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| Winter/Spring 1998 Usenet, The Unsung Hero of the Internet Vol 8 No 1 |
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"A large part of the success of Usenet is due to the fact
that its admins. do *not* generally quash argument and
unpopular opinion. This made it a crucible for testing
ideas and opinions in one of the closest approaches to the
`marketplace of ideas' that has been seen in history."
Gregory G. Woodbury
Table of Contents
[1] Interview with Tom Truscott. . . . . . . . . . . . . (27,816 bytes)
[2] Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 6,423 bytes)
[3] Factsheet Five: ACN Vol 7 No 2 . . . . . . . . . . . ( 1,564 bytes)
[4] Cooperative Nature of Usenet . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 4,076 bytes)
[5] Creating Broadsides. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (19,027 bytes)
[6] History of the Net is Important. . . . . . . . . . . (27,866 bytes)
[7] Netizens: Review of Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 7,038 bytes)
[8] Book Reviews: Netizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( 6,946 bytes)
[9] Community in k12.chat.teacher. . . . . . . . . . . . (39,378 bytes)
[10] Wiener and Licklider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (17,202 bytes)
[11] Amateur Computerist Index: 1988-1998 . . . . . . . . ( 6,257 bytes)
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[1] Interview with Tom Truscott:
On the Environment
and Early Days of Usenet News
by Ronda Hauben
au329@cleveland.freenet.edu
[Editor's Note: Following is an edited interview by Ronda Hauben
with Tom Truscott, one of the pioneers who created Usenet. It is
based on an e-mail exchange.]
Ronda: First can you say a little about your background and
interests in computer science before you became involved in
Usenet?
Tom: As an undergraduate I got interested in writing a computer
chess program. I don't play chess well but my chemistry lab
partner did and so we undertook a multi-year project to write a
chess program that could beat Bobby Fisher (my goal) or at least
be able to beat a rank amateur (partner Bruce Wright's goal).
Ronda: How did you become interested in computer chess? You have
said it wasn't that you were interested in chess itself.
Tom: Well, I'm not sure. Here is rambling speculation. As a kid
I did not read much, but some things caught my imagination. One
was a short story, Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. (I think
Danny Dunn was a kid who invented all kinds of fun stuff.) I
thought that this would be a neat machine to have. I realize it
is a big leap from homework to chess playing, but somehow it
makes sense to me .
My first chance to use a computer (an interactive BASIC
system) was in a summer program between junior and senior years
of high school. My first large program played checkers. It didn't
play all that well, but it seemed to have potential. As a Duke
freshman my chemistry lab partner was Bruce Wright, an excellent
chess player.
I told him we could write a computer chess program that
would beat Bobby Fisher.
He didn't think so, but we started writing the program
anyway. I was interested because of the computing challenge and
no doubt the fame that we would garner by defeating Fisher, and I
guess Bruce was interested because he wanted to learn computing.
We spent a LOT of time writing it, and we learned a lot about how
not to write programs.
I guess one thing about computer game programs is that they
are like robots a somewhat autonomous thing.
At tournaments the program tells me what moves to make for
it, asks me how much time it has left on the clock, stuff like
that. And writing a software robot is a lot easier than building
a real one. Why I (and other people) find robots fascinating is
beyond me, but there it is.
Ronda: I have read some articles from the 1970s that describe how
computer chess was understood as something important. Did you
have that sense?
Tom: Yes, and we had the incentive to believe that because
computer chess was far too expensive to be a mere hobby. From a
computational point of view, chess and checkers are remarkably
similar problems. And the world's best checkers player is still a
human. But just try asking Columbia (i.e. some university -Ed.)
for plane tickets to a computer checkers tournament, or asking
the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) to spend thousands
of dollars to host one!
But enough of this cynicism.
When computer chess, and more generally Artificial
Intelligence (AI), were just starting out, no one knew what was
going to happen. Computer games were (and are) like the
drosophila fruit fly of AI because the problems are relatively
simple, the rules are clear, there are plenty of human experts
for comparison, and there are objective measures of "success."
Many felt that break-throughs in general AI would happen first
in this simpler arena.
People still don't know what is going to happen. I guess
there haven't been big breakthroughs, but there are a number of
"lessons" from computer chess that are argued and/or used in the
general AI context. One (controversial) lesson is that computers
should not "think" by mimicking humans. Should planes fly by
flapping their wings?
If nothing else, computer chess will make a significant dent
in the human psyche when a computer decisively defeats the human
world chess champion.
It is going to happen sure as Silicon Valley makes chips.
And it will be like a tiny version of the moon landing. It will
be something of a stunt, and not really that important, but it
will have a symbolic impact that will change how people think.
Ronda: Can you say what you did once you and Bruce Wright decided
to write a championship chess program?
Tom: I discovered that Claude Shannon had written a very early
paper on how to construct a chess playing machine.(1) It was
remarkably farsighted given the state of computing then. The next
oldest paper I found was from 1957 by someone who implemented a
program similar to Shannon's proposal. It played terribly.
Our first computer chess tournament was the North American
Computer Chess Championships, (CCC) held in November 1974 at the
ACM Annual Conference in San Diego. (We competed in a local
human tournament earlier that year.) Because ACM was sponsoring
it I decided to become an ACM member (in April 1974, I was a
junior by then) if only to see the announcements about the
upcoming tournament. It was tough reading for an undergraduate
but there were some interesting papers. A particularly
interesting one appeared that year, about a timesharing system
that ran on a PDP-11.(2) It sounded so much more sensible than the
IBM MVT/TSO computer system that we were using. Simple things
were simple, and yet one could do nifty things as well.
Ronda: What was the Duke computer you wrote your first chess
program for?
Tom: It was an IBM System 370 Model 165, 80 nanosecond cycle time
(12.5 MHZ in today's lingo), three megabytes of main memory
(later upgraded to four megabytes for a mere $100,000). Pretty
much the top of the line at the time. We did our development in
batch mode (the source code was on punched cards and the compiled
code was stored on disk) and used time sharing option (TSO) when
competing in tournaments.
Ronda: What happened at the tournament?
Tom: Bruce Wright and I called our program "Duchess". It did
quite well, and it was there that I met Ken Thompson who also had
a good chess program. His machine was running a background task
sopping up idle CPU time by solving simple chess end games! (For
example King and Rook vs. King). There was no chance we could do
something like that on our mainframe which cost 20 cents per
second. But on the other hand our three MIP mainframe was about
the fastest there was, and could compute rings around a little
PDP.
There were twelve teams competing in the tournament. We
were on a stage in a large room with seating for spectators. Each
team had a computer terminal (something like a dot-matrix printer
with a keyboard in front and an acoustic modem on the back). And
a telephone. Boy were those phone calls expensive. But the ACM
was picking up the tab, and Duke was giving us the computer time.
At the 1974 tournament, we knocked off MIT's "TECH-II" in
the first round. They had come in second the previous year, and
we were a newcomer, so that was something of an upset.
In the second round we got clobbered by the perennial champ,
"CHESS 4.0" from Northwestern University.
In the third round we played Bell Labs' "Belle". (I think it
was called "Tinker Belle" at one point.) I had met the author
earlier, before the second round, when he showed me how good his
program was at solving mating problems. I wasn't that interested
in chess, but humored him while he pulled a chess position out of
a library and had the program find a mate in 5 (or some such). I
guess if I actually played chess I would have been impressed.
So when the third round began Bruce Wright and I were on one
side of a table, and Ken Thompson and someone else from Bell Labs
(who years later I realized was Brian Kernighan) were on the
other side. I noticed that when Ken Thompson logged on, the Bell
Labs computer printed:
"Chess tonight, please don't compute."
I mentioned that that was really neat to be able to get the
computer center to put out a notice like that. He said something
noncommital in response. So the game began. A few hours and a few
thousand dollars later we really had "Belle" on the ropes. All it
had left was a lone king and we were about to queen a pawn! But
then our program ABENDed (core dumped) in a way that caused the
phone line to drop. We dialed back in and set things up, same
thing. Every so often it would actually make a move. But making
the phone call was slow (we had to ask for an outside line from
the hotel operator) and painful (rotary dial you know) and
eventually our program lost on time.
Later, after the tournament, we concluded that the problem
was not in our program. Rather it was a problem caused by TSO
trying to load overlays from a partitioned MVT data set that had
become excessively fragmented. Did I mention something earlier
about simple things being simple? Thus was our mighty mainframe
slain by a minicomputer. But I didn't realize it was UNIX.
Ronda: What does 'losing on time' in chess mean?
Tom: As is typical in human tournaments, each player has two
hours to make their first 40 moves, and get an additional 30
minutes for each 10 moves after that. The games utilize a pair of
clocks, one for each player. Whenever it is a given player's
turn, their clock is ticking. If they use up two hours before
completing 40 moves, they "lose on time". "Duchess" was intending
to complete 40 moves in 1:40 (i.e. with 20 minutes to spare), but
the program crashed so many times while trying to complete the
last few moves that it ran out of time.
Ronda: Can you describe what happened after the chess tournament?
How did you get to work at Bell Labs in the Summer of 1979?
Tom: Duchess competed in every ACM CCC from 1974 to 1980, but the
next time I met Ken Thompson was at the 1976 UNIX Users Group
meeting at Harvard. That was great fun. There were about 60
attendees. I was a grad student and we had just installed UNIX
(Version 6) and somewhere along the way I made the connection
between "Belle" and Thompson and UNIX. I was also at the 1978
UNIX Users Group meeting at Columbia University, and I think both
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were there. Thompson also
competed in the 1978 ACM CCC. I think he had some special chess
hardware but it was no match for the much-improved mainframe
programs.
Because of our mutual interests Thompson would even call up
our computer at Duke from time to time, and "write" me. That was
pretty intense, my trying to pick perfect sentences to send along
to the genius at the other end. I think it was during one of
those "write" sessions in early 1979, that he asked if I would
be interested in a summer job.
Ronda: What did you work on at Bell Labs when you worked there
under Ken Thompson that summer?
Tom: I remember making changes to the "ed" text editor command,
and working on a global optimizer for C.
Ronda: Can you say what it was like working at Bell Labs in the
Summer of 1979?
Tom: Well, I fell into the following routine:
Woke up at 11 a.m. Got to Bell Labs at noon so I could play
volleyball out on the front lawn with Mike Lesk and Steven Bourne
and other folks. (After a few weeks the security folks told us
they couldn't have a regulated monopoly running around loose like
that.) Lunch at 1 p.m. in the Bell Labs restaurant. Ken Thompson
and Dennis Ritchie and Greg Chesson were regulars. They had lunch
at 1 p.m. because sometimes they didn't get to work until then.
Sometimes Dennis Ritchie would entertain us with a horror
story about a non-UNIX system that he had to deal with recently.
I think one day Ken Thompson explained the C-compiler Trojan-
Horse hack he did. (It might have been in the lab, but lunch
sounds right.) I thought it was cute but didn't recognize the
larger implications. He later described it in his "Reflections on
Trusting Trust" Turing Award paper (which was nicely written so I
think Ritchie helped him with it). I tried to think of clever
things to say, which was not an easy thing.
At 2 p.m. the day began, which involved doing pretty much
whatever we wanted.
Ritchie was working on "Streams", I think. Ken Thompson was
working on typesetting software but mostly working on a chess
machine. (In 1980 he won the Third World Computer Chess
Championship, defeating the "Duke" chess program that I co-authored.)
Often at 7 p.m. a group would go out for dinner (they liked
pizza). Occasionally someone would host dinner at their home.
Afterwards I would go back to the labs and work until midnight.
And the next day I would get up "at the crack of noon", as
Thompson put it.
There was a kind of lull that summer because UNIX (Version 7)
had just been wrapped up. That was the summer that the Seventh
Edition of UNIX was sent out with lots of new software such as
"sed", "awk", "uucp", and the Bourne shell. Ritchie did various
paperwork and tape-making to get it out the door.
Ronda: Was there any special work being done with UUCP during
that summer at Bell Labs?
Tom: I didn't pay much attention to UUCP that summer, though I
did receive e-mail from other Bell Labs locations. Of course no
e-mail came from the outside. They didn't have UUCP yet. (I have a
curious memory of Mark Horton sending me a letter, but that
probably did not happen.) Anyway I was too smug to pay much
attention to other Bell Labs sites. After all I was at the very
root of UNIX itself, hacking on the machine named "research" and
eating pizza with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie!
Of course when the summer was over and I was back at Duke,
one of the first things I did was arrange a UUCP connection to
"research". They called us nightly, which was great.
Ronda: What was the origin of Usenet? Was there a Unix News
program before you folks at Duke and University of North Carolina
developed Netnews?
Tom: I think the DEC PDP 11/70 there (at Bell Labs named
"research") had a primitive "news" program that printed unread
files found in the directory /usr/news.
But Duke already had a program (from one of the early user
group tapes) that supported multiple "categories" of news. (I
don't think the program was called "news" though), so I wasn't
impressed.
In the UNIX (Version 7) manual set there were two papers on
UUCP. One was "A Dial-Up Network of UNIX Systems" by D.A. Nowitz
and M.E. Lesk, August 1978. The other was "UUCP Implementation
Description" by D.A. Nowitz, October 1978. (UNIX V7 didn't ship
until the summer of 1979 though.). So I have always thought of
Dan Nowitz as a principal author of UUCP. It is odd that in a
recent USENIX ;Login: I think I saw Mike Lesk but NOT Nowitz
being given some recognition for UUCP.
Ronda: Did you continue to play computer chess after you and the
other folks at the University of North Carolina and Duke created
Usenet?
Tom: In 1980 we competed in the Third World Computer Chess
Championship held in Linz, Austria. Ken and Joe Condon (a
researcher at Bell Labs) had completed their hardware chess
machine and snagged first place. (From then on, hardware chess
machines have dominated the championships. The flexibility of
software programs has not been enough to overcome the raw speed
of chess hardware.)
"Duchess" came in second (or maybe third, I forget).
Claude Shannon was in attendance, and even handed out the
trophies at the awards ceremony.
Afterwards we all went over to a TV studio to watch a West
German TV special on computer chess and the championship. Claude
Shannon and his wife were very engaging people. Someone took a
photo of all of us, I have a copy buried somewhere.(3)
Ronda: What happened when you got back to Duke in Fall 1979? Did
you keep in contact with folks from Bell Labs?
Tom: When I got back to Duke I set up UUCP, and Thompson also
called in from time to time.
We really didn't get much software updating from them.
Technically they should not supply it anyway, due to the various
rules and regulations involved.
Ronda: I wondered if anything happened at Bell Labs over the
summer that helped you to propose Usenet...
Tom: Not really.
Ronda: Can you say what it was that led you or you and Jim Ellis
to conceive of Usenet?
Tom: Well, here is some text I wrote about that a few months ago:
"I think there was a confluence of things in fall 1979 that
brought it about.
1. Jim had installed the latest UNIX (Version 7) which broke
many old programs including a public domain "news" program that
had been sent out on one of the early UNIX User Group tapes. (In
summer 1979 the user group was renamed USENIX to avoid trademark
problems.) [It was earlier than that, but the first new meeting
was summer 1979] I don't think the program was called "news"
(perhaps it was called "items"). I think it allowed items to be
entered under one of several "categories". It had a number of
problems (including a 512 byte limit per item), so we were
thinking about writing a completely new program. Then we could
contribute it to the next user group tape and hopefully achieve
some minor level of fame.
2. I had worked for Ken Thompson at Bell Labs in the summer of
1979 and was in UNIX heaven the whole time. I also attended the
summer 1979 USENIX conference in Toronto. Returning to Duke in
the fall meant the end of that. Our only connection with the
outside UNIX world was the user group newsletter ;Login:, but we
had not seen one in a while. It was published on an erratic
schedule by a professor [Mel Ferentz] who had a lot of other
demands on his time. We were quite nervous that should anything
happen to him this tenuous connection would be lost entirely.
3. UNIX (Version 7) came with UUCP. This complex (for its day)
program made it easy to send e-mail and files to other UNIX
(Version 7) sites over phone lines provided that one end had an
auto-dialing telephone and modem and the other an auto-answering
telephone and modem. The Duke Computer Science PDP 11/70 had
both."
(We built the auto-dialers ourselves. An interesting
story...)
We were using UUCP to contact two other UNIX machines at
Duke and also one at U.N.C.-Chapel Hill.
So one night Jim and I had a rambling conversation about
these things and the idea behind Usenet just popped out.
We held a few meetings to figure out the details. Two other
local UNIX enthusiasts also attended: Dennis Rockwell from Duke
and Steven Bellovin from UNC. We decided on the transfer format
(what an article would look like on the wire) and on the basic
functionality of the software. Steven Bellovin implemented this
stuff with shell scripts as proof of concept. It was impressively
slow, but it worked!
We also decided on terminology such as "newsgroups". We
probably chose that due to the newsletter analogy. This was long
before the PC and "bulletin boards". We may have chosen
incorrectly but it wasn't due to carelessness. One thing we
didn't decide on was the name of the network. I think early on
Jim coined "Usenet", but our first announcement did not use that
(or any other) name.
An energetic new Duke graduate student,Stephen Daniel, also
turned out to be a UNIX enthusiast. He created the dotted
newsgroup structure that we know and love today, and wrote the
first production version of news ("A-news").
Ronda: Fred Brooks, who wrote "The Mythical Man Month" about the
problems of creating large software projects was a Professor at
the University of North Carolina. Did he do anything to help with
Usenet?
Tom: He was not involved in the early (or later) Usenet as far
as I know. He did pay for a leased line between U.N.C. and Duke
that made communication via UUCP a "free good". But we really
didn't seek faculty help for Usenet except for clerical issues
such as handling long distance bills until we were reimbursed.
Ronda: How did you present Usenet to people at USENIX in Winter
of 1980?
Tom: Jim Ellis presented a talk, but people did not come
specifically to hear his talk. There was no preannouncement of
Usenet. We didn't even have a name for the thing. There were 400
attendees, no parallel sessions, and pretty much everyone heard
everything. Ah, the good old days.
Ronda: I have been told that the reason "A-news" was written is
that the early shell script version of Usenet was too slow and
tied up the computer science departments computer. Is that why
the "A-news" version of Usenet was done to replace the shell
script version?
Tom: We never seriously considered implementing news as a shell
script.
It did not tie up the Department computer. We did, however,
have that problem with regard to UUCP. A grad student, Jothy
Rosenburg, had a PDP/11 at Duke Student Health that ran UNIX. He
used UUCP to ship files back and forth. The files got larger and
larger tying up our phone lines (we only had two) and when he
shipped a 500 Kbyte file which at 300 baud took 5 hours to
transfer, some people indeed hit the roof....Besides Jothy,
people blamed the problem on people playing computer games. But I
monitored phone use rather carefully and statistically game
playing was a total non-problem. But people had their minds made
up. This was in the fall of 1979 before news. News to U.N.C. (and
to phs) used fast leased lines which were not a problem. News
elsewhere happened in the dead of night which again was not a
problem. Usenet was being shipped via e-mail (not gateways of
mailing lists) long before 1982.
Ronda: Across the ARPANET?
Tom: I'm not sure, but it seems likely. Perhaps not across the
country, but across the campus would be rather attractive. It
("A-news") had general support for non-uucp transports [like
ARPANET] in early 1980.
Ronda: Do you have any idea how early in 1980?
Tom: Quite early. Well before the Delaware USENIX Conference. The
"uprop.n" paper (that was handed out at that conference) has a
section on this I will include here:
"Remote systems can also subscribe to newsgroups on an
individual basis. For each such system a subscription list and a
transmission protocol are maintained. Whenever an article should
be sent to a remote system, the transmission protocol of that
system is executed with a formatted version of the article as
input. This program performs the necessary magic to send an
article to the news program on the remote system. This might, for
example, be done by remote execution or the article could be
encapsulated and mailed to the remote system, when another
program would recover it and pass it on to the local news
program."
Ronda: I wondered if there were technical limitations to the
number and names of newsgroups under the original "A-news"
program and then under the early versions of "B-news". I have
been reading the discussion in "A-news" about forming new groups
and wondered if there were constraints that had to be taken into
account due to the software.
Tom: The early documentation said that newsgroup names were
restricted to 14 or fewer characters, but that was arbitrarily
chosen. ("A-news" did not store articles in a newsgroup tree, so
the old UNIX limitation of 14 character filenames did not apply
here.)
There was no limit on the number of newsgroups. However,
rather than have individual .newsrc files, "A-news" stored each
user's subscription list as a single line in the file
/usr/spool/news/uindex. The maximum line was originally 200
bytes, which limits the number of explicitly requested
newsgroups. On the other hand, one could subscribe to "all" to
read every thing so this was not that big a deal at first. The
"200" was also arbitrarily chosen, and was increased over time.
The real problem was the huge number of news articles. The
software was very inefficient at processing articles (which
would have been okay for three articles per day) and was
painfully slow as a result of the traffic. There was also a naive
assumption that the news program could allocate an array to hold
all the news articles the user wanted to read (or otherwise
process). But the PDP 11/70 did not have enough memory for more
than about 1000 articles! So we hacked the program to deal with
about 1000 articles at a time.
Ronda: Do you remember the earliest means of keeping track of
what newsgroups there were that people could subscribe to or did
people just subscribe to all? I have noticed that someone posted
a list of newsgroups in the early 1980s (maybe by 1982) I do not
have the earliest posts so I wonder if such lists had been made
earlier or if there was only a need for them at a certain point.
Tom: Originally people could create a newsgroup just by
submitting something to it, and similarly could subscribe to
non-existent newsgroups. This got to be a problem because people
would misspell newsgroup names. So we added a
/usr/spool/news/ngfile which had a list of all the known
newsgroups, and if someone submitted or subscribed to an unknown
group they were warned and asked if they wanted to add it to
ngfile. Newsgroup creation became a bigger deal in "B-news" which
created actual directories for the various newsgroups.
Ronda: You have said that human-nets was an important newsgroup
that was available in the early days of Usenet. Can you say what
you felt was important about it and why it was called human-nets?
Tom: "human-nets" was a discussion of the implications of
world-wide ubiquitous networking. This network of the future was
referred to as "Worldnet". It was a very interesting mailing
list and possible only due to the ability of the network itself
to permit those interested in this obscure subject to communicate.
Ronda: What role do you feel Usenet has played in all of this?
Tom: Usenet provided a good way to have online discussions, and
so I think it (accidentally) played quite a large role in this. I
think of personal e-mail, mailing lists, and news articles as
differing in their purpose and audience, but not in their content
or format. Stretching this further, we might view Web pages
simply as "messages" over which unusual care has been lavished.
And at the other end we might view "chat" style conversations as
sequences of messages over which unusually little care has been
lavished. Usenet just happened to find a sweet spot somewhere in
the middle. Anyway, it seems reasonable that all these different
kinds of messages could be formatted and handled in a more
uniform manner.
Ronda: Do you think we have succeeded in creating Worldnet?
Tom: It is easy to say "no", because less than half the world's
population have ever used a telephone, let alone a computer. We
don't yet have ubiquitous networking. And yet almost all of the
Worldnet vision has been implemented and is in widespread use.
The Worldnet discussions were about creating online journals and
creating an online storage of the world's knowledge. There were
concerns about fairness (would minority viewpoints be
suppressed?) and multi-culturalism (would we have a tyranny of
the English language, or perhaps instead a Tower of Babel?).
Well, the discussions have been overtaken by reality, and the
concerns are no longer academic!
------------
Notes
(1) The paper was Claude E. Shannon, "A Chess-- Playing Machine",
Scientific American, p. 48, February 1950.
(2) This was the July 1974 paper by Ritchie and Thompson on the
Unix Time Sharing System that was published in the Communications
of the ACM Number 17. (The earliest announcement perhaps of Unix
to the world.)
(3) Reproduced in "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet
and the Internet" by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2] Editorial
Championing Usenet
In Fall 1992, the Amateur Computerist published a collection
of articles about Usenet. By 1992, Usenet, which was born in Fall
1979, had grown and developed into a network and forum linking
millions of computer users around the world. But few of those not
on Usenet knew anything of its nature or existence. And many on
Usenet had rarely taken the time to consider what they had become
part of. The Fall 1992 Amateur Computerist collection of articles
was one of the early acknowledgments that Usenet was something
significant, and thus made it possible for those on Usenet or not
yet on Usenet to pause and reflect on this important new
development in human to human communication.
Since that time, the Internet has become a subject that has
gripped the imagination of people around the world. E-mail,
Usenet, IRC, Telnet, and FTP and now the World Wide Web (WWW)
have become some of the uses of the Net that have enhanced
communication among people, making our world smaller and more
dynamic than ever before. However much of the press, at least in
the U.S., is only charmed by the WWW, misrepresenting it as the
Internet, and presenting electronic commerce (e-commerce) as the
nature and future of the Net.
Meanwhile, hidden in general from public view, is the
cooperative and dynamic form of communication that is the
regenerative aspect of the Net. As networking visionaries Robert
Taylor and J.C.R. Licklider pointed out, when people communicate
in an active way, new ideas emerge. The development of a global
network is but one of the products of this constructive
interaction.
In 1961, in a speech given at an MIT conference about the
future of the computer, British writer C. P. Snow noted that
government officials would be making decisions that would affect
the future of the computer. He cautioned against having those
decisions made in secret by a small group of people who did not
understand the nature of the computer. Instead, he urged that as
broad a set of people as possible be involved in the discussion
of the issues governments would need to resolve to plan for how
the computer would be developed, so that the computer would
benefit society.
In a similar way today, there is a need for such broad
ranging discussion among many people. But today the issue is not
merely the future of the computer, but the future of the Internet
and of the computer as a new means of communication.
While small groups of government officials in the U.S., for
example, are planning to replace the dynamic Net of the present
with their model of a buying and selling bazaar from the past,
other segments of the U.S. government and population recognize
the importance of the Net as a new form of communication media.
Writing in the early 1960s, the German philosopher Jorgen
Habermas explained why the ability to have discussion among
people with diverse views which characterizes what we called "the
public sphere", is so important.
Habermas explains the power of critical rational discussion
and debate to determine the public interest on "the basis of
which alone a rational agreement between publicly competing
opinions could freely be reached." He describes different periods
of history where such rational discussion by a sector of the
population, was able to determine the important issues of the
day.
In the U.S. federal district court decision in a case
involving the Internet (ACLU versus Reno), one of the judges,
Judge Stewart Dalzell, eloquently described the importance and
power of Usenet and the Internet as a new media making possible a
similar kind of democratic participation and discussion. He
wrote: "The plaintiffs in these actions correctly describe the
'democratizing' effects of Internet communication: individual
citizens of limited means can speak to a worldwide audience on
issues of concern to them. Federalists and Anti-Federalists may
debate the structure of their government nightly, but these
debates occur in newsgroups and chat rooms rather than in
pamphlets.... The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium
than print, the village green, or the mails."
Judge Dalzell documents that there is a vibrant new form of
public sphere developing online similar to that which Habermas
described in other historical periods. Habermas' concept of the
public sphere provides a way to recognize the democratic
structures and the people who develop them as a crucial aspect of
evolving social and political structures.
A new form of public sphere is being created as the
conditions and the actors develop with the ability and the need
for the democratic processes and forms of the public sphere. And
in a similar way, there are those interests trying to corrupt
this newly forming public sphere.
This issue of the Amateur Computerist focuses on the
capability of online technology, particularly Usenet, to
encourage those who are online to contribute their news and
views, to have diverse opinions aired and considered. This is a
singular and special achievement that networking technology,
particularly Usenet, makes possible. This is creating a new
public sphere that promises to transform society in a way that
can reflect the interests of a broader set of people than
formerly and make possible a new form of democratic
participation. Those who promote e-commerce as the future of the
Internet, and the categorization of online users as "customers"
of merchants of e-commerce, are trying to replace the dynamic
democratic potential of the Internet with the old model of the
citizen as passive actor of a commercially dominated society.
This is why we feel it is crucial to examine and explore the
importance of discussion and debate and of uncensored posts that
are carried on Usenet, both from its earliest days and in current
newsgroups. We have taken this as our topic for this issue of the
Amateur Computerist.
Many people over many long years have worked to make it
possible for the communication that the Net makes possible to
grow and flourish. Will the Net continue to grow and flourish as
a significant new means of human to human communication? This is
a crucial question for our times. We hope that this issue of the
Amateur Computerist helps Netizens to answer this question in an
ever more vital and active way.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[3] Factsheet Five: ACN Vol 7 No 2
[Editors Note: Factsheet Five is a magazine which describes
hundreds of zines. Here is what it had to say about the Amateur
Computerist Vol 7 No 2 in its Winter 1998 issue.]
-- The Amateur Computerist Vol 7 No 2 --
The Amateur Computerist is like the complete antitheses of
Wired magazine. Look at its design, simple two-column pages that
are actually "readable", run off on an office xerox machine with
a single corner staple. The other key difference is that The
Amateur Computerist is a publication about computers, technology,
and the Internet while Wired primarily focuses on business,
marketing, and corporations. The best thing I can say about The
Amateur Computerist is that it's for former or current Wired
subscribers who are disgusted with its flag-waving corporate
stance and are looking for something with an emphasis on real
technology.
This thoughtful issue explores how the many facets of the
Internet has transformed society. They cover everything from
Usenet to e-mail to freenets to the Web. It starts off with a
great piece that explores how online discussion forums like
newsgroups are toppling the authoritative voice of newspapers.
Another fabulous piece is Ronda's history of Usenet, covering how
it grew out of a small group of researchers who wanted to
exchange tips on implementing Unix. Other highlights include
excerpts from the recent federal decision on the CDA, thoughts on
online education, and the report from INET '96.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[4] The Cooperative Nature of Usenet
by Gregory G. Woodbury
ggw@cds.duke.edu
[Editor's Note: In a thread in the newsgroup news.future, a
poster in August 1993 wrote that he felt those on Usenet had a
commitment to the anarchy that he felt characterized Usenet. In
response Greg Woodbury, a Usenet pioneer who has been on Usenet
since its earliest days, disagreed that one should characterize
Usenet as an anarchy and wrote the following post describing his
view of the organizational structure of Usenet.]
Postulating the concept of net.anarchy as being at the base
of a belief system (or "faith") is an interesting twist on the
topic. Part of the confusion arises, I think, from a misunder-
standing of what is meant when folks call netnews an "anarchy."
The governance structure of the net (and there *is* one)
does not (yet) have an "archy" word around to describe it. It is
not an hierarchy, it is not an oligarchy, it isn't an "aristocracy",
nor do any of the other "archy" or "ocracy" words quite describe
it. Since it cannot be put into a neat little category, it is
lumped into the "not otherwise specified" category, which happens
to be "anarchy."
As it stands, there is no good way to even describe the
structures that do exist. They are distributed (as opposed to
centralized), they are "consensual" (as opposed to majority
rule), they are both individual and collective, and they are
highly mutable/dynamic.
A few years ago there was some major discussion about the
use of the term "organized" in relation to netnews. (Actually, in
the application of the word organizations to Usenet/Netnews.)
Such discussions arise periodically on the net, and serve to
clarify the governance in the minds of those involved.
For other reasons, the use of the term "operational anarchy"
in relation to netnews serves to remind those involved that we
are involved in a co-operative situation, where the ultimate
responsibility of the contents rests squarely on the poster of an
article. Much of the arguments about netnews governance are
attempts to avoid this basic fact. :-)
Another reason that "anarchy" continues to be applied is to
remind folks that the site owners and their agents (the admin.)
hold basic real property rights (in most places) to their
machines that are used in providing this cooperative service, and
that these rights are joined with concomitant real (i.e. legal)
responsibilities.
Additional complications arise when the existing "laws" are
applied to a situation that has far outpaced the ability of the
"system" to keep up with it. One example is the application of
"copyright" to the articles created by the posters.
Then comes the questions of how to "model" this dynamic
system in such a way that a human can comprehend it and deal with
it. Several different models may apply (simultaneously!) to it.
The inability to choose a single, simple model further adds to
the confusing (and thus anarchic) quality of netnews.
I can claim (with a bit of pride :-) ) to have watched
netnews/Usenet grow from its two-machine origin into three, then
four, and then up its growth curve. The very basic assumption
that people using the netnews software wanted to have interactive
communication is still essentially unchallenged as the purpose
for this "creature" we call netnews/Usenet to exist.
There *is* a quasi-religious quality about netnews in some
of the arguments that occur, and it is quite possible that some
folks are using a variety of faith postulates in their
conceptions of it.
I, however, do not think that being an "anarchy" is one of
those for most people. The term remains in use simply because
there isn't any other term that can be applied to netnews instead.
There are, IMnsHO(1), a few folks who have made faith
postulates out of the "advantages of democracy" and other
concepts. :-)
Wolfe
--------------
Note
(1) IMnsHO := "In My (not so) Humble Opinion", a common net
acronym.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[5] Creating Broadsides for Our Day (Part 2)
by Ronda Hauben
au329@cleveland.freenet.edu
[Editor's Note: The following is the second part of this article.
The first part appeared in the Amateur Computerist Vol 7 No 2. A
footnoted version is available from the author]
V - Creating the Form for Usenet
The earliest days of Usenet demonstrate both the principles
and practices in embryo of new and more democratic forms that
this new technology makes possible. The issues developed in
certain key newsgroups during this early period clarify the
problems that a new communications medium bring to the fore. The
model for Usenet that pioneers had early on was of an electronic
newsletter. "Not to belittle any new newsgroup, but it strikes me
that we are developing a real electronic newspaper here," wrote
George Otto in a post in January 1982. "We already have a science
section, an automotive section, a comic section, movie review
column, sports section, travel section, book reviews, even want
ads." Michael Shiloh noted that he enjoyed the network both "for
entertainment and for receiving the latest news on many subjects,"
Another user pointed out that he didn't feel the news wires
belonged on Usenet, "Although the news wire is something I want
to see in Worldnet," he explained, "I don't want it on Usenet,
unless it belongs in one of the other newsgroups." J. C. Winterton
explained that he didn't feel that Usenet "should become an arm of
AP, Reuthers, etc." However, in considering what Usenet should
make possible, one user at allegra at Bell Labs wrote, "Wouldn't
it be great to use this electronic medium to send notes to our
government officials. I never seem to write postal letters or
telegrams," he admitted, "but we all seem to find these electric
notes convenient enough to use often. Can you imagine net.reagan
with a few authentic replies?" Another user added "or what if we
could lobby our favorite senator (net.lobby, net.senator?)" In
articulating the importance of Usenet, Mel Haas wrote that the
effort had to be to "Try to make the net a useful exchange of
useful information and ideas that will pay for the service and
help people." Another user explained his view that Usenet "was
supposed to represent electronic mail and bulletins among a
group of professionals with a common interest, thus representing
fast communication about important technological topics." S.
McGeady noted, a bit in dismay, "We are running a networked
democracy here." Observing that, "computer networks, news and
mail systems are much closer to the 'broadsides' of yesterday,
Alan Watt asked, "are they therefore protected under the free
speech amendment?"
To make such communication possible, it was important that
rapid replies be possible after the item was posted. "The problem
of disjointed communications is very real," wrote Jerry Schwartz
at harpo, "Frequently we receive the reply to an item before we
receive the item." To help alleviate the confusion that might
result from this situation, he recommended, "that people put a
line or two at the beginning of their submission (like the head
of this one) to indicate what they are replying to."
Such long delays in being able to respond to posts were
problematic, "If Netnews is to be used for an interactive medium
for discussion," wrote Mark Horton, "a reply could take over a
week to get back, with a two week turnaround. Clearly, this is
the worst case, and a delay of a few days is more likely than a
week. But there would be a significant lag, and conversations
would be way out of sync with each other." Horton noted that he
was replying to a message that had been posted two weeks before.
The newsgroup net.news was created to discuss Usenet
itself. In this newsgroup, users discussed changes that they felt
could be made in the software to improve Usenet. For example,
Chris (at cincy) noted that it was then necessary to save the
news item one wanted to respond to, exit netnews to write one's
reply, and then send it and return to Usenet. Instead, he
proposed that a means of automatically replying be built into the
netnews software.
Often proposals for how to improve Usenet were submitted
online with requests for comments and discussion. However, when
ARPANET digests were read by those on Usenet, it was difficult to
respond to the individual posts since the e-mail address of the
gateway to Usenet was given as the source of the digests, rather
than the poster's e-mail. Several on Usenet discussed how this
made it difficult to respond to the writer, and raised possible
ways to remedy the problem. In response, Horton explained that he
was beginning to think that a change should be made and the real
sender listed. He asked for "Comments" on his proposed change.
Steve Bellovin, one of Usenet's creators, noted that he was
one of the people who had created the old form. He welcomed
making a change, and proposed generating a "Reply-to" field for
the e-mail address of the original author so that they would
receive the response if one did "reply" with a lower case r but
if one used an upper case R, the reply would be sent to Usenet as
a follow up message.
In May 1981, Matt Glickman posting from the University of
California Berkeley, announced that he and Mark Horton were
working on a new version of the Netnews software used to
transport Usenet. By July 1981, the software was going into the
testing phase. Horton posted that "Comments on the conversion
process are welcome."
In a similar way, in Nov. 1981, Horton proposed a policy for
Usenet. He asked "If anyone objects to this policy, please let me
know." Also Horton posted that he observed that people seemed to
confuse Usenet with the UUCPnet that was used to transport
Usenet. Therefore, Horton proposed, "I am toying with the idea of
changing the names Usenet (the network itself) and Netnews (the
collection of software that implement Netnews) both to "newsnet".
But he commented, "Since this is a sweeping change, and
since I'm not God, I would like to see discussion on whether this
is a good thing to do. Please reply to net.news." His request
drew an immediate response. One such reply was from Bellovin.
Bellovin wrote, "Mark, we picked 'Usenet' in deliberate imitation
of 'USENIX', (one of) the UNIX User's Groups. At the time, we
hoped that it might become 'the official network' of USENIX."
Others suggested a variety of names, including WEB with the
comment "unfortunately, sounds too much like a TV station."
Names like "Arachnet", "Arachne", and "Compuco", "meaning a
computer conferencing" and "info-ex", i.e. short for information
exchange, were proposed.
Bill Jollitz supported a suggestion by Lauren Weinstein on
the need to be careful of names with existing trademarks. Both
agreed that it was important to raise the issue of "how this net
will grow." Though certain problems like those of a technical or
political nature were "well handled in the forum of the network
itself," they felt other problems should be discussed at USENIX,
as "it's the only large forum appropriate at the time."
Other names suggested included "Thinknet" or "Idnet" as
names to represent the need for intelligent discussion that was
represented on the net. "And speaking of Web," another poster
responded, if there were discussion on the subject it could turn
into a "Dragnet."
Weinstein proposed that any renaming proposal be brought up
at the January 1982 USENIX meeting because it was important to
have a "reasoned consideration of any new name."
Another post indicated the user had searched through the
Webster's dictionary using the Unix tool grep and listed all the
words he found ending in "net."
In a post dated Nov. 22, Horton listed a set of possible
names and asked for a vote. He wrote, "Usenet is the current name
of the logical net of sites running the netnews programs. They
make up an electronic distributed bulletin board." Horton submitted
several policy issues as a proposal to Usenet. There was online
discussion about these proposals. Several, however, commented that
they would be attending the USENIX meeting in Santa Monica,
California in January 1982 and asked that any policy wait till
that meeting.
"I have gotten lots of pressure," Horton writes, "to let the
people at USENIX make the decision (and for the network name,
too) and I want to state for the record that while I fully hope
to postpone all such decisions until at least USENIX, the people
who can't make it to Santa Monica this January have just as much
right to be heard as those who can....I want to hear both groups,
but the real public that counts here is the USERS OF THE NET
(e.g. all you folks that are reading this.)"
Horton, however, proposed that votes wait till the USENIX
meeting and be carried out in person, "since carrying out a
discussion on this medium is very reasonable, but carrying out a
vote is not, I suggest that we all air our opinions here and that
after we talk ourselves out, those who can't make it to USENIX
should find somebody who can and have them cast your vote by
proxy. (Preferably someone you can talk with in person and hand a
piece of paper to with your signature on it.)"
Agreeing that the policies should be discussed at USENIX,
Brian Redman wrote "It's unfortunate indeed that more people
can't be represented at our January meeting....My suggestion that
we wait 'till the meeting is in response to Mark's suggestion
that we set some policies. I can't imagine that an actual vote by
the readers could be carried out fairly," he cautioned, adding,
"I for one would vote on behalf of all the integers in a VAX."
Others objected to having decisions made at USENIX rather
than online. Among the objections were those raised by Greg Ordy
from Case Western University (cwruecmp) who wrote, "I submit that
if it takes an across the country meeting to settle the issues at
hand, we are in big trouble....It's the old loudest talker and
prettiest face that sways opinions. I would think that this
neutral medium would be an ideal place to judge only on content,
not on packaging." He also noted that "the amount of non-
technical news is starting to swamp the straight Unix stuff...."
And he asked, "How much time does the average news reader/writer
spend with news each day?"
Dave Curry also questioned relying on a USENIX meeting to
make decisions on Usenet policy. He wrote, "I must say that
putting the decisions on Usenet policy into the hands of those
people attending the USENIX conference (certainly a minority of
those who read news, etc.) is grossly unfair. I myself cannot
afford to attend the conference (I don't know if I would, even if
I could), and am certain numerous others aren't for numerous
reasons. He proposed that, "the decisions should be made over the
net." And he outlined a procedure to have those on the net
involved in determining the decisions.
Horton's policy proposal had included a procedure to set up
new newsgroups. Horton suggested a committee of those who knew
how Usenet functioned to make decisions on the names of new
newsgroups. Others on Usenet commented on the proposed procedure.
Jerry Schwartz at harpo disagreed, "Rather than a committee to
determine the names of groups," he wrote, "I propose a group
'net.names'. The official procedure to create a new group would
be to announce a proposed new group in 'net.general.' People
interested in the group would reply via mail to the originator,
and any objections to the name would be posted to 'net.names'.
After a few days the originator can make a decision on the name
and announce the creation of the group in 'net.general'. Any
discussion of the changes to the names of existing groups could
also go in 'net.news'."
Another response added, "I find it hard to believe that Mark
is proposing a committee to approve of new newsgroups. Up to that
point, his proposal sounds fine. How about just establishing
rules for new groups." He detailed some proposed rules:
"1 - Send a request for interested parties to net.general
2 - Interested parties reply to the sender.
3 - If there is enough interest, replies are collected and sent
out as the first transmission of the new group."
"This system," he commented, "seems simple and self
policing. If there is enough interest for a group to be started,
then it is no committee's business to say it shouldn't exist."
And he added, "I even get the feeling that if there was a
committee, it would really end up being a rubber stamp since who
has the time to do the work necessary to come to a rational
decision about a group? Or if the committee does turn a group
down, the metadiscussion generated would probably be worse than
any group I can think of. If someone violates the rules, I'm sure
that they could be jumped on and their (illegal) newsgroup
disallowed by the local administrator."
Alan Watt outlined the principles he felt were governing the
creation and development of Usenet:
"1) Usenet is a strictly volunteer organization: nobody HAS
to join, and guidelines cannot be enforced.
2) Any local news administrator has the de facto power to
impose any kind of censorship technically feasible.
3) Systems will only participate in Usenet if the perceived
benefits exceed the visible costs. Any guidelines
proposed ought to be guided by the principle of 'what is
obviously for the common good that everyone will accept
it once stated'."
He believed that "the character of Usenet will be the
consensus of the individuals who maintain it at each local site,
in spite of what any central committee requires or forbids."
From the discussion, he added, it appeared that in many
cases "management isn't even aware that Usenet exists. The real
danger," he continued, "is that if management doesn't know about
Usenet, it follows that for most installations no one has an
official responsibility to maintain it. This is certainly true
for us." He continued, "Maintaining the news system on our single
machine takes some measurable portion of my not-too-empty
schedule each day. I squeeze out the necessary time because of
perception (3)"
A post by Mel Haas added, "My personal hope is that the net
will add to our capability to communicate, and do away with the
horrible decisions that are made by committee meetings 'in
secret' at some conference or other. I hope that all discussion
of this (of censorship etc) or any other topic relating to the
net is relayed to the net."
Jolitz said that he would report to those on the Net who
couldn't attend the USENIX meeting about what went on. And Brian
Redman responded that USENIX is "NOT a secret organization. BTW,
Usenet was introduced at a USENIX meeting."
Another poster acknowledged that "most of the sites here at
Bell Labs Indian Hill are running Netnews without benefit of
super-user collaboration or even approval..."
VI - The Online Public Forum and Creating a New Form of Town Hall
Democracy
Those online found themselves creating a new communication
medium and a new communication environment. The discussion on
early Usenet over policy proposals demonstrated an open process
where people were encouraged to contribute. Issues and proposals
were debated to determine the principles to guide the decisions
made and the procedures adopted. In addition, this discussion
raised the question of what parts of the democratic process can
be carried out online versus what areas need face to face
meetings or other means of implementation. And how can these
different forms interrelate? During the discussion of policy
issues in the 1981-82 period, several people commented that they
didn't trust votes carried out online, pointing out the ease with
which votes could be tampered with in an online voting process.
They also pointed to the discrepancy between the tentative vote
carried out online about choosing a new name for Usenet and the
vote held at the USENIX meeting where the vote for a new name for
Usenet yielded very different results.
In a similar way, through online discussion and
consideration, the new newsgroup naming and creation process was
examined and a means found to create a working procedure, as
opposed to depending on a proposed appointed committee to carry
out the procedure.
In "The Rights of Man," Tom Paine describes the importance
of the discussion among people to determine the underlying
principles upon which new forms can be fashioned. "Forms grow out
of principles and operate to continue the principles they grow
from," Paine observed. "It is impossible to practice a bad form
on anything but a bad principle," he continued. Paine also
proposed that the beginning of a new form is the most important
and most difficult step, "as the probability is always greater
against a thing beginning than of proceeding after it has begun."
The discussion made possible in net.news during this early
period on Usenet demonstrates how problems can be examined to
determine the crucial principles so as to set the foundation for
a community or social compact. Before there are agreed upon
principles and policies, the interests and desires of those who
are joining together need to be explored and debated. The
principles of any social compact need to be determined before the
forms, so the forms that will serve these needs can be created.
The insistence of various participants on Usenet during this
early period for input into the decisions about Usenet, echoed
and articulated in Mark Horton's statement that "I'm not God,"
demonstrated the commitment that such decisions had to be
determined by Net users. This was a statement of the fact that
sovereignty resided in the users, not in any individual or
organization.
This open process created a foundation upon which Usenet
could expand and develop. Much that was only dreamt about or
proposed as wishful thinking in 1981 on Usenet is now assumed
procedure. Thomas Paine explains that if the principles
determining a new form are good principles, the form will reflect
and spread the good principles, and vice versa. The democratic
process developed by those who formed Usenet, established the
foundation for it to grow and flourish. In "The Rights of Man",
Paine describes his observations when he left Great Britain and
came to the U.S. He found a new form had been created in the new
world of America to guide how governments could function. In a
similar way, the discussion on Usenet during its early days shows
how a new form was created to guide the development of the
online community. Studying these early efforts of the Usenet
pioneers shows how they gave the world a new communication media
and a new form of online town hall democracy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[6] [Editor's Note: In the following written in 1994, ARPANET
pioneer Keith Lynch recalls his early days online and comments
on some of the challenges to the future of the Net.]
History of the Net is Important
by Keith F. Lynch
kfl@clark.net
Well, originally it was just "The ARPANET". In 1977 friends
introduced me to it. We used a TI [Texas Instrument] Silent 700
terminal. This was a printing terminal which used thermal paper
and built-in 300 baud acoustic coupled modem. One would dial a
local "TIP". For instance there was one at Mitre, a nearby
company. One would then type "@L134" to connect to host 134, or
whatever. There was no TIP (later TAC) login at that time. Host
numbers were always a single number of up to three digits. No
dots. Host names were always short and uppercase, and also had
no dots.
A TIP was a machine which did nothing except allow dial-up
users to connect to other machines. Later they were renamed TACs.
There was no security on them. Not only was no password needed,
but you could issue commands to other sessions on the TAC!
Everyone was expecting that TAC login was imminent, but it wasn't
installed for a long time. Not until 1986, I think.
I've heard of guest users being asked not to use a TAC
because all its lines were busy who resolved the problem by
paying for an extra phone line and modem to be installed at the
TAC!
TACs had some little-known features, for instance a way to
link to a user dialed into another TAC, so you can have a
real-time conversation without connecting to a computer. This
was handy during hours when guest users weren't allowed to log in
on the ITS systems at MIT. If you were both good typists, you
could disable echo, so that when either of you typed, only the
person not typing saw it. Which meant you could both type at the
same time without stepping on each other.
A couple times, I would dial into a TAC from a printing
terminal at work, and just leave it dialed in. Then, from home, I
would tell that TAC port to con nect to an ITS machine. Then, I
would get on ITS from home and link to the newly appeared job,
log it in, and have it list various files, so that they would
print out at work for me.
One time I dialed into a TAC from a microcom puter running
CP/M at work. (CP/M was a very simple OS for eight bit micros,
before the 16 bit IBM PC and MS/DOS came out. It didn't even
support hard disks, or tree structured directories.) Then I
could connect to it via the net from home. I told my net-friends
that we had a machine on the net at work. A machine running CP/M.
I showed them how to connect to it, and they did so. This was
considered a great lark. I can't easily convey how ridiculous
the idea of a small machine on the net was in those days. I think
this was in 1981 or 1982, when connection required a government
contract and a refrigerator-sized quarter million dollar IMP.
The most popular machines on the net were the ITS machines
at MIT. There was DM (77), AI (134), ML (198), and MC (236). DM
had Zork on it. Zork was a text-only adventure game played in
woods, caverns, dungeons, etc, which contained treasure to be
brought back. (Infocom later marketed a modified version of Zork
for various micros.) MC had Macsyma, a program for solving
equations. (Macsyma was later marketed by Symbolics.) All
machines had EMACS, the screen editor written by Richard M.
Stallman et al, which gave rise to the later commercial EMACS
written and marketed by Gosling, and the GNU EMACS again written
by Richard M. Stallman, who later won a MacArthur foundation
quarter million dollar genius grant for it and for related work.
The ITS EMACS was the original EMACS, and was written in TECO, a
character-based editing language.
ITS stood for the Incompatible Time-sharing System, an
obvious take-off on CTSS, the Compati ble Time Sharing System.
(Just as Unix is a take-off on the earlier TENEX, TWENEX, and
MULTICS.)
All four ITS machines also had UNTALK, a split-screen
conferencing program similar to the later "talk" on Unix and
PHONE on VMS. I was told it was written by a user whose ITS
username was UNCOLA and who had committed suicide. I don't know
if it was the first program of that type, but it was the first I
had seen.
ITS was a strange operating system. Commands took effect
without one's needing to type <CR>. There was a
semi-hierarchical file system, suppos edly hacked together in one
weekend by David A. Moon. Files on other ITS systems were
transparently available through the "Chaosnet" (a predecessor of
Ethernet, and probably an inspiration for it) simply by prefacing
the filename with the name of the machine it was on.
Similar ideas later appeared in VMS/DECNET and Unix/NFS.
Eventually (1979?), ITS instituted passwords. Fortunately
for me, they allowed guest users. Even without an account, one
could get in fairly easily. I'll explain how, as it helps give a
flavor for the system:
Users who weren't logged in still got a prompt. They just
couldn't do much with it. One thing they could do was see who's
logged in. Another was use the SEND command to send a real-time
message to anyone who was logged in at the time. Anyhow, when one
wasn't logged in, one could use SEND to send to someone else who
wasn't logged in. The SEND command would then automatically
invoke the MAIL command. And from within the mailer one could do
"<ESC>E" to invoke EMACS (just as today in the Unix mail command,
one can do "~e" to do the same thing). And from within EMACS,
one uses "^X^V" to load DDT (the exec) and "^X^W" to write it
over SEND. Then one aborts out, and invokes SEND a second time.
Only since SEND had been replaced with a copy of DDT, you'd be in
the exec, fully logged in.
Unfortunately, the machines (PDP-10s) were usually so
heavily loaded that guests were often restricted to using them
after midnight. During slack periods, they were allowed on as
early as 8 pm. And sometimes all day on weekends. File space was
quite restricted. And guests didn't get personal directories.
Also, there was no file protection. Anyone could read or alter
any file on the system. And anyone could spy on anyone else's
session, and even link to their exec and issue commands to it.
This is something I really miss in Unix and VMS when a user needs
assistance it would be very handy to be able to look over their
shoulder and to type commands for them while they watch,
remotely.
Guests were allowed to, and even encouraged to, modify the
system. If people didn't like the modifica tions, they were taken
out again.
The ITS convention was that it was O.K. to read other
people's mail. Eventually, this collided with the net-wide
convention that this wasn't O.K., with some unfortunate results,
which included at least one di vorce, that of Marty and Nancy
Conner, who had married after meeting on the Bandykin mailing
list.
The Bandykin list was originally set up for the friends of
Bandy (Andrew Scott Beals) to console him for the loss of his
girlfriend. I think this was in 1984 or so. It was alluded to,
not by name, in Quarterman and Hoskins' "Notable Computer
Networks" (CACM, October 1986 please don't try to write a history
of the net until you've read this paper). It was later renamed to
Kin, when Bandy wished to be dissociated from it. Before dying,
it spawned off a number of other lists, including Elbows,
Lectroids, TANSTAAFL, and Info-Frobkin. That last list gave rise
to FTP Software, a thriving Cambridge firm with which the company
I work for has recently done business. (FTP Software was
presumably named after the net's File Transfer Protocol, which of
course greatly predated it.)
The Kin list died because Marty Conner reserved the right to
add anyone and everyone to the list. The new lists were
constituted without him, and with strict rules about who could
join.
It wasn't until 1981 that I had fairly consistent access
from home, using a borrowed 300 baud modem and H19 terminal.
Prior to that, I had often gone months or sometimes years between
access. After 1981, I have never been offline for more than a
month. I missed a month in 1986 due to TAC logins finally being
installed. And another month in 1993, when I was installing
computers overseas. (Ironically, as of last month those overseas
comput ers are now on the net!)
In 1982 I got my own Heathkit H19 terminal and assembled it.
I used it until I got a 286 PC in 1986. I'm still using that PC.
I'm currently using a 2400 baud modem I borrowed from work three
years ago. Prior to that, I was using my own 1200 baud modem.
Early this year I rescued a TI Silent 700 terminal from the trash
can at a hamfest, mostly just for old times' sake. (The TI had
been marked $15, but nobody bought it. They cost about $1000 new
in the late 70s.)
In 1986, I started using a service called PC Pursuit. It
allowed one to make off-hours long distance computer calls to
about 30 cities in the US, including Boston. I used it not just
to get onto ITS, but also onto various BBS systems around the
country.
In 1986, 1987, 1989, 1989 again, and 1990, I visited MIT in
person.
In May 1990, the last ITS machine was shut down. But I also
had guest accounts on Unix systems at MIT by then. It was one of
those on which I first used Usenet newsgroups, perhaps in 1987 or
so. Previously, most of my activity had been reading and posting
to mailing lists, having real-time chats, and downloading various
text files. I recall one four-way real-time chat which included
people in Virginia, Norway, the Philippines, and Missouri.
In 1991 I switched from using a Unix system at MIT to using
Digex, a Unix system in Maryland, a local call from here. Not
long after, I dropped PC Pursuit. PC Pursuit was nice at first,
but they changed from allowing unlimited off-hours usage to one
hour a day, while increasing their rates from $20 a month to $30
a month. Also, their local number was busy most of the time, and
connections were sluggish, and frequently punctuated with the
notorious "** POSSIBLE DATA LOSS 00 55 **" which invariably meant
several pages had been discarded. I probably would have dropped
it anyhow, as there were only two long distance BBSs I called
regularly, and one had shut down, while the other had moved out
of a PC Pursuit area (and has since shut down).
Digex was founded, and is headed by, Doug Humphrey, whom I
first met in person at a convention called WATS-80 which he
hosted in Washington DC in 1980. Oddly, instead of using his real
name there, he called himself "Aubrey Philipsz" after a character
in James Hogan's 1978 novel The Genesis Machine. I may have met
him online earlier. He was DIGEX on the ITS machines. In those
days, he had a large DEC-10 in his small apartment. He had bought
it for scrap prices. He used to wear the key to it around his
neck as jewelry.
In 1989 he had an ITS system in his apartment, which was
only one of two not at MIT (the other was in Scandinavia
somewhere). I don't think he still has it. (I wonder if there's
a law against killing an endangered operating system.)
I remember his mentioning ARPANET, and how easy it was to
get onto it, during a talk he gave at WATS-80 in 1980. The
implication was that we were all unauthorized users, but that
nobody really minded yet.
I don't think Usenet was mentioned at that convention.
WATS-80 was mentioned in the Washington Post. I'm sure I
still have the newspaper clipping some where. (I always save
everything forever, but often have a hard time finding it later,
since it's mixed in with everything else I've saved.)
As you can see from my header, I'm still on Digex. [That was
in 1994 -ed] It's grown a lot since I first logged on here, from
a SUN-3 with an "MX record" (not directly on the net) with about
1000 newsgroups, to several large SUN-4s linked to the Internet
backbone with a T1 line, carrying about 9000 newsgroups.
I still have an account on a Unix machine at MIT, too, which
I can telnet into, but I seldom use it.
> one of the questions I am most interested in sorting out is
> "What was the degree of Usenet/Internet overlap at various
> times"?
That's hard to answer. I can give you my impres sions. ITS
was never part of Usenet. The idea of a newsgroup is a fairly
obvious one, given mailing lists. I recall commenting in 1979 or
1980, that it was silly to mail a copy of the same thing
separately to lots of people on the same machine, rather than
mailing a pointer to it, and having one copy in a common area. In
fact, the SF-Lovers digest was set up that way for some users for
a while in 1980 instead of being mailed the digest, they had the
option of being mailed a notification that there's a new digest,
so they can read it from the online archives. This was
discontinued after a year or two, probably because it was only
practical when most readers were on ITS, which is where the list
origi nated. Almost all mailing lists originated from ITS, since
it had the most advanced mailer software.
Rich Zellich maintained a "list of lists" which could be
ftp'd from SRI-NIC.ARPA. For all I know, he still does. But it
was hopelessly out of date by 1983 or so, as there was no formal
procedures for information on new lists, or on changes in old
lists, to be conveyed to him.
I gradually became aware of Usenet via references in
SF-Lovers, Human-Nets and other mailing lists. It became clear
that some people didn't see something called the "SF-Lovers
Digest," but instead read something called "fa.sf-lovers". I
became aware of what newsgroups were, and that they all began
with "net." except the ones which were aliased to an ARPANET
mailing list, which began with "fa.". Nothing began with alt. or
misc. or rec. or sci. or soc. in those days.
Speaking of SF-Lovers, Brad Templeton put the first few
years of archives (starting in 1979) on a CD-ROM last year, along
with lots of recent SF novels and short stories. My brother has a
copy. It's easy to scan these archives, unlike my personal
archives which are on thousands of five inch dis kettes, mostly
unlabeled, in no particular order. It was fun to see my own
postings, older than some current net users, now immortalized in
plastic and tinfoil.
(I just checked that disc, and found that the first mention
of fa.sf-lovers in the SF-Lovers digest was in August 1982, in a
message which also mentions net.sf-lovers. I don't know if those
were two different newsgroups. I can forward that message to you
if you like.)
Actually, SF-Lovers didn't begin in 1979. It had an earlier
incarnation, whose archives apparently haven't been preserved
anywhere. It was shut down after Senator William Proxmire gave
the ARPANET his golden fleece award for wasting taxpayers' money,
citing SF-Lovers and the wine lovers mailing lists as examples.
(I don't know when this was, but it should be easy to look up.)
The wine lovers mailing list never came back.
Usenet people also participated in mailing lists. They
always had addresses in the form foo!bar!baz!zoo!yar!yaz where
foo and yaz were the starting and ending points, or perhaps the
other way around. ARPANET addresses were always in the form
FOO@BAR, or if they were on some kind of subnet FOO%BAR@BAZ.
Traffic which had traversed the nets would look like
foo!bar!baz%ZOO@YAR. It wasn't always clear which way to parse
this.
I definitely had the impression that ARPANET (later,
Internet) and Usenet were two very different things, and that
mail got from one to the other only because one or two machines
happened to be on both networks. These gateway machines which
were on both networks kept changing, presumably because once word
got out that one was acting as a gateway, it quickly became
overloaded, and soon refused to act as a gateway anymore.
My impression (which may have been wrong) was that the
Usenet mailing lists were completely different from the ARPANET
mailing lists, although some adventurous Usenetters were
subscribed to the latter via a gateway.
There was a Usenet map file, consisting of several pages of
ASCII line drawings meant to be connected together, which showed
all the systems on the Usenet, and which ones talked (via uucp)
to which other ones.
I may still have a hardcopy of this somewhere. I recall that
only one or two machines on the map was also an ARPANET host. But
it was hard to tell, since a host's Usenet name and ARPANET name
could be (and usually were) completely different.
Today, I have the impression that Internet and Usenet are
essentially the same thing. And that the overwhelming majority of
newsgroup traffic flows via TCP/IP over the Internet, rather than
via uucp over dial-up modems. Trying to separate them today seems
about as productive as distinguishing the Angles from the Saxons
today.
I recall that Usenet users were considered some how lower
class. For instance there was a message on the Bandykin list
suggesting that Usenet people be banned from the list. I wrote a
reply, replacing "Usenet" with "black", and "Internet" with
"white," showing that "netism" (as I then named it) is as bad as
racism. (I'm sure I still have a copy of these messages.)
Today, on some newsgroups there's similar, but lesser,
netism toward AOL, Delphi, and/or Fidonet users.
> And I would love to know about the 1980 ARPANET crash - that's
> just after Usenet started (when in 1980 was the crash?)
October? I don't recall the cause, except that it came as an
enormous surprise, as the ARPANET was supposed to be crash-proof.
Some kind of self- propagating host table update had a bug in it,
I think. It was definitely an accident, not malicious, not an
attempt to crash anything.
> Have you seen any history work done on Usenet and ARPANET
> history?
I don't think so. Not until the past year have I noticed
lots of books being available, describing what the net is like
now, and how to do things with it. It makes sense that such books
would appear before books that describe how it came to be that
way, and what it was like earlier, the latter being of lesser
immediate practical use.
The net's history is very small, measured in person-years.
Perhaps 50 million? Compared to about 20 billion person-years of
US history, and a similar number of person-years for the Roman
Empire, that isn't very much. Thus one might expect one net
history book for every 400 US history books.
> ... and when it is often written about, the details are
> often wrong (when it is written about by the press, etc.)
I've noticed that the press tends to be quite accurate,
except when they're writing on a subject I know something about.
:-)
Concerning quoting styles, the ARPANET style was to indent
the text being quoted, the Usenet style (which I've long since
adopted) was to quote messages with a ">" character at the
beginning of each quoted line, and the Fidonet style was to quote
messages with the person's initials followed by a ">" character
at the beginning of each quoted line. All three styles are now
found on all three nets, as are various other styles, many of
them nearly unreadable.
Often, the ">" is replaced by some other character such as
"|", probably to get around software that puts limits on quoted
text.
The earliest mailing list I'm aware of is MSGGROUP, a list
for discussing e-mail and related issues. I've recently seen some
online archives of it dating back to 1975, and I downloaded the
earliest parts of it as a souvenir.
The first digestified mailing lists were SF-Lovers and
Human-Nets, which became digestified in January 1980, because the
daily volume became too great for the ITS mailer to handle
overnight. With digestification came de facto moderation, since
there was no automatic software for digestification. These may
have been the first mailing lists to be moderated.
The first *automatic* digestification, at least among the
lists I read at the time, was on the Space Digest. I remember
being very surprised by it. This was probably around 1982.
I think I first saw smileys in 1981 or 1982. The original
one was :-).
FTP, telnet, and mail date back to the beginning of the
ARPANET, though they changed somewhat when NCP was replaced by
TCP/IP (in 1982?). IRC, WWW, Archie, and Gopher are quite recent.
I used something just like IRC on the BITNET in 1987 or so, and
I'm pretty sure there was no IRC at that time, though there were
MUDs. I used something just like a one-channel IRC on an HP-2000
(not on any net) in 1977.
I'm not sure when FAQs started, though I'm pretty sure they
came from Usenet, not Internet.
GIFs, I'm pretty sure originally came from CompuServe.
> > (I do hope newsgroups have been, and are being, totally
> > archived.)
> They were by Henry Spencer at the university of Toronto - but
> he gave his tapes last summer to someone who claimed they would
> make a CD-ROM > of them ...
Make a CD-ROM of the complete archives of Usenet? I believe
the current volume is about equal to one CD-ROM per *week*.
> But also some of the research I have done in the
> past is available from wuarchive.wustl.edu in
> directory /doc/misc/acn/netbook
I'll get that file as soon as I finish writing this. (I
don't want to bias my recollections, and feed back information
already in the file to you.)
Until 1990 or so, my perception was that the net, or at
least my access to it, was likely to go away soon. TAC login was
coming soon. Guest users at MIT were always becoming more
numerous and weren't as well behaved as in the "good old days,"
thus were likely to soon all be flushed. The net often became
unusably slow (i.e. five or ten minutes for what I type to echo
sometimes I'd type ahead a whole session, including the logout,
before getting the password prompt) and it was obvious that
guests would be flushed since the capacity was now being
exceeded.
Later came the infamous FCC "modem tax" threat. The
outrageous idea was that the net, PC Pursuit, etc, were
underselling the phone company and the post office, and that this
was unacceptable. Thus, whenever information crosses a state
line electronically, it would be charged as much as it would cost
to send via a regular modem over a regular long distance phone
line. (This was when regular modems didn't exceed 1200 BPS.) This
threat later came back as a recurring "urban legend," but it was
quite real the first time. Fortunately, the FCC received more
letters opposing it than they had received in all history on all
other issues combined, so they reluctantly backed down. Packet
nets such as the Internet and PC Pursuit are inherently much
cheaper than a dedicated phone line. It's like the difference
between sharing a lane on the road, and having a whole lane
dedicated to you for the duration of your trip. Naturally, the
latter costs much more. A dial-up phone line is exactly
equivalent to ftping a 64KB file every second, plus another one
at the same time in the opposite direction, for the duration of
one's session.
This "modem tax" would have been an extreme and senseless
distortion of the marketplace, roughly equivalent to putting a
one million percent tax on trucks driven forwards, but not on
those driven in reverse gear.
There's long been a lot of commonality between people on the
net and people at Science Fiction con ventions (cons). Not only
are SF cons discussed a lot on the net, but SF cons have had "@
parties," or "@! parties" since at least 1986. There are also
often parties associated with a given mailing list or newsgroup.
I'm not sure whether in general people discover the net at cons,
or cons on the net, or whether, like me, they discover both
independently.
Also, either a disproportionate number of libertari ans are
on the net, or just as likely the news media are lying to us
about how many libertarians are in the general population.
There's also a lot of overlap with ham radio types. The net
is the exciting electronic frontier that I thought I had
permanently missed when reading amateur radio magazines from the
1910s. I used to have a ham radio licence, but let it lapse when
I discovered the net. I couldn't combine the two hobbies, as
ASCII wasn't allowed on the air until 1980. And packet ham radio
came much later. (It's interesting to note that the American
Radio Relay League was founded in 1916 by hams to organize
networks of hams to relay messages (their own and messages from
the general public) across the country, and, ten years later,
across the world, using Morse code. It still exists, and I was a
member for a while.)
An early mailing list was Human Nets. It was for the
discussion of "Worldnet," a hypothetical future worldwide
computer network. The list is long gone, but I hope the archives
are available online somewhere. They'd make valuable reading for
you, since by read ing them "backwards" you can get a good image
of what the net was like at that time, just as the best way to
see what was considered bad about a time and place is to read a
utopian novel written then and there, since a utopia is always
fairly similar to what the author is accustomed to, with the bad
features removed or reversed.
One April Fool's Day sometime in the early '80s, there was a
hoax posting from KREMVAX, which purported to be a VAX in the
Kremlin in the USSR.
This was considered quite hilarious, since the ARPANET was
for US defense, and the USSR was our enemy. At that time, there
were hosts at US bases overseas, but nowhere else outside the US.
Much later, after Russia was on the Internet, someone in Russia
became aware of this prank, and named their Internet host KREMVAX
as a lark.
> Thanks for writing. Would you like to say something about
> today?
Today there are more systems on the net in our computer room
where I work, than were on the whole net in 1977. Some of these
systems are a single circuit board that could fit in my shirt
pocket.
And tomorrow?
-----------------
[The above e-mail message was written over three years ago. The
author's web site is at http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/. In a
recent e-mail message Keith Lynch updated this e-mail exchange:
"Note that in 1994 I saw WWW as just another random service on
the net, along with Archie, Gopher, and IRC, rather than the 800
pound gorilla it has become. And spam was such a minor issue in
those days that I didn't even mention it, while today it takes up
the majority of my online time. I believe spam is the greatest
threat the net has ever known.
I'm against Usenet 2, or any other retreat due to spam. I
don't discard any e-mail unread, or munge my address, or cease
posting helpful messages to Usenet, or move to Usenet 2, or
register with remove lists, or do anything else to surrender any
part of the net to spammers, or to imply their legitimacy.
Let THEM built a second Usenet or a second Internet. I
won't let them drive me off this one. I wish everyone felt the
same. I wish every spam to ten million victims was met with ten
million strongly worded complaints. We made AGIS back down. We
drove Spamford off the net, along with Nancynet, Walt Rines'
Quantcom, and a dozen other rogue domains. Spammers are on the
defensive now.
See http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/ftc.html for my coverage of
the FTC spam hearings six months ago, which I attended. See
http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/ toll.html for my list of toll-free
numbers seen in recent e-mail spam.
Also see http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/timeline .html, which
should be of interest to every Internet historian."]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[7] Netizens: Review of Reviews
The Amateur Computerist is proud to announce the book,
"Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet"
by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, two founding editors of the
Amateur Computerist, appeared in May 1997. It was published by
the IEEE Computer Society Press. Many of the chapters of this 345
page hardcover book had previously appeared in earlier versions
as articles in the Amateur Computerist. It is now available in
bookstores but remains online as it has been since January 1994
at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/. In October 1997 a
Japanese translation was published by Chuokoron-Sha. The book has
been greeted by a number of interesting reviews in English and
Japanese.
Michael Swaine writes in Dr. Dobbs Journal, a magazine for
programmers, that he liked "the copious quotations from the
actual participants" in the development of UNIX, Usenet and the
Internet that "Netizens" documents. "The Haubens," he writes,
"have produced a readable but well documented story of the
development of the Internet. They spent years working on the
book, and really seem to have done their research." He urges
authors of other technical books to emulate them.
In a review in ComputerWorld, a computer industry weekly
publication, Johanna Ambrosio recommends that "this book is a
must-read for anyone even remotely connected with or to the
Internet." She describes it as "part philosophical tome, part
social science and part history. worth the price of admission
solely for its look at some of the Internet/ARPANET pioneers."
She points to the visions documented in the book such as viewing
communication as an interactive creative process and the
importance of people in the computer industry today learning from
them. The review ends, "Read this book. As good books are
supposed to do, it makes you think."
An article in the "Orange County Register" (Ca) by Leslie
Gornstein reviews "Netizens" for the newspaper's 400,000 readers
and includes a telephone interview with the authors. The headline
reads "Should Net Access Be a Right?" Ms. Gornstein reports that
the book "calls for Net access for all," even suggesting "a bill
of rights for online dwellers." She writes that this book both a
history of the Internet and a theory on its role in society
advocates, "Equal Internet access time for all. Equal quality of
connection for all. Banishment of official 'spokespersons'.
Banishment of personal profit resulting from what others
contribute online ." She quotes from the book that, "The Net is
not a service, it is a right" and includes that Internet dwellers
must contribute as much as they benefit. In the interview portion
of her article, the reporter asks, "So you see the Internet as a
utility?" and gets the answer," that is how the early pioneers
saw it." This review for a more general audience stresses the
social aspect of the book and the importance of the book to those
not online yet.
In the December 1997 issue of ";Login:", Daniel Lazenby
reminds the Unix cummunity and others who read ";Login:" that
"ordinary people have made and can make a difference." That he
says is what "Netizens" documents by capturing the story of those
who quietly nurtured and fostered the current revolution caused
by network technology. He writes that "Netizens" is easy to read
and he is struck by the potential it shows for Usenet and the
Internet to create a much grander communications and information
revolution than even the printing press achieved. The reviewer
points out the importance of staying true to a vision with the
example of "Licklider's refusal to set his sights lower than the
vision of a global computer" network. He ends his review saying,
"look closely while reading the book and you may find yourself
viewing the world a little bit differently when you finish."
Karin Geiselhart, a PhD student in Australia, reviewed
"Netizens" for the journal "Internet Research". She welcomes
"Netizens" as "a book which champions grassroots democracy." By
speaking through the online citizens that helped shape the net in
its early days, she writes, "Netizens demonstrates the potential
for users being active participants in an ongoing process" of
development. She reminds us that "technology should serve
people." Geiselhart remembers Vint Cerf commenting in Montreal at
the INET'96 conference that "Democracy doesn't scale" but she
ends her review by commenting that, "Netizens is an affirmation
by the authors on behalf of all their fellow Usenet contributors,
and all of us who have benefitted in some way from the altruism
and free information which flows across the Internet. Theirs is
an optimistic mantra: democracy can scale."
The Japanese translation has on its cover in English, "Net +
Citizens = Netizens". It is 381 pages but does not contain all
the chapters of the English version. It is reviewed in the Sunday
10/26/97 edition of Nihon Keizai Shimbun more commonly known as
"Nikkei" (the Wall Street Journal of Japan). The review by
senior staff writer Waichi Sekiguchi discusses who Netizens are,
stressing that the authors of "Netizens" are referring to "the
people who work cooperatively with all the people on the Net and
coordinate the work they do all over the world through the Net."
Mr. Sekiguchi writes that Netizens are a new species of Homo
sapiens who participate in ways that are more democratic than in
the rest of society. He points out that the authors of the book
find cooperative and democratic behavior on Usenet and that they
say that individuals being able to send and receive information
is more democratic and powerful than the mass media where only a
small number of people send the information. The reviewer writes
that this book is particularly important in Japan because readers
there will learn from it how to hear the voice of Netizens needed
for the current administrative reform movement.
Besides offline reviews of "Netizens" there has been some
mention of the book online (See the review by Mark Horton below).
"The Chronicle of Higher Education" on its Academe Today mailing
list pointed to "Netizens" as a new book on the societal impact
of the Internet and the history of Usenet now in bookstores which
can also be accessed online. In another online review, Cye
Waldman writes that even though to him the Internet means the
World Wide Web it is important to read this book so all Netizens
are "aware of the forces that are shaping our lives." "Netizens"
is not a casual history of the Internet as is found in many books
he concludes but "rather, it is a thoroughly researched piece of
work that chronicles one of the most important phenomena of the
decade."
This is a positive start for "Netizens". If any readers of
the Amateur Computerist write a review or see one, we would be
interested in knowing about it. We again congratulate Ronda and
Michael on seeing the product of their hard work gaining some of
the respect and review it deserves.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[8] Two Book Reviews: Netizens
REVIEW from CMC
by Mark Horton
Netizens by Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben
Published by the IEEE Computer Society
Netizens describes the history of the Internet, focusing
especially on the formation of the Usenet bulletin board system.
For me it was a trip down memory lane. The social and political
implications of opening up communication among a group of
academic philosophers was groundbreaking, and Netizens is there
to give us the play-by-play.
The book includes interviews with the found ers of Usenet
and with the pioneers who contrib uted to its character and
growth. The story of how Tom Truscott's summer job at Bell Labs,
volley ball, chess, and "rising at the crack of noon" turned into
the seed of Usenet is inspiring, especially in this age of
cost-cutting and disposable computer software. The authors make
good use of an archive of the first few years of Usenet postings.
Those of us who were there remember much, but the archive is like
putting history on videotape. Quotes from the formative days
remind us of the issues of the time, such as the unwillingness of
the ARPANET to talk to Usenet; censorship; and how the high cost
of getting Usenet to Europe was overcome.
Chapters of the book tell the history of many of the
building blocks of the Internet. The early days of the ARPANET
are chronicled, from the selection of the first four sites in
1968 to the people involved and how they solved the early
problems of the net. Netizens also tells the story of the UNIX
operating system, how it came about, the key contributors, even
how the "grep" command got its name.
Photos from the 1950s showing computer center machine rooms
with IBM 704 components taking up the entire room, key
researchers at places like MIT, computer chess tournaments, and
the founders of Usenet add to the sense of history.
This is an excellent book. The academic style means you'll
have to think to read it. This book is a vital element in any
Internet historian's library.
------------------------
REVIEW from ;LOGIN:
by Daniel Lazenby
dlazenby@ix.netcom.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet
Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben. IEEE Computer Society, 1997,
ISBN 0-8186-7706-6. Pp. 345, $28.95
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 Frame work." 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 grass-root'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
simultaneously lay the foundation for solving global needs.
Licklider's refusal to set his sights lower than the vision of a
global computer [network] 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.
-----------------------
Review from ;login:, Vol. 22, No. 6 December, 1997, pages 56-57,
Newsletter of USENIX
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[9] Community in the Usenet Newsgroup k12.chat.teacher
by Michael Hauben
hauben@columbia.edu
Usenet newsgroups cover a diverse spread of interests. I
chose to explore what human community can develop facilitated by
the Usenet form of computer mediated communication (CMC) by
looking at the newsgroup k12.chat.teacher.
An interesting framework to use to analyze this forum is M.
K. Halliday's definitions of field, semiotic tenor and mode (see
Halliday's Language and Social Man). As participants in
newsgroups usually do not share the same physical environment,
all information needs to be shared in the typed out text of
messages, whether it is the content or context of the questions.
In CMC there is no field to be looked for outside of the actual
interaction saved to the newsgroup in messages (and also in
private e-mail). However, the topic of the newsgroup defines the
tenor in that this particular section is for the discussion of
teachers with other teachers in a k12 situation. For the most
part the newsgroup is a community of peers, with other visitors,
some welcomed and some not.
The mode and the field of each message are the most variable
elements in this framework. For mode, the messages can be 1)
providing information, 2)posing a statement, or 3) posing a
question. Responses can be 1) making a constructive agreement, 2)
making a constructive disagreement, 3) providing details or
experiences as evidence, 4) asking more questions, 5) making
acknowledgment or emphatic support. In addition to these, there
are out of place responses and messages or responses attempting
to be disruptive. As the subject matter comprises part of the
field of each message, that is what will be further explored in
the rest of this article.
The data source explored is the Usenet newsgroup
k12.chat.teacher where kindergarten through 12th grade teachers
and others discuss education. Teachers use it as a support and
resource group to talk about the problems, responsibilities and
duties as a teacher. Concerns about education, and working
conditions are also brought up by current teachers and people
preparing to be teachers. The data consists of messages collected
over two time periods - from February 7, 1997 to February 25,
1997 and from March 26, 1997 to March 31, 1997. The sample from
the newsgroup includes single messages and message threads from
this newsgroup. Message threads are created by news reading
software linking original messages, with responses made to the
original message and subsequent responses. In addition to the
public responses, private e-mail messages were most likely sent
to the original posters of messages. However, because e-mail is
private I have not gotten to see such responses since I only
looked in the public message board. If I were to continue this
research or extend this project I might contact the original
posters of messages to find out if they would be willing to share
any private responses that they received.
I have found the discourse and community in this newsgroup
to be constructive and worthy of study, as there appear to be a
large cross-section of active people who create the critical mass
needed for useful discussion and conversations. I have not
encoded the individual's names because Usenet newsgroups are
public bulletin board areas available to anyone who has access to
either Usenet or the Internet. People who participate in
newsgroups usually understand this, and post messages hoping
others will read them and provide commentary. This desire to
share and communicate is what makes Usenet valuable. It is
essentially a public space.
The main areas of discourse, as part of the field of the
messages, are teachers' relations to their students, school
administration, the students' parents, other teachers in their
work, other classes in other schools, and what turned out to be
the mainstay of conversation, the teaching profession.
Other topics covered included asking technical questions
about using computers and other new technologies in the classroom
setting, either in the presentation of material to students or
for the interactive use by students. Other useful postings
included the announcements of web pages and e-mail lists that
teachers might find interesting in developing curriculum or
students might find interesting exploring as part of time on the
world wide web.
Sadly k12.chat.teacher is not obscure enough to hide from
the noise on the Net, widely posted inappropriate spam messages
which usually never interest the readers. These messages are
accompanied by other commercial advertisements which teachers are
used to seeing in normal education journals and magazines. These
seem to be carry-overs from the old media, and are not the same
as the grassroots voices of teachers airing their real problems
leading towards discussion that is valuable to all who read and
share the common situation. However, the forum has more airing of
the new voice than the old, making it worthwhile to join the
community.
The people primarily vocal in the community of
k12.chat.teacher are current teachers teaching in public and
private k12 classrooms, students studying to be teachers and
looking for jobs, and parents. Seeing parents involved was
surprising at first, but their discussions of home schooling and
talking about the education of children and adolescents was quite
appropriate. Both teachers and parents spoke of the parent's role
in their children's education, and how caring parents should be
equally interested in aiding their children's education as
teachers are required to be, if not more so. It would be
interesting to study other newsgroups such as misc.education to
see who reads and is active utilizing other newsgroups concerning
education.
Following are examples of messages posted to this Usenet
newsgroup, with some descriptive analysis. The five major
categories were teachers and their relations A) to their job and
the teaching profession, B) to their students, C) to parents, D)
to other teach ers, and E) to administrators. The remaining two
categories are F) examples of miscellaneous questions and G) JUNK
postings/SPAMS.
CATEGORIES (and common topics)
A) Discussing the Teaching Profession.
A large number of the messages here were from teachers or
student teachers looking for jobs or think ing of looking for
jobs. A number of the teachers were currently substitute teachers
either remarking on their uncertainty of moving towards obtaining
a full time job, or describing their strategies towards gaining
one. Others were first or second year teach ers looking to gain
certifications to get better teach ing jobs or better paying
positions. Other people were looking for help with particular
curricula or sharing their lesson plans and web pages. Various
messages asked for help with building curriculum units. Teacher
concern was another subject especially the role of what was
wondered to be an either overly zealous principal or possibly
just a deeply concerned one.
Each of the remaining broad topics received less amount of
focus, but were still represented.
Example 1:
From: "Jennifer M. Blaske" <redhead1@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: I am interested in teachers experience in
getting hired.
Date: Sat Feb 15 09:34:49 1997
Brett Lettiere wrote:
>
> I am an undergraduate at I.S.U. I am interested in hearing
> other teachers discuss their experience of getting hired
>and about their first years as a teacher. I am interested in
> how they handled their class in the beginning. I am also
> interested in knowing how hard it was getting hired.
Well, as I've mentioned here before, I've been subbing for
a year while certified and have still not been offered any
thing. I know an experienced art teacher from another
state who has been subbing for five years and still does not
have a position. I know the teacher's think she's a great
sub, so I don't know what's going on there. I also know
two teacher's assistants also experienced teachers who
became assistants in the hopes that it would lead to their
own classroom. After three years, they are both still wait
ing.
-Jen
Example 2:
From: poet@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Certification upon certification?
Date: Thu Feb 13 09:13:26 1997
In article <01bc19b1$3bf2b980$9078adce@CSR.concentric.net>
"Michael"<michaelb@concentric.net> writes:
>
>I am pursuing a degree in education (Secondary English);
> I am beginning to hear about different certifications
> which are in addition to the overall teacher certification.
> For example someone yesterday mentioned to me that
>she was thinking about trying to get her computer
>technology endorsement. What are these additional
> certifications for? Do I need them even if I am already
> adept at the subject which the endorsement covers?
>
>Confused.
>Michael
>
I suppose this varies by state, so it would probably be best to
contact your state teachers' credentialing agency, most likely
located in the state capital.
As far as endorsements, or authorizations as my credential
lists them: these do not, strangely enough mean knowledge
of the subject, but rather permission to teach the subject.
You may be fluent in Spanish or Greek, but you can't
*teach* it without the authorization on your credential.
It's good to pick up as many authorizations as you can
(you can pick up more after you have your credential, by the
way), because school districts like people who are versatile,
so as enrollment rises or falls, or more Spanish speakers
move in (or out) of the district or the school acquires more
computers, or four years of math or basket making becomes
a requirement to get into junior college, you'll be able to step
into those positions as necessary. If you are certain that you
only want to teach XXX and never anything else, then don't
get the authorizations, but expect to have a harder time
finding a job, though if it's chemistry or calculus, it'll be
easier than if it's English.
Good luck!
B) Teachers Relations with Students.
Messages discussing the relationships between teacher and
student included the role of uniforms for both students and
teachers. (For teachers, less about an actual "uniform" and more
about trying to dress professionally whether that meant a shirt
and tie, or just nice well-kept clothes.) One thread discussed
the responsibility for interest in the classroom and education -
how much rested with the teacher and how much was shared between
teachers and students. Again we see requests for help defining
curriculum, for example in the teaching of language arts and
idioms or suggestions on how to develop a lesson around the then
recent Hale Bopp comet.
Example 1:
From: redrose@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: are teachers responsible for making class 'fun'?
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 19:16:04 +0000
One person wrote:
>>I feel classes should be more fun and that responsibility
>> is the teachers.
Another person wrote:
>Wrong! Learning is *your* responsibility.
Personally, I think they're both right. It is BOTH the
teacher's and the student's responsibility. It takes two to
teach.
For myself, as a teacher, the question is, "What is the
definition of fun?" Or, rather than fun, interesting. I have
many intelligent, thoughtful students who can find interest
in difficult, challenging material, but unfortunately, they
are in the minority. I sometimes feel frustrated that my
students do not want to take the time to penetrate readings
that are not immediately easy to understand but are none
theless interesting. Or to go through the process of solving
difficult problems. For many students "difficult" means
"boring," (or "not fun.") My objective is not to make
school "fun," but only meaningful, relevant and interest-
ing, but some things are just difficult and require a good
deal of cognition, which is demanding.
The idea of "dumbing down" school is often to make it
more "fun," and thereby watering down material to make
it flashy and shiny and like a game, but there can be tre
mendous satisfaction in reading difficult literature (both
fiction and non-fiction) or ploughing through a high level
math activity. For me, the most "fun" I ever have is hav
ing a stimulating conversation with someone who is
knowledgeable and articulate about many topics. The
only way to arrive at that level of broad knowledge is to
confront intellectual challenges. Be willing to do that and
you will find your classes a good deal more interesting and
therefore "fun."
Deborah
Example 2:
From: Elizabeth Keith <bethk@flash.net>
Subject: Re: Teaching Idioms
Date: Sat Feb 15 23:17:07 1997
Linda E Lombardo wrote:
>
> > teach0629@aol.com (Teach0629) writes:
> >
> > >Hi! I'm doing a research project on American Idioms.
> > >If you have any ideas or any info. on ways that one
> > >can teach them, explain them or where they came
> > >from--would be REALLY helpful.
> >
> > Really. Regardless of your opinion of Americans, it is
> > not nice to call names in a public forum. Not to
> > mention, your lack of specificity. Are you talking about
> > North Americans, South Americans, Central
> > Americans? And why do you think Americans are
> > idiots?..... Oh, wait.... Never mind....
> >
> > Perhaps if you can give an example of what you mean
> > by American idioms, and what you are trying to get
> > across....
>
> Kurt Duncan (kduncan@southwind.net ) writes:
> Idiot = one who does not know what an idiom is. :>
> just kidding
>
> Don't you mean
> shake a leg
> get the lead out
<...OTHER IDIOMS DELETED...>
> pinch a penny
> got the ax
>
> etc. etc. there are a million the only way I've seen
> these taught (and this was just for fun to play with
> language) students would draw a picture of the idiom
> and write it and perhaps it's explanation at the bottom.
> It was interesting to find out that they have idioms in
> other languages also. You might explore that as an
> additional activity.
> ---
>
> *************************************************
>
> "Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap
> compared to that of an ignorant nation."-Walter Cronkite.
>
> *************************************************
> LINDA LOMBARDO AMHERST, VIRGINIA
One of the ways I've introduced idioms is by reading the
children a book called The King Who Rained by Fred Guynn
alias Herman Munster. He wrote several books like this and
they are fantastic. His illustrations are terrific too. The
kids love it.
beth
C) Teachers Relations with Parents.
A big issue entering into many of the messages was the
responsibility of parents for their children's education and
well-being. Some teachers complained about the apparent lack of
caring and sometimes attitude from parents that it is all the
teachers responsibility. Others were parents who posted about the
importance of integrating learning into more aspects of life than
just school. One large thread included one teacher's request for
ideas in a way to incorporate parents more into the everyday
activity at school. Some suggestions included making parents
welcome at school as co-educators, perhaps teaching one-time
skill sessions or similar presentations. This sugges tion was so
that parents would not feel unwanted as non-professionals. So the
tensions and communica tion are happening outside of once a
semester par ent-teacher conferences which helps teachers (and
parents) to change. The questions of the relation ship between
parents and teachers get raised, and this leads to the
consciousness needed before changes can happen in the larger
society.
Example 1:
From: "M. A." <manorman@roanoke.infi.net>
Subject: Re: Teacher Accountability and Parent Responsibility
Date: Sun Feb 16 14:39:17 1997
Dear Fred,
I am a teacher who would like to see parents take an
active role in their child's education. This would include
not only a nightly session with checking and assisting with
homework, but also a daily session of reading and practic
ing math facts - whether it is when dinner is being cooked,
and the child practices measuring out a cup of water to
looking at the receipt from the grocery store and figuring
out if one can of fruit cost $.79, how much would three
cans cost?? I think if parents would let students see their
interest in what they are learning and _apply_ it to their
homes, then children would be more apt to think of learn
ing as something they do EVERYWHERE and not just at
school. It is most important for us to create a sense of
learning for life, rather than learning for school. We are
trying, but it will take all of us to make education worth
while for the 20th century!
Thanks for the opportunity to speak!
Example 2:
From: philcain@orelle.com (Philip Cain)
Subject: Re: Parent/School Involvement
Date: Sat Feb 15 16:08:35 1997
bbechst@bgnet.bgsu.edu wrote:
> A team of teachers at our Junior High is trying to
> develop a method of involving parents in our school
> community. We would like to have parents in the
> building as consistently as possible. We are a school of
> 600 students, consisting of 7th and 8th grades and 45
> teachers. We would like to improve our overall student
> morale, motivation and mannerisms. We would also like
> to let the community know how our school operates and
> what the students are learning.
If you mean to break down traditional barriers that sepa
rate teachers and parents, your goal is commendable.
I think the basis for any association between the two
groups has to be the acknowledgment that both are teachers.
Both groups must say this out loud and mean it.
Then, to begin a practical relationship (I'm a parent, so I
speak from that viewpoint) it is necessary to "let" the
parents in. I say it this way because many (most?) parents
feel "left out", not because teachers necessarily keep them
out, but because teaching is a profession and, as with other
professions, non professionals don't "belong" there.
To let the parents in, it might be useful to invite them to
teach something. In a controlled environment specifically for
the purpose, a parent might be given a point on a lesson plan
and asked to give a try at getting the point across.
The purpose of such an exercise would not be to train parents
to teach but to give parents a taste of it and so some
vocabulary to facilitate talking with teachers.
Phil Cain
D) Teachers Relations with Other Teachers in the
School and in Other Schools.
One issue that was probably easier to share slightly
anonymously was problems and questions of relationships with the
other teachers within the schools people worked at. By raising
issues possibly sensitive to raise with others at their location,
it was possible to explore the possibilities and think things out
before going to teachers at their location to dis cuss particular
problems and relationships. Also the medium allowed teachers to
hook up with teachers in other schools and potentially link up
classrooms.
Example 1:
From: "Margaret" <twv000@mail.connect.more.net>
Subject: problem teacher
Date: 27 Mar 97 17:20:48 GMT
Hello all,
I teach in a very small public school (285 students K-12) in a
rural area. The teachers and students get to know each other
very well here. The problem is we have one teacher who
constantly puts students down *in front of other students.*
He/she tends to "join in" when the "popular" kids start mak
ing fun of the "unpopular" kids; and he/she makes remarks
in class like "oh you don't want to sit next to Nelson, he
smells bad." All this in front of the entire class, and in front
of Nelson. The principal and superintendent are aware of
the complaints against this teacher, but they say they have to
hear it first-hand from the students, not second-hand from
teachers. The students involved are afraid to come forward
for fear of retribution by the teacher. (Actually, the students
who are the butt of the criticism are too humiliated to ever
say anything to anyone, but several of the "popular" students
are very upset by what they know is just not right.) I have
had several students tell me about this, and have relayed the
information to the administration, but as yet nothing has
been done. So I guess my question is, WHAT WOULD
YOU DO? Because I have lost enough sleep over this, and I
am tired of seeing kids get hurt, and I am starting to question
my entire profession, and wondering why I bother caring
when no one else does.
--
Margaret
Please copy replies via e-mail, as I am experiencing some
technical difficulty with this news server.
Example 2:
Removed at poster's request
E) Teachers Relations with School Administration.
Yet another tough problem is how to be a good teacher, and
at the same time handle the demands from above, whether
principals, or even further from school boards and
administrations. The news- group provides a good forum to compare
notes and discuss what teachers are being asked to do around the
world from the top-down, and discussing how to deal with such
demands.
Example 1:
From: howie@smtp.dorsai.org (howie)
Subject: Re: Alternatives to Grading with Averages
Date: Mon Feb 17 22:17:52 1997
Rick MacLemale (maclemr@intnet.net) wrote:
> Hello all...
> My county is currently in this phase where elementary
> teachers are being discouraged from using averaging as a
> means to determine grades. Elementary teachers are told
> not to average, but to instead "look at the progress of the
> whole child". The only catch is that that's all they've told
> us. Anyone (who does not use averaging) want to share
> their grading systems?
> Richard MacLemale
> Teacher + Programmer
> http://members.aol.com/RMacLemale/CoolClassroom.html
> (Educational freeware + shareware)
Sounds like one of those great school board concepts that
are simply not thought through. Sort of like when my principal
told us not to teach for the test (in New York State we have
Regents exams). One teacher asked if pass fail statistics
were no longer going to be calculated for each teacher. The
principal went on to the next topic.
One way of fairly grading the class while still looking at
progress is to weight each exam higher as the year goes on.
For example, the first test might be weighted as 1 test, the
second as 1.1 tests, the third as 1.2 tests, etc. It sounds
pretty cumbersome but shouldn't be too bad if you use a spread
sheet.
Good luck,
Howie
Example 2:
From: c4 <c4@groupz.net>
Subject: Would like teacher comments/suggestions on situation
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 13:44:23 -0500
I am not a teacher, and am posting this message to the news-
group, requesting helpful comments/suggestions for my
sister whose Internet access is limited. I would be glad to get
them via e-mail or in this newsgroup.
My sister, a first grade teacher, is under a great deal of stress
with a new principal at her school who will be evaluating her
teaching. Her message indicates that other teachers in her
school are being evaluated by others, and the evaluation
requirements are inconsistent between the evaluators.
Like most teachers she spends a lot of her personal time and
money preparing for her classes and providing educational
materials for her students that the school does not provide.
She is very a very conscientious teacher and loves teaching.
She is 58 years old and plans to continue teaching for several
years since she didn't start teaching in public schools until
about 6 years ago.
This is what she wrote me in e-mail:
> I told you that I would be having an evaluation by the
> new principal soon. I have been thinking about what to
> do. He gives you a message for the "week of" and can
> drop by at any time his heart desires. He had a
> pre-meeting and told everyone what he expected to see!
> When we told the other teachers who are being evaluated
> by other individuals they thought he was on an
> intimidation trip. He wants stuff no one else has ever
> requested before. He wants a desk...a chair (he's in there
> 45 minutes), he wants to see lesson plan books (no one
> has done that since I have been teaching at <school
> omitted>.), He wants to see portfolios of all the children
> with evidence of their work, he wants a map of where
> named children are sitting, he wants to see all the
> elements listed on the TTAS plan, he wants to see
> individual situations, group situations where children
> are working in teams, he wants to see all participating
> and being successful, he wants to hear lots of higher
> level thinking skills tossed around, he wants NO DOG
> AND PONY SHOWS....oh please....what else is all
> that!!!
> Some teachers, especially older ones, are concerned that
> he may knock them off the career ladder, which would
> mean a loss in pay. If he did do that, I feel there would
> be such an outcry that he would be looking for a new
> school post haste. We all do a good job! Our school is
> exemplary, but he thinks it should be national
> exemplary....and is really putting the pressure on!
F) Miscellaneous Useful Questions
There were numerous other questions andposts that were hard
to categorize but were useful. Probably the largest number
concerned the use of technology in the classroom and school
setting, whether it was for teacher presentations, students use
in computer labs or just the wiring and setting up of computers
in schools. One large thread was of teachers sharing in the lack
of respect from their administrations and in the need for
technology coordinators to establish the technologies in the
schools and to train other teachers. This seems to be a larger
problem than just receiving funding for computers. There has to
be monies for support and training, and this is an ongoing
concern.
Example 1:
From: George Cassutto <nhhs@fred.net>
Subject: Using PowerPoint In the Secondary Classroom
Date: Fri Feb 14 21:30:01 1997
Hello Readers,
I tried an interesting experiment in my 9th grade US
Government classes last week, and I am interested in your
feedback, tips, and ideas. Using PowerPoint, I was actually
able to deliver a full-blown lecture on the Civil Rights
Movement to 9th graders. They took notes dutifully, engaged
in meaningful discussion when prompted by my questions, and
generally stayed on-task to a greater degree than if the
material had been displayed on a traditional overhead
apparatus. In conjunction with the delivery of information
by way of the PowerPoint program, which included sound
effects and paragraph "building," I toggled between
PowerPoint and the World Wide Web, using pre-cached
sites to illustrate various historical events such as
the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington and
the King assassination. Some of these graphics were embedded
in the PowerPoint slides, others left on the web. Additionally,
I had Microsoft Encarta at the ready for sound clips
of the "I Have A Dream Speech" and L .B .J. commenting
on the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I hope to use PowerPoint more often, but not to the extent
that the students will burn out on it. What successes and
cautions might your experience be able to provide in order to
maintain the edge I think this medium has for secondary
Social Studies students?
Thanks for reading this far, and if you plan to hit the reply
button, thanks in advance for your input.
George Cassutto
Teacher of Social Studies
North Hagerstown High School (MD)
http://www.fred.net/nhhs (Main Page)
http://www.fred.net/nhhs/html/cassutto.html (Personal page)
nhhs@fred.net
georgec@umd5.umd.edu
Example 2:
From: Ted Johnson <ted.johnson@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Technology Coordinators - Please help
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 21:58:10 -0800
Chris Zimmerman wrote:
>
> I am researching how different schools handle this
> position. I am currently a first year teacher, and have
> been offered this position for our high school for next
> year. Currently our school pays only $800 per year for
> this position. We have about 160 computers which will
>be networked. Our school has about 650 students as well.
>
>I was wondering what arrangements other school districts
> have on this position. I was thinking that more money
> would be necessary to take the position. But even more
> important was a prep time to work on computers only. (We have 8
> periods and I have 2 prep periods for 3-4 classes.)
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Mr. Z
Chris: I was asked to apply for our school's new tech
position last year. Originally, I would work full-time on the
system and staff training, at my current salary level (I would
have stayed on the teachers' salary schedule). It then be
came � teaching, � tech. It then became full-time teaching,
with my being paid for an extra 1 � hours (at my regular
salary) with another teacher being paid the same to work as
my assistant. At this point, I told the principal (nicely) to go
away. -:)
As it stands, we still have no tech person.
--
tj
Host, Education Forum on Delphi
tj3@delphi.com
http://www.dusable.cps.k12.il.us/homepages/tedj/gphs.html
Example 3:
From: holtzp@stillwater.k12.mn.us
Subject: MacSchool + NetWare
Date: Tue Feb 11 22:21:05 1997
Is anyone running MacSchool on a NetWare server in
stead of an AppleShare server? Are there any side effects
from doing this?
--
Paul Holtz
ISD 834 - Stillwater, MN
Technical Support Specialist
--------==== Posted via Deja News ====--------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to
Usenet
G) JUNK Postings
It would be incomplete to show you the newsgroup without
examples of the junk that has to be sorted through. Some of these
are SPAMs which are indiscriminately sent to numerous newsgroups
without any regard for the fact people use newsgroup shopping to
read message about particular subjects, of which these SPAMs have
no relevance. Other messages include commercial advertisements.
Finally, when someone posted just to make trouble, there were two
responses:
Example 1:
From: rhcramer@pen.k12.va.us (Roxanne H. Cramer)
Subject: Re: School Play
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 00:32:20 GMT
I find it hard to believe that a request for information on a
school play was answered so cruelly. In general, I've
found this group to be very helpful and supportive. I hope
the teacher from Mexico does not think we're all such
boors!
Roxanne Cramer
---
rhcramer@pen.k12.VA.US
Example 2:
Removed at poster's request
CONCLUSION
The newsgroup k12.chat.teacher is a place where k12 teachers
gather to discuss their profession and work lives. As such the
audience which gathers has a strong degree of common interests
and shared knowledge, and the participants work towards the
purpose of communication as requesting and imparting information
along with discussing specific issues. The newsgroup also
demonstrates Licklider and Taylor's vision of the development of
a physical network which promotes the social network of
connection of people with like interests.
With the lack of additional context in the field or tenor
whether body language or context of place, people are learning
the importance in the written text and are careful to include
situational details. Similarly the lack of observable details of
social clues means users have to project their social roles and
position to help define the tenor of the communication. The
discussion between parents and teachers highlights some of this.
What roles do each play, and how can they come to communicate on
an comfort able and equal level?
The many conversations simultaneously ongoing allow the
reader to chose from the variety and range of concerns of the
teaching profession. If you think of a teacher just beginning or
looking for a job, the newsgroup offers a rare glimpse into the
actual situation of teaching. For the experienced teacher it
offers a place to share in the problems and frustrations of the
situation. And for teachers who feel successful, a place to share
those successes with others who might find they are interesting
or useful in their own classrooms. Essentially, the
k12.chat.teacher newsgroup allows for the collective gathering of
educators so that they do not feel alone in their situation. But
the newsgroup is currently only an embryo of the possibility. It
is doubtful that its importance is recognized by school
administrations and access is not made readily available to
teachers. However, hopefully by spreading knowledge of the group,
teachers will grasp the importance and push for access and time
to be made available.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collot, Milena and Nancy Belmore. (1996). "Electronic Language: A
New Variety of English." In Susan C. Herring (Ed.) Computer
Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural
Perspectives (pp. 13-28). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
Murray, Denise E. (1990). "CmC: A Report on the Nature and
Evolution of On-line e-messages." English Today, 23, 42 - 46.
Licklider, J.C.R. and Robert Taylor. (1968, April). "The
Computer as a Communication Device." Science and Technology: For
the Technical Men in Management, 76, 21-31. Also reprinted in In
Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: 1915-1990. Report 61. Systems
Research Center. Digital Equipment Corporation. Palo Alto,
California. August 7, 1990. Pp. 21-41. Available Online at
http://www.memex.org/licklider.html in Adobe PDF format.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Language and Social Man. London:
Longman.
Hauben, Michael. "Behind the Net: The Untold Story of the ARPANET
and Computer Science." In Hauben, Michael and Ronda Hauben.
(1997). Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the
Internet (pp. 96-114) Los Alamitos, California: IEEE Computer
Society Press. Available Online (1994)
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
Feenberg, Andrew. (1989). "A User's Guide to the Pragmatics of
Computer Mediated Communication." Semiotica, 75, 257-278.
Eldred, Janet Carey and Gail E. Hawisher. (1995). "Researching
Electronic Networks." Written Communication, 12, 330 - 369.
Gulia, Milena and Barry Wellman. ( 1997). "Virtual Communities:
When Social Networks are Computer Networks." In Smith, Marc and
Peter Kollock. Communities in Cyberspace: Perspectives on New
Forms of Social Organization California: University of California
Press. Available Online:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/csoc/cinc/wellman.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[10] Norbert Wiener, J.C.R. Licklider
and the Global Communications Network
by Jay Hauben
jrh29@columbia.edu
In the last quarter of the twentieth century a new global
communications network emerged with a growing effect on most
aspects of human society. In the events that launched and
nourished this network a prominent role was played by J.C.R.
Licklider. He not only envisioned a great leap for human society
based on a tight coupling and networking of people and computers,
he did much to infect others with his early enthusiasm. He also
set in motion a public sponsorship and funding mechanism that
brought the communications network he envisioned into reality. In
the 1960s, Licklider published two seminal articles: "Man
Computer Symbiosis"(1) in 1960 and "The Computer as a
Communications Device"(2) written with Robert Taylor in 1968.
Looking for the intellectual roots of these papers and
Licklider's vision, at least one researcher(3) was drawn to the
work of Norbert Wiener. This article will look at some of the
related work of Norbert Wiener and J.C.R. Licklider.
Norbert Wiener began his teaching and research career at MIT
in 1919 at the age of 24. He distinguished himself with original
contributions in mathematics and in the connection of mathematics
with physical systems as in his study of Brownian motion. Perhaps
he is best known for what he called "the science of cybernetics
or the theory of communication and control in the machine and in
the living organism."(4) Wiener traces the cybernetic synthesis
connecting engineering and neurophysiology and his insights about
communication to his work in the 1940s related to anti-aircraft
predictors.
In connection with World War II, Wiener undertook to analyze
the problem of improving the success of anti-aircraft fire. An
anti-aircraft gunner must shoot ahead of where his target is at
the time of firing. The amount and direction ahead must be
estimated quickly and accurately. Where to aim is based on
knowledge of how the plane has been traveling and where it is
likely to travel in the time the shell takes to reach it even if
the pilot takes evasive action. Wiener was able to contribute to
the solution of this prediction problem partly because he had
previously developed the equations to be solved when knowledge in
one region is used to predict behavior in another (Hopf-Wiener).
Wiener was also familiar with the work at MIT of Vannevar Bush
with analog computers. Putting the pieces together, Wiener
envisioned the direct coupling of anti-aircraft guns with radar
detection and automatic aiming based on his mathematical solution
of the prediction equation. Motors attached to the gun turrets
could position and aim the gun under the control of data
generated by the mathematical processing of input from radar. In
fact, as radar became perfected the process was mechanized to the
point where the human element could be eliminated from anti-
aircraft gun aiming and firing. Wiener reports that his work on
this problem had a profound impact on him.
Up until this work, the servomechanisms for the control of
gun turrets were always assumed to belong to power technology
rather than communications technology. What dawned on Wiener was
that the action of the motors could be conceived valuably as
communicating the aiming parameters to the turret and hence that
the motors and the computers controlling them could be treated as
communications devices. Wiener wrote that this point of view made
him "regard the computer as another form of communications
apparatus, concerned more with messages than with power."(5) In
addition Wiener saw a striking analogy between the workings of an
automatic anti-aircraft system and that of a living organism.
There was input, processing of that input, and resulting
response. He began to regard the brain and the nervous system in
much the same light as a computing machine. Out of such
considerations a new synthesis emerged which Wiener eventually
termed cybernetics (from the Greek word for "steersman"). As the
communications and engineering consequences of Wiener's new ideas
were worked out, he began to predict that the series of analogies
between the human nervous system and the computer and control
systems would lead to the possibility of a very high level of
automation.(6)
In 1944 at Princeton University, Wiener gathered a group of
neurophysiologist, communications engineers, and computing
machine people for an informal session to layout some of his
thinking. He found a willingness on the part of the members of
different disciplines to learn what others were doing and to see
the striking similarities. Encouraged by this gathering, there
was support for Wiener to launch two series of similar
interdisciplinary sessions, one in New York City and the other in
Cambridge, MA. He also worked out his new synthesis in
"Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine" (The Technology Press, 1948; MIT Press, 1961) and later
popularized it in "The Human Use of Human Beings" (Houghton
Mifflin, 1950).
Wiener's work raised an important question. What should be
the relations between people and machines in the age of
automation? He called for an "independent study of systems
involving human and mechanical elements to decide which functions
should properly be assigned to the two agencies, human and
machine."(7) Wiener also worried that automation would lead
society to unbearable unemployment unless it was carefully
implemented withfull concern for the working people.
Communication was the unifying thread in Wiener's synthesis.
He concluded that "communication is the cement of society.
Society does not consist merely in a multiplicity of individuals
meeting only in personal strife and for the sake of procreation,
but in an intimate interplay of these individuals in a larger
organism."(8) It was in the strengthening of this larger organism
via the improvements in communications that his hope lie that the
problems also generated could be solved. He therefore sought to
"bring to the attention of all the possibilities and the dangers
of the new developments."(9)
After WWII, Wiener's ideas began to be known and discussed
in scientific and technical circles. When asked in an interview
in 1988 where his interest in digital computers came from, J.C.R.
Licklider answered, "There was tremendous intellectual ferment in
Cambridge after WWII. Norbert Wiener ran a weekly circle of 40
or 50 people . I was a faithful adherent to that."10 He added
that, even though he was a researcher and faculty member at
Harvard at the time, he audited a seminar given by Wiener and
participated in an MIT faculty group that discussed cybernetics.
The weekly circle launched by Wiener in 1948 that Licklider
attended with his colleagues Walter Rosenblith and M. Fred
Webster was know as the seminar on scientific method.
On the way home from each dinner meeting, Licklider and his
friends critiqued what had been presented and discussed and
shared with each other what from their different disciplinary
perspectives each had understood.
In 1950 Licklider left Harvard to join the MIT faculty and
research community of which Wiener was a part. Licklider
described himself as "an experimental psychologist interested
especially in how the brain works in conjunction with hearing,
but also in speech and communication and human engineering."12 At
MIT he participated in two summer studies sponsored by military
branches which gave him "an opportunity to hear of computers and
radar sets and communications."(13) His own work, very much in the
Wiener tradition, was split into psychology, acoustics and
electronics. His efforts to try to model how the brain works in
hearing with an analog computer convinced him he really had to
learn digital computing. Licklider left MIT in 1957 to work at
the acoustic consulting firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN)
where he was promised access to digital computing. However he
maintained his ties with MIT and its scientific and technical
community and participated with Norbert Wiener and others in many
important events there like the 1961 MIT Centennial Celebration.
At BBN, Licklider undertook a small research project that
was to lead to his answer to Wiener's question of the future
relation between people and computers. Licklider did a mini
time-motion study of the activities during the hours regarded as
devoted to work of a technical person. Although he was aware of
the inadequacy of the sampling, he wrote, "I served as my own
subject." He found that 85% or more of his "thinking" time was
devoted to clerical or mechanical chores: searching, calculating,
plotting, transforming, determining the dynamic or logical
consequences of a set of assumptions or hypothesis, preparing the
way for a decision or insight. Having had the opportunity at BBN
to sit at an interactive computer for four or five hours on a
regular basis, Licklider drew the conclusion that it should be
possible to create a flexible relationship via programming and
interface devices between a person and a computer so that both
could contribute what it does best to the accomplishment of
mental work. In "Man-Computer Symbiosis", he presented his
conclusion that "in not too many years, human brains and
computing machines will be coupled together very tightly and that
the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever
thought and process data in a way not approached by information
handling machines we know today." Licklider's vision was
different from that of the computer be coming a servant for
people or an extension of a person's abilities and different from
the long range goal of artificial intelligence researchers that
the computer would one day replace or supercede human thinking.
Wiener had also foreseen a people-computer partnership. For
example, Wiener envisioned a computer programmed to translate
from one language to an other whose output would be filtered
through a human translation expert. The human would make sure
that the translation made sense in the final language. This
expert might then reprogram the computer to do better or devise
exercises for the computer from which it could learn to make
improved translations. Licklider was carrying this prediction
further by suggesting that computers could be involved in the
formulation of questions and in the process of thinking and
working through to their solution. The human would handle very
low probability situations, propose hypotheses, and make unusual
connections; the computer would convert hypotheses into testable
models, retrieve information, create simulations, etc. Most of
Licklider's article laid out research tasks that needed to be
accomplished in order for this vision to be realized. These
included the need to achieve better computer memory capacities,
to network and internetwork computers, to develop graphical and
audio interfaces and for languages that facilitated learning by
both humans and computers. These research tasks were to make up
much of the research agenda of the newly emerging discipline of
computer science. Licklider put forward that agenda and then as
director of the Information Processing Technologies Office of the
Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) fostered it by arranging
for its public support and funding.
Besides taking up the question of the human-computer
relationship raised by Wiener's work, Licklider together with
Robert Taylor investigated the implications of Wiener's insight
that computers were communications devices. For Wiener,
communication was closely linked with control: to manufacture a
car, for example, people could communicate with a computer via
programming. The computer could then communicate the motions
necessary to assemble the car to the tools via servomechanisms.
The tools in turn would respond with motion and feedback. This
was the automation revolution which Wiener's experience with the
anti-aircraft problem helped him to foresee. In "The Computer as
a Communications Device", Licklider and Taylor look for how the
computer will help people do more than send and receive data.
Their emphasis was deliberately on people. They saw the
possibility that communication would be dynamic. "When minds
interact new ideas emerge" they wrote. They saw that the
programmed digital computer helped create a medium that is
plastic, can be modeled, where premises could flow into
consequences, and "above all a common medium that can be
contributed to and experimented with by all. Its presence can
change the nature and value of communication even more profoundly
than the printing press and the picture tube, for a
well-programmed computer can provide direct access both to
informational resources and to the process for making use of
resources."(14) Licklider and Taylor argued that when
information transmission and information processing are combined
and available on networks of computers cooperation, collaboration
and coherence are much more likely to occur than among isolated
researchers. By making possible quality transmission and
processing of information among geographically separated people,
there would follow the creation of communities not of common
location but based on commonality of interest that would be large
enough to support comprehensive accumulations of people, data and
programs. Like Wiener, they saw great benefit to society as a
result of the communication revolution made possible by the
digital computer and the global computer network. But also just
as Wiener warned of the danger of unplanned automation, Licklider
and Taylor included in their article a warning: "For the society,
the impact will be good or bad depending mainly on the question:
Will 'to be on line' be a privilege or a right? If only a favored
segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of
"intelligence amplification," the network may exaggerate the
discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity."(15)
Licklider and Taylor's article in 1968 ushered in the great
experiment that began in 1969 as the ARPANET and that we know
today as the Internet.
In summary, in the 1940s Norbert Wiener developed a
synthesis that stressed the importance of communications. The
ideas and questions raised by him fueled an intellectual ferment
in and around MIT. J.C.R. Licklider and other time sharing and
networking pioneers took part in that ferment and in the
intellectual and technical community at MIT and the greater
Boston area which contributed so much to the technological
developments of the second half of the twentieth century. It is
not a surprise that there would be a connection between the
cybernetics synthesis that Wiener introduced and the
contributions of pioneers like Licklider. That a new global
communications network exists today is a tribute to Wiener and to
Licklider and the other pioneers who developed the original
insights into a promising advance for human society.
---------------
Notes:
1) J.C.R. Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis," In IRE
Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, Vol HFE-1, March,
1960, Pp. 4-11. Also reprinted in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider:
1915-1990, Report 61", Systems Research Center, Digital Equipment
Corporation, Palo Alto, California, August 7, 1990, pp. 1-19.
2) J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, "The Computer as a
Communication Device," In Science and Technology: For the
Technical Men in Management, No 76, April, 1968, pp. 21-31. Also
reprinted in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: 1915-1990, Report
61," Systems Research Center, Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo
Alto, California, August 7, 1990, pp. 21-41.
3) See Ronda Hauben, "Cybernetics, Time-sharing, Human-Computer
Symbiosis and Online Communities: Creating a Supercommunity of
Online Communities," chapter 6 in "The Netizens and the Wonderful
World of the Net: On the History and the Impact of the Internet
and Usenet News," Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, online
manuscript, January 10, 1994, URL
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
4) Norbert Wiener, I Am A Mathematician: The Later Life of a
Prodigy, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1956, p. 269.
5) ibid., p. 265.
6) ibid., p. 275.
7) Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain
Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion, The MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964, p. 71.
8) I Am A Mathematician, p.326.
9) ibid., p. 308.
10) Interview of J.C.R. Licklider by William Aspray and Arthur L.
Norberg, tape recording, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 28 October
1988, OH 150, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
11) "The Legacy of Norbert Wiener: A Centennial Symbosium,"
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994, p. 19.
12) "The Project MAC Interviews" by John A. N. Lee and Robert
Rosin, in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol 14 no 2,
1992, pp. 15-16.
13) ibid., p.16.
14) "The Computer as a Communication Device," p. 22.
15) ibid., p. 40.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[11] [Editor's Note: February 11, 1998 marked the tenth
anniversary of the Amateur Computerist. Following are the
Tables of Contents of all the issues from our first 10 years.]
Amateur Computerist Index
Volume 1 Number 1 (Feb 1988)
Introduction; Dawn of a New Era; Dedication; World of
Telecommunications; Future Belongs to Programmers; Try This
(IBM); Commodore Tips and Tricks; Why Learn Programming
Volume 1 Number 2 (June 1988)
The Big Machine; Pass the Profits, Please; Technol ogy Editorial;
Sample BASIC Program; Try This (IBM); Telecommunications; German
Vocabulary Helper Program; Configuring Your System; Programming
in C or BASIC?; Letter to the Editor
Volume 1 Number 3 (Oct 1988)
Radio-Electronics Letter; Responding Letters; Election &
Computers; Savior in Waiting; Merit Network; Virtual Drives-Batch
Files; Try This (IBM & Apple); As I Was Saying; Computers & Free
Speech; Letter to Editor
Volume 2 Number 1 (Jan 1989)
Return to Sanity; Letters from Readers; Problem Corner; TRY THIS;
Commodore County; Computer Hacking; Assigning Keys; History of
Computers
Volume 2 Number 2 (Apr 1989)
Why Learn to Program?; LETTERS from Readers; TRY THIS "Message";
TRY THIS "SE Q"; JOBS: Hours and Sense; MAYDAY Poem; Sample
Batch File; History of Computers (Part 2)
Volume 2 Number 3 (Summer 1989)
Impact of Computers Debate; Letters to Editor; Coco Corner
(Try-This); Commodore County USA; Out of the Abacus; History of
Computer (Part 3)
Volume 2 Number 4 (Fall 1989)
Prosecutor's Letter; Response: Labor Relation Hoax; Letters; Coco
Corner; IBM version; Hero; Trig. Lesson (IBM); History of
Computer (Part 4)
Volume 3 Number 1 (Winter 1990)
Public Funds; Don't Replicate UAW-Ford School; Their Walls Come
Tumbling Down; LETTERS TO EDITOR; Commodore County USA; The
Spirit of Babbage; Coco Corner; CAD/CAM/CIM; HISTORY OF
COMPUTERS (Part 5)
Volume 3 Number 2 (Spring 1990)
THE LABORER, YES; FLOYD HOKE-MILLER (1898-1990); The Picket; THE
SOWER OF THE SEEDS; COMPUTER EDUCATION; Letter from
Superintendent; Open Letter to SUPERINTENDENT; Letter to
Governor; COMMODORE COUNTY U.S.A.; C-64 Music Digitizer; IBM
Label Program; COCO CORNER; Bulletin Board Numbers
Volume 3 Number 3 (Fall 1990)
WHAT CRITICISMS HAVE YOU; TIPS AND TRICKS; LETTER TO EDITOR;
EDITORIAL; Common Man of Greatness; COCO CORNER; EXCERPTS FROM
BBS; C-64 RESET SWITCH
Volume 3 Number 4 (Winter 1991)
Hats off To Patriot; Amateurs Are Needed More Than Ever; Coco
Corner; Bringing Automation Home; BBS Discussion On The War;
Computers for the People
Volume 4 Number 1 (Fall 1991)
Computers for the People; Letters to the Editor; Ten
Commandments - Networking; Try This Program; USSR and the
Computer; Command Line Calculator; Question of Censorship
Volume 4 Number 2-3 (Winter/Spring 1992)
Computers vs Plant Closures; Amateur Computerist Index; Problem
Corner; Union For ever; Letter To The Editor; Letters to Amateur
Computerist; Letter to Editor of Utne Reader; Review from the MU
PERIPHERAL; Tribute-Modern Computer Pioneer; Interview with Staff
Member; On Line Program; Computers For The People; Pascal
Program
Volume 4 Number 4 (Summer 1992)
Impact of the Computer on Society; Letters to the Editor;
Electronic Mail; Computers for the People; Try This (programs);
From the Shop Floor; OPEN ACCESS; Problem Corner; Interview with
Staff Member (part 2)
Supplement (FALL 1992)
INTRODUCTION; THE NET WORKS; 'Arte'; Computers and Usenet News;
Computer as a Democratizer; CityNet in New Zealand; Learning
About Usenet; FreeNet BBS's; Two Books to Help Users; Liberation
Technology
Volume 5 Number 1-2 (Winter/Spring 1993)
Interview with Henry Spencer; Tradition of May 1, 1848; Social
Forces Behind Usenet; The Net and the Labor Movement; Letters to
Editor; The New Dawn; Pittsburgh Press Strike; John G. Kemeny;
Computers for the People; Pascal Program; Try This Program in C;
Charter for Newsgroup
Volume 5 Number 3-4 (Summer/Fall 1993)
From ARPANET to Usenet News; Battle For Programming; COMMON
SENSE; Imminent Death of the Net; Letters To The Editor; News
From Europe; From The Shop Floor; Report: Summer 1993 USENIX;
Proposals on NSF Backbone; C Program; Computers for the People;
Soul of the Internet
Volume 6 Number 1 (Winter/Spring 1994)
UNIX and Computer Science; An Interview with John Lions; An
Interview with Berkley Tague; On the 25th Anniversary of UNIX;
Usenet News: The Poor Man's ARPANET; What the Net Means to Me;
Plumbing The Depths of UNIX; Using UNIX Tools; C Program; New
Net Book; The Linux Movement; The Ten Commandments for C; May
Day in the Morning; Free Software Foundation
Volume 6 Number 2-3 (Fall/Winter 1994/95)
What is a Netizen?; Licklider's Vision and the Future; Net
Cultural Assumptions; Etiquette and the Internet; Ethics and the
Internet; The Internet Society; The Internet: Maintaining
Diversity; Do You Want to Lose Your Voice?; The Net: A Scientific
Perspective; Book Proposal; Netizens: The Impact of the Net;
Rights of Netizens
Volume 7 Number 1 (Winter/Spring 1996)
Net Access: A Privilege or a Right?; Canadian Community
Networking; Netizens and Community Networks; Letter to the
Editor; Access For All FAQ; The Future of Democracy; Old Freedoms
and New Technologies; Forming the Usenet Online Community;
History of Cleveland Free-Net; Universal Access to E-Mail;
Prototype for Policy Decisions; In Honor of 'Doc' Wilson
Volume 7 Number 2 (Winter 1997)
Power Tools of Our Times; Effect of Net on Professional News
Media; Report from INET'96 Part I; CDA Decision (Excerpts);
E-mail Evangel ad dict; Culture and Communication; Online
Education; Report from INET'96 Part II; Internet Impact of Daily
Lives?; FCC Submission on Universal Service; Letter to the
Editor; Free-Nets and Politics of Community; Broadsides for Our
Day; Genora (Johnson) Dollinger (1913-1995)
Volume 8 Number 1 (Winter 1998)
Interview with Tom Truscott; Editorial; Factsheet Five: ACN;
Cooperative Nature of Usenet; Creating Broadsides; History of
the Net is Important; Netizens: Review of Reviews; Book Reviews:
Netizens; Community in k12.chat.teacher; Wiener and Licklider;
Amateur Computerist Index: 1988 - 1998
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The opinions expressed in articles are those of their authors and not
necessarily the opinions of The Amateur Computerist newsletter. The Editors
welcome submissions from a spectrum of viewpoints.
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Jay Hauben
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is sent to the Amateur Computerist newsletter.
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