 contemporary events.

In the OHI interviews, Internet Pioneers are reminded that they must

voluntarily give their consent to be interviewed and understand that they

can withdraw 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 recording 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 interviews 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 obliged to ask historically significant

questions, reflecting careful preparation for the interview and understand-

ing 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 interviews,

both interviewers and interviewees (Internet Pioneers) should strive for

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intellectual honesty and the best application of the skills of their discipline,

while avoiding stereotypes, misrepresentations, or manipulations of the

narrators’ words.

In keeping with the goal of long term preservation 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 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 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 accompanied the presentation. You can also see the slides at:

http://www

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

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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 important incentive for a direction with

a History of the Internet Conference. In the introduction to the conference

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.

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 universities,

corporations, research centers, etc. The computer users on Usenet were

eager to discuss many topics. Also, users helped each other with comput-

ers, technology in general, and other problems.

Page 13

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 experi-

ence 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

programming 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 impor-

tance 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 devel-

opment and the fundamental change it represents over previous

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communications media. I will consult with people who have

been involved with Usenet from its beginnings, and the various

networks that comprise the Computer Network around the

world. I wish to come to some understanding 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 beginning 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. And one of the pioneers sent me a copy of a journal

Page 15

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 something 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 differentiat-

ing between communication versus the sending and receiving of informa-

tion. 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 communication – the part

that transcends ‘now we both know a fact that only one of us

knew before.’ When minds interact, new ideas emerge. We

want to talk about the creative aspect of communication.

Subsequently Michael was in a computer ethics class and the

professor wanted students to do a research 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 summarized and which

became part of a paper he wrote and posted. A surprising aspect of the

responses he received 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 everyone 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

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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 conventional

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 McCarthy in a memo at MIT, proposed a form

of computing 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 computer 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 interactive 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 psychologist. 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 civilian office

within the U.S. Department of Defense.

At ARPA, Licklider began a research program that would fundamen-

tally change the mode of operating 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

Processing Techniques Office” (IPTO) to reflect the work being done by

Page 17

this office.

Not only did the research done under Licklider’s leadership make a

great impact on the type of computing available in the world, but also he

identified the need for computer networking and put forward 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 Intelligence. 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 frequently 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 computer 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

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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 computer become a

medium that stimulated the formation of a human community

… .

Licklider’s vision was of an ‘Intergalactic Network,’ 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 geo-

graphically 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 communication through a

console – Communication among people and consoles located

in the same room or in the same university campus or even at

distantly separate separated laboratories of the same research

and development organization. This kind of communication –

through a single multi access computer with the aid of tele-

phone lines is beginning to foster cooperation and promote

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 connections than might have been expected. A new

form of community is generated:

The collection of people, hardware, and software – the multi

access computer together with its local community of users –

will become a node in a geographically distributed computer

network. Let us assume for a moment that such a network has

been formed … through the network of message processors,

Page 19

therefore, all the large computers 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 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 computers and people would create. Licklider’s vision of an

‘intergalactic network’ connecting people represented 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 discus-

sion 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. Government 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 communication.”

Demonstrating this understanding of the communications 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.

Page 20

He wrote:

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 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 continued 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 potential we have

for future change.

Early on, Licklider had recognized the kind of changes Clark was

referring to. In 1970, at a conference 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

information.”

It’s either mere access to information or interaction with

information.

Licklider explained:

And for mankind it implies either an enmeshment in the silent

gears of the great electronic machine or mastery of a marvel-

ous new and truly plastic medium for formulating ideas and for

exploring, expressing, and communicating them.

Licklider posed this dichotomy as presenting a significant challenge for

society.

Part of Licklider’s vision was the promise of a more active participa-

tory role for the human made possible by the communication capability of

the computer. This vision included recognizing that information 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 Telecommunications Information

Administration (NTIA), a public agency under the U.S. Dept. of Com-

merce, organized a national online conference raising the question of what

Page 21

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 discussed during this

online conference.

Among views emphasized was the importance of the Internet for

making it possible to hear diverse voices and to transform the nature of the

communication 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 restricting

the meaning of communication to the sharing of information.

In the view presented by Michael and others at the conference,

communication meant “universal interconnection rather than universal

access. As Michael explains:

‘access’ stresses the status-quo understanding of one-way

communication, the user accesses information that other

‘authorized’ information providers make available. 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 communi-

cation and information. 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 consider-

ation 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 information 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

Page 22

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 interactive computing, time-sharing, and building

the ARPANET, Usenet and the Internet, was the kind of discussion 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 Civiliza-

tion 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 mastering 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 communications that the computer makes

possible can help to understand how to build on those advances.

To move to a digital civilization requires studying what advances

have been made and learning how to appreciate and recognize new modes

of development like the communication advances Usenet and email and

the ARPANET and Internet have made possible.

Page 23

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 technology.

[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

Page 24

supposed ideological and many geographic 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 development and computer science and science in general. I will

start with the Hungarian-born scientist and mathematician 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 successful 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 purpose

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 computing 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 informa-

tion connected with this subject.

He was here placing his contributions to computer 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.

Page 25

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,

Denmark, and Australia. Also, scientific and technical journals began to

contain articles describing computer developments in many of these

countries. Visits were 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 development. 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

researchers 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 attendees.

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,

Page 26

the Twelve-Year Plan for the Development of Sciences and Technology

included computer 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

Organization (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 international organiza-

tions 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 conference 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 annually 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 computer networking research and

Page 27

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 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 computer 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 Informa-

tion 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 institution 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 interspersed. This Packet switching

technology treated each packet equally. By sharing the communication

Page 28

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 questions 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, mathematicians 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

inexpensive and powerful and open for change and improvement 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 scientists 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 technol-

ogy. 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 scientific 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

Page 29

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 technology 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

Communications (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 telecommunica-

tion usage from most of these, with 800 computer communication

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 communica-

tion among technically different computer networks in countries with

different political systems and laws. From the very beginning the solution

had to be sought via international collaborations. One collaboration that

made possible the TCP/IP foundation of the internet included a test bed

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

Throughout the 1970s the ARPANET grew as did computing and

computer centers in many countries. 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.

Page 30

The hope was to connect the two computer networks with Vienna as the

East-West connection point. IIASANET got its name from the Interna-

tional Institute 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

conferences, they were pointed to or had already read the journal articles

describing the details of the ARPANET. 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 commercial 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 discussions

and sharing were at a high level. They felt their trip was a useful beginning

to reestablish “channels of communication between Chinese and American

computer 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 ARPANET especially

network email and file transfer attracted 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 collaboration 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 discussion. They called the system USENET, short for UNIX

Users Network. Since UNIX was wide spread on computers in many

Page 31

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 computer

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

researchers 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 approaches 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 University 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 connectivity 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.

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In the 1980s, CSNET flourished spreading international 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 technology 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 collaboration 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 excerpt is online testimony given at

the 1994 Virtual Conference on Universal Service and Open Access to the Telecommuni-

cations Network sponsored by the U.S. National Telecommunications Information

Administration (NTIA). There were over 800 participants across the U.S. and abroad who

contributed a wide spectrum of thoughtful opinions.]

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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 communication

were owned and operated by large companies. Other more democratic

forms of broadcast which provide one-to-many communication exist for

small segments 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 recognized this difference, and voiced their

opinion on how it is important to keep the Net as an open channel for non-

commercial voices.

The picture of the Internet painted by the U.S. government has been

one of an “information superhighway” 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 communications forums on Usenet where everyone

can contribute. 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

important aspect of the Internet and Usenet is that they provide a place

where people can share ideas, observations and questions. The transfer of

information is secondary.

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FROM: R. M

Overlooked in the current free market vs regulated 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 repositories? 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 tremen-

dous 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

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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 “interconnection” 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

available. 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 informa-

tion. 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 Interconnec-

tion

The new era of interconnection and many-to-many communication

afforded by Netnews and Mailing lists (among other technologies) brings

to the forefront a model of bottom-up rather than top-down communica-

tion and information. It is time to reexamine 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 highlight, discuss and

make available interactive modes of communication instead of the passive

transfer of information. Thus I am suggesting emphasizing forms of

multiple ways of communication and broadcasting. Forms currently

defined by newsgroups, mailing lists, talk sessions, IRC sessions, MOO

experiences, and other forms of sharing and collaboration. These types of

Page 36

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 communication which this new media facili-

tates, and which was less possible and present in the past

From: B. Harris

Summary of the Affordability and Availability Conference

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, demands 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 commu-

nity 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: <19941117220[email protected]>

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

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

Subject: Re: [REDEFUS:123] universal access but not ubiquitous use

Message-ID: <224FE6[email protected].edu>

3. From: howl[email protected]

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

Page 37

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

Message-Id: <19941117031[email protected]asa.gov>

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

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

Subject: Universal Access...

Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9411141352.G26106-01[email protected]cez.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: <19941122065[email protected]>

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: <9411142150.AA09999@slugbt.zso.dec.com>

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

sarily the opinions of the Amateur Computerist newsletter. We welcome

submissions from a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

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

All Amateur Computerist issues from 1988 to the present are

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

Page 38

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.

Articles can be submitted via e-mail:

mailto:[email protected]

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

provided credit is given, with name of author and source of article cited.

Page 39