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 <dlazenby@ix.netcom.com>
 
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.