Review from ;login:, Vol. 22, No. 6 December, 1997, pages 56-57 Newsletter of Usenix Michael and Ronda Hauben ______________________________________ Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet IEEE Computer Society, 1997, ISBN 0-8186-7706-6. Pp. 345. $28.95 Reviewed by Daniel Lazenby The title says it all. This book tells the story of how ordinary people have made and can make a difference. Often the revolution caused by a technology and the people who quietly nurtured and fostered it into being is not recorded until well after the fact. Netizens strives to capture the history while some founders are still able to provide firsthand accounts. This easily read book chronicles the evolution of USENET and the Internet. Not only does Netizens chronicle the past; it strives to illustrate the life-changing influence USENET and the Internet have had on people and society. The book also takes a few moments to ponder the changes yet to come. This book is based on academic research papers that Michael and Ronda orginally published on the Internet. Netizens is broken into four major parts, "The Present," "The Past," "And the Future," and "Contributions Toward Developing a Theoretical Framework." The first part recaps what has been created and how it was created. "The Past" reviews where USENET and the Internet came from. This part of the book explores the grassroots beginnings of USENET and the gestation of what is now known as the Internet. The third part explores the effects of the net on individuals, organizations, and societal structures. "Contributions Toward Developing a Theoretical Framework" contains two chapters. The first compares the printing press, USENET, and the Internet. At the time of its invention, the printing press created both communication and information revolutions. This part of the book presents USENET's and the Internet's potential for creating another, much grander, communication and information revolution. In this day of ubiquitous modems, the Intenet, Internet Providers, and personal computers, one sometimes forget there was a time when these things were not widely available. Many people and organizations were responsible for the creation of the Internet and USENET. Much thanks should go to the Department of Defense for funding the early research. Among the many people involved, several stood out. J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor are two names associated with the founding of the Internet. They saw the computer as a communications tool with global connectivity and as a way to share both computer and human resources. This perspective was a very radical idea in 1968, when computers from different manufacturers could not exchange data or communicate with each other. With Department of Defense research dollars and the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Licklider solved the immediate problem of getting incompatible computers to talk. But he never lost his global vision. His efforts resulted in the computer communications networks (ARPAnet). The global Internet can trace its roots back to this simple ARPAnet. What if you were a poor, underendowed university without Defense Department research dollars? How could you get your computers talking to each other? Enter the "poor man's ARPAnet." Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin all had a desire to automatically share files and articles among several computer platforms. Fortunately, they were university students and cash poor. So they did the only thing they could do: they acquired some university computer time and an auto dialer and applied a little creative UNIX hacking (the positive kind). Using these limited resources, these fellows developed what is now known as USENET. Their first incarnation of USENET simply dialed another computer, checked for new files, and then copied all the new files to itself. They set up their first USENET network on three university computers. Within a few years, these three nodes grew into several hundred nodes and eventually became part of the Internet. This book illustrates that ordinary people with limited resources and a vision can made a difference. The grassroot's creation of USENET by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, Steve Bellovin, and others is such an example. People with significant resources and a vision can solve a specific, localized problem and simulaneously lay the foundation for solving global needs. Licklider's refusal to set his sights lower than the vision of a global computer is an example of exceeding short-term expectations. Look closely while reading the book, and you may find yourself viewing the world a little bit differently when you finish.