Hardy, History of the Net
USENET
Hardy:The History of the Net
Master's Thesis
School of Communications
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401
v 8.5
September 28, 1993
by Henry Edward Hardy
seraphim@umcc.umich.edu
|
If we could look in on the future at say, the year 2000, would
we see a unity, a federation, or a fragmentation? That is: would
we see a single multi-purpose network encompassing all
applications and serving everyone? Or a more or less coherent
system of intercommunicating networks? Or an incoherent
assortment of isolated noncommunicating networks... The middle
alternative--the more or less coherent network of networks--
appears to have a fairly high probability and also to be
desirable...
[Licklider and Vezza 1978, p. 1342]
Preface
"So where is the agora for the global community? The answer has
to be, On the net."
--Brenda Laurel, Interval Research Corporation, quoted in Leslie
[1993], p 34.
Why write a history of the Net? It's not enough to say merely
that it's never been done.
The Net is a unique creation of human intelligence.
The Net is the first intelligent artificial organism.
The Net represents the growth of a new society within the old.
The Net represents a new model of governance.
The Net represents a threat to civil liberties.
The Net is the greatest free marketplace of ideas that has ever
existed.
The Net is in imminent danger of extinction.
The Net is immortal.
What is "the Net?"
"The Net" is a term used by those who are on the Net to
refer to it. It is therefor hard to define outside of its own
terms of reference. John Quarterman, calls the Net "The Matrix"
in his book "The Matrix" [1990]. Tracy LaQuey [1993] says that:
The Matrix is sometimes called the Net by citizens of all
networks. This term is ambiguous because it doesn't refer
to any one network, but works well in referring to the
overall worldwide situation. If you hear someone say he's
"on the Net," it probably means he can be contacted by
email."
[LaQuey, 1993:37-38]
This inclusive definition of the Net would encompass not
only the Internet, Usenet and their kin but would also include
users of computer bulletin boards (BBSs), commercial services
such as America Online, the Source, Genie, the Well, Prodigy, and
Compuserve, and telephone-based teletext services such as the
French Minitel.
However, for purposes of the present work a narrower
definition of the Net will permit a more focused approach. This
work therefore concentrates primarily on the development of
packet-switched networks such as ARPANET and the Internet and
store-and-forward networks such as BITNET and Usenet. These
networks form a particular culture. In many cases there is a
substantial overlap among those who participate in the various
networks that comprise the Net.
The people of the Net are self-defined as such, like the
members of any other culture. In its structure, we may see the
basis for a new form of "electronic democracy."
Contrary to the popular belief that computers and electronic
communications mean the death of the written word, computer
mediated communication systems represent its resurgence and
transformation. The written culture of the Net is much like an
oral culture in the immediacy of communication, and in the role
of tradition and traditional gatekeepers in the place of
hierarchical formal authority structures. The Net is in a state
much like a tribal society in many ways, with complex but often
subtle structures of influence and self-regulation.
There is much to be learned from the Net by historians,
information theorists, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists,
cyberneticians, and those in many other disciplines. The Net is
an example of a non-teleological, self- organizing system that
combines human and machine communication, reasoning, and
associative capabilities.
The Net, if conceived of as a sort of mental space, or
cyberspace, is regarded by many as a "last frontier." The
relatively free access to the Net, huge resources, and
system of total prestation [Mauss, 1967] make the Net a nation
of first allegiance for many of its members.
In the current tremendous expansion of the Net we have to
opportunity to watch and study the growth of a fantastically huge
new industry, on a scale similar to the building of the public
highway systems, postal systems, telephone, railroad, and
electrical infrastructure. To understand the current state of the
Net and formulate ideas about its future we must have a clear
understanding about its past.
This is challenging because nothing on the Net has ever been
cast in stone. Things have always changed, sometimes gradually
and sometimes catastrophically, but have never remained static.
Most major changes have been attended with great controversy,
controversies which never entirely die down. Further, the lack
of any central authority or policy making bodies in the
traditional sense makes any authoritative statement about the Net
subject to immediate qualification and revision.
So writing about the Net is important because:
Millions of people participate in the Net.
The development of laws and regulation of the Net will shape the
degree of liberty enjoyed by all.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake in the struggle over
commercialization.
Understanding the history of the Net helps us to understand the
past, present and future of human culture.
Why a "History" of the Net?
Most books and articles about the Net are "how to" works
aimed at novices. Many thousands of technical papers, proposals,
conference presentations, meeting notes, RFC's (Request For
Comment,) technical specifications and the like have been
written. A few works have treated the Net from the standpoint of
sociology, psychology, library studies or learning behavior.
Recently, an increasing number of researchers in the field of
communications have begun to study the Net as well.
Interestingly, it seems that most of the material treating
the Net from the historical perspective has come from those on
the Net itself. Much interesting material has been generated on
Usenet and BITNET through groups such as alt.folklore.computers
and ipct-l. In addition, there are an increasing number of
electronic journals which have made important contributions, such
as the Amateur Computerist, the Electronic Journal of Virtual
Culture and Computer Underground Digest.
However, the study of the Net is a field which by and large
remains undiscovered territory for the historian. The natural
scientists who study Man yesterday, today and tomorrow are the
historian and archaeologist, the anthropologist, and the futurist
respectively; the Net should be of supreme interest to each and
all of them. The methods of statistical, social and physical
sciences are most suited to an atomistic world in which events
are predicable and repeatable. The natural scientist such as the
astronomer or the geologist on the other hand might concern
herself with a quasar or a volcanic explosion; such events are
not at this stage of our culture predicable or able to be
reproduced under laboratory conditions, but are nonetheless of
great interest to the natural scientist.
In the view of the statistical, deconstructivist social
scientist who seeks to ape the physical sciences, the Net may not
be much good to study: it is a data point of one. There has
never been a Net like this in human culture. But it is equally a
mistake to think that the changes brought about through the Net
are entirely unprecedented. As Innis [1949] noted, changes in
communications technology have often accompanied great social
changes. We have now a unique opportunity -- to study a culture
in its infancy. We know only that we cannot say for certain what
the future of the Net may be. But that it is of tremendous
importance to the future history of humanity cannot be disputed.
Changes in computer mediated communication have now gone beyond
doing the same old thing the same old way only faster and better;
the machines are now rewriting the software of Man.
As an anthropologist and historian I have often mourned the
loss of so many wonderful languages and cultures in our lifetime.
But here is a new language and a new culture growing within the
shell of an old. As scientists and as humanists we may this time
be able to do more than chronicle the loss of another ancient and
irreplaceable culture. We may also study the emergence of the
new culture which with tolerance and understanding may in time
replace our own. Capitalism, nations, laws, governments -- all
of these things which seem so certain a part of our life are
called into question by the Net.
Although the Net can really be said to have begun in the
late 1960s, and thus within the lifetime of many of its citizens,
its early history has been obscured by the erasure of much that
it once recorded and the obsolescence of the technologies and
software which once made it go. The history of the Net has also
been adumbrated with many legends and myths which might both
frustrate the literal minded historian and at the same time
delight the anthropologist and folklorist.
A comprehensive history of the Net remains to be written.
This essay can only show the path where others may later follow.
Since we wish to illumine some general historical truths and
trends, and since we wish to as much as possible avoid deluging
the reader with jargon which may seem to resemble a foreign
tongue (as indeed it is becoming), we shall limit our discussion
to a few of the myriad networks that comprise the Net. Readers
who find themselves still completely adrift in unfamiliar seas
may wish to consult the several excellent books for new users of
the Net, such as Krol's "The whole Internet user's guide and
catalog" [1992] or LaQuey's "The Internet companion." [1993]
From address space to cyberspace
The history of the Net begins in the 1960s with the
establishment of the packet-switched networks. Packet-switching
is a method of fragmenting messages into sub-parts called
packets, routing them to their destinations, and reassembling
them. Packetizing information has several advantages. It
facilitates allowing several users to share the same connection
by breaking up the data into discrete units which can be routed
separately. Because no transmission medium is 100% reliable,
packet-switching allows one "bad" packet to be re-sent while
other "good" packets are uninterrupted in their transmission.
Packets may carry information about themselves, where they have
been and where they are going. In addition, packets may be
compressed for speed and size advantages or encrypted for
security. Most packets carry some sort of internal check for
consistency that helps to weed out bad packets. Packetizing data
has advantages in overcoming certain inherent bandwidth and speed
constraints, particularly in older network and modem-based
communication.
Packet-switching procedures, or algorithms, have a close
analogue in the postal encoding and sorting routines which have
evolved over the centuries. Methods of encoding, packetizing,
transmitting, and decoding information have had a great
implication for national security and commerce for thousands of
years. Many scholars have noted that the greatness of Rome was
founded on its road system. What has not often been noted is
that the roads were only the transmission layer of the Roman data
system. Equally important in the function of the Roman postal
system were the postal switching stations, milestones, and
published itineraries. The Romans, like the United States, in
their Imperial period sought to make their "Net" and encryption
procedures state secrets. The postal agents, or "agents in
rebus," became the most feared and powerful secret police
organization in Rome in the third and fourth centuries AD. We
may ask ourselves what kind of society we will build if we enable
our own secret services and national security agencies to control
cryptography and access to the Net.
The development of packet-switched networks has some
precedent in the earlier timesharing systems operated by IBM and
other companies and universities. Of particular relevance were
the services offered in the 1960s by GE and Tymeshare which
allowed remote dial-in access to computers. One difference
between these early systems, which connected terminals to remote
hosts, and packet-switched networks is that timesharing networks
generally offered a master/slave relationship (or as we now say
"client/server") whereas packet-switched networks, although
hierarchical in structure, were more essentially peer-to-peer
networks. This represented a revolution in thinking about
computers that helped ultimately to spell the doom of the large
centralized timesharing systems except for certain specific
tasks. It is safe to say that most computer users today never
need to log in to a mainframe. Scientific modelling and large
database applications remain two notable exceptions.
But in general, the picture of computing today is much more
democratic than in the 1960s. Peer-to-peer systems had a lot to
do with this. No longer was one machine in a transaction always
dumb and a single computer the only accessible source of data.
The advent of personal computers and 1200 baud modems in the mid-
1970s accelerated the trend towards a decentralized and anarchic
model of computer mediated communication networks.
Perhaps the first packet-switching network operated at the
National Physical Laboratories in the UK beginning in 1968.
Another early packet-switching experiment conducted by the
Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques in
1968-1970. Development of a packet-switched network began in the
US in 1968, but it was not until 1969 that this technology was
delivered to the US Defense Department's Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA). The ARPANET used NCP, Network Control
Protocol as its transmission protocol from 1969 to 1982, when NCP
was replaced with the now-widespread TCP/IP. [Quarterman
1990:141,143; LaQuey 1990:194].
From ARPANET to Internet
An "internet" is a connected set of networks, such as those
using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol
(IP). When used in conjunction, this suite of protocols is
referred to as TCP/IP. "The Internet" usually refers to the
connected TCP/IP internets. Networks based on other systems,
such as OSI might also be considered internets and part of the
Internet. Often this definition is expanded to include
all the other networks which have connections to the Internet,
such as BITNET, Janet and Usenet.
Ronda Hauben [1993a] cites the 1962 Rand Corporation report
"On Distributed Communications" by Paul Baran:
Baran's research, done under a grant from the U.S. Air
Force, discusses how the U.S. military could protect its
communications systems from serious attack. He outlines the
principle of "redundancy of connectivity" and explores
various models of forming communications systems and
evaluating their vulnerability.
The report proposes a communications system where there
would be no obvious central command and control point, but
all surviving points would be able to re-establish contact in
the event of an attack on any one point. Thus damage to a
part would not destroy the whole and its effect on the whole
would be minimized.
One of his recommendations is for a national
public utility to transport computer data, much in the way
the telephone system transports voice data. "Is it time now
to start thinking about a new and possibly non-existent
public utility," Baran asks, "a common user digital data
communication plant designed specifically for the
transmission of digital data among a large set of
subscribers?"
[Hauben, 1993a]
Hauben (1993a) says that the initial plan for the ARPANET
was distributed at the October 1967 Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Operating Principles in Gatlingberg,
Tennessee. The initial design called for networking four sites.
The first ARPANET Information Message Processor (IMP) was
installed at UCLA on September 1, 1969. Hauben notes that these
IMP's, Honeywell 516's, had only 12 K of memory although they
were considered to be powerful minicomputers of their time.
Additional nodes were soon added at Stanford Research Institute
(SRI) the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), and
the University of Utah. Utah was the first site to enable remote
logging in from other sites. [Ellison, 1993]
All of these sites are still active on the Net as of August
1993, although the former ARPA National Information Center
Center (SRI-NIC.ARPA or nic.ddn.mil) is now nisc.sri.com and
the new MILNET Defense Data Network Information Center
(nic.ddn.mil) is located in Virginia. [Johnson, 1993]
The Internet, the "Network of Networks," had its origin in
1972. Hauben [1993a] says:
In October 1972, the First International Conference on
Computer Communications was held in Washington, D.C. A
public demonstration of the ARPANET was given setting up an
actual node with 40 machines. Representatives from projects
around the world including Canada, France, Japan, Norway,
Sweden, Great Britain and the U.S. discussed the need to
begin work on establishing agreed upon protocols. The
InterNetwork Working Group (INWG) was created to begin
discussions for such a common protocol and Vinton Cerf, who
was involved with UCLA Arpanet was chosen as the first
Chairman. The vision proposed for the architectural
principles for an international interconnection of networks
was "a mess of independent, autonomous networks
interconnected by gateways, just as independent circuits of
ARPANET are interconnected by IMPs."
[Hauben, 1993a]
The popularity of electronic mail on the early ARPANET was
unanticipated by its designers. Licklider and Vezza (1978)
noted that:
One of the advantages of the message system over letter
mail was that, in an ARPANET message, one could
write tersely and type imperfectly, even to an older person
in a superior position and even to a person one did not know
very well, and the recipient took no offense. The formality
and perfection that most people expect in a typed letter did
not become associated with network messages, probably
because the network was so much faster, so much more like
the telephone. Indeed, tolerance for informality and
imperfect typing was even more evident when two users of
the ARPANET linked their consoles together and typed back
and forth in an alphanumeric conversation. Among the
advantages of the network message services over the
telephone were the fact that one could proceed immediately
to the point without having to engage in small talk first,
that the message services produced a preservable record,
and that the sender and receiver did not have to be
available at the same time.
[Licklider and Vezza, 1978]
In 1983, the ARPANET was split into ARPANET and MILNET. The
later was integrated into the Defense Data Network, created in
1982. ARPANET was taken out of service in 1990. ARPANET's role
as network backbone was taken over by NSFNET which may in time be
in turn be supplanted by the National Research and Educational
Network (NREN).
ARPANET was very important in the development of the Net. In
its time it was the largest, fastest, and most populated part of
the Net. Its initial structure was influenced by the fact that it
was intended to form part of the central command and control
structure for the US armed forces during the height of the Cold
War. As such, it was designed to be able to survive a nuclear
attack. This in turn influenced the decentralized and
peer-to-peer structure of the Net.
The Internet. The Internet we make so much of today --
the global Internet which has helped scholars so much,
where free speech is flourishing as never before in
history -- the Internet was a Cold War military
project. It was designed for purposes of military
communication in a United States devastated by a Soviet
nuclear strike. Originally, the Internet was a
post-apocalypse command grid.
And look at it now. No one really planned it this
way. Its users made the Internet that way, because
they had the courage to use the network to support
their own values, to bend the technology to their own
purposes. To serve their own liberty. Their own
convenience, their own amusement, even their own idle
pleasure. When I look at the Internet -- that paragon
of cyberspace today -- I see something astounding and
delightful. It's as if some grim fallout shelter had
burst open and a full-scale Mardi Gras parade had come
out.
[Sterling, 1993]
Store-and-forward networks: the poor man's internets
While ARPANET was in the early stages of its evolution,
another technology was influencing the growth of the Net.
Store-and-forward networks used the technology of electronic mail
systems and extended them to what we now call conferencing. A
conference in this sense is somewhere in between broadcasting
(one-way, one-to-many) and electronic mail (two-way, one-to-one.)
Conferencing is two-way and one-to-many.
In the 1970s and early 1980s another kind of network
technology began to come to the fore. These were the early
store-and-forward networks such as BITNET and Usenet.
Like many other aspects of computer mediated communication,
interactive conferencing as a concept predates computer
technology. Quarterman [1990] credits Vannevar Bush for
proposing the first conferencing system in his 1945 Atlantic
Monthly article, "As we may think" [Bush, 1945].
From 1945 to 1970, several models of conferencing for face-
to-face or regular mail were developed. One such influential
model is the "Delphi" method [Quarteman 1990].
The first online Delphi conferencing system was initiated in
1970. The first dedicated hardware and software specifically
dedicated to conferencing, EMISARI, was implemented in 1971.
However, computer and teletext conferencing systems of the 1970s
tended to be slow and unwieldy, and were therefore used primarily
in structured environments for particular tasks. This was to
change in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the emergence of
economical, user-created networks such as Usenet, BITNET and
Fidonet [Quarterman 1990].
Oh say, can UUCP?
The unix-to-unix-copy protocol, or UUCP, was created in
1976 by Mike Lesk at AT&T Bell Labs as part of a research
project. The product was a success within AT&T, and an improved
version by Lesk, David Notiwitz, and Greg Chesson was released in
1977 with UNIX version 7. Several networks evolved to take
advantage of this facility for sending and receiving mail,
conferencing, and remote login and file transfers. [O'Reilly and
Todino, 1990]
One such early network was THEORYNET. Begun by Lawrence
Landweber, Richard DeMillo, and Richard Lipton at the University
of Wisconsin in 1977, THEORYNET provided email facilities for
over 100 computer science researchers. In May 1979, Landweber
convened a two day meeting of representatives from DARPA, the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and computer scientists from
several universities. The purpose of the meeting was "to
establish the feasibility of establishing a Computer Science
Department research computer network." This meeting led to the
eventual establishment of the Computer Science Research Network
(CSNET) [Comer, 1983].
CSNET was established for two reasons. On the one hand,
UUCP, modems, and the existing telephone system provided a
ready-made method of data transport. On the other hand, large
computing facilities such as the University of Wisconsin which
were not part of the ARPANET were increasingly concerned that the
advantages of linked computer systems at university ARPANET sites
gave those sites a substantial advantage in research and faculty
and student recruitment.
A series of proposals to the NSF was generated and revised.
The earliest designs for CSNET envisioned it as a stand-alone
network. During this period of revisions the idea of a gateway
to the ARPANET was added to the plan.
In summer 1980, DARPA scientist Vinton Cerf proposed a plan
for an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET.
This plan called for CSNET to be a logical network composed of
several physical networks. Communications between CSNET and
ARPANET would be arranged so as to be transparent, that is,
services on either network would be accessed through a set of
protocols that would be the same from the standpoint of the user
regardless of what network the user or service was on.
A set of communications protocols developed by DARPA,
called TCP/IP would be used to route information between the
networks. Connections between the networks would be through a
gateway called the VAN, or Value Added Network. The
implementation of this inter-network gateway and the important
decision to make TCP/IP available without charge mark the
foundation of what later became known as "the Internet."
At the August 1980 CSNET planning group meeting, several
goals were adopted: all researchers should have access to CSNET,
the cost for member institutions should be graduated according to
the volume and level of service, CSNET should eventually become
financially self-sufficient, and the implementation of the
project should cost less than 5 million dollars and take less
than five years. [Comer, 1983]
Phase I of the implementation plan for CSNET, providing
dialup access to email, was completed by July, 1982. Phase II,
completed in early late 1983, included the implementation of the
first nameserver at UW. This was the forerunner of Domain Name
Service now widely used on TCP/IP networks. The Domain Name
Service approach facilitates the transport of mail in that the
user or user's host computer no longer need to know the exact
path to the recipient's site. Information about mail routing can
be generated by consulting the central database at the Domain
Nameserver. By about 1990 this approach supplanted the older
unix way, which was to have all information about known hosts on
each machine in a file called hosts.txt.
In the meantime, another network making use of UUCP was
already up and running.
Usenet
One important early distributed conferencing systems is the
Unix User Network, or Usenet. Usenet implemented the UUCP, or
Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol, to transport news and views. It is
estimated that there are more than ten million user accounts on
computers which are part of Usenet, and that more than 2.5
million people read Usenet in a given month [Reid, 1993].
Usenet is an example of a client-server (client-host)
architecture. A user connects to a machine which in turn
connects to another machine which has stored the Usenet
postings for the past few days, weeks, or hours. The users
typically look at the headings of postings in the newsgroups of
interest to them. The user may issue a command requesting the
full text of a particular posting (article). The client machine
in turn requests the particular article to be forwarded from the
host machine. If the article is unavailable (expired, no longer
stored, or cancelled by its poster) then a message, "article
unavailable," is transmitted back to the user. Otherwise, the
full text of the requested posting should appear on the user's
terminal. The user may then read or store the article, or reply
through electronic mail, post a follow-up article or start a new
subject heading with a new posting.
Usenet proper is generally considered to have begun in 1979
as a series of shell scripts written by University of North
Carolina (UNC) graduate student Steve Bellovin in order to
automate and facilitate UUCP communication between UNC and Duke
University. These scripts were rewritten and extended in a
program written in the computer language "C" by Steve Daniel and
Tom Truscott. This version is generally referred to as the "A"
release of news.
News articles are separated into divisions called
newsgroups. Each division is supposed to limit itself
to a single topic, and the name of the group is
supposed to give you some idea as to the content of the
group.These groups are then organized into hierarchies
of related topics. Usenet Network News started out with
just two hierarchies, mod and net. The mod hierarchy
had those groups that had a person as the moderator to
edit and control the information. The net hierarchy
handled all other groups. With the release of B News
and its ability to have any single group be moderated
or open, the great renaming was undertaken.
[Weinstein, 1992]
Matt Glickman, a high school student, and Mark Horton, a
graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley
wrote the "B" version of news in 1981. A series of releases
numbered from 2.1 to 2.10.2 appeared between 1982 and 1984. These
were authored first by Horton and later by Rick Adams of the
Center for Seismic Studies (now at Uunet) [Livingston, 1988c].
In the early days of Usenet, some irrational routing
occurred because of bureaucratic inertia at some of the sites and
because of the ad-hoc way in which the early Usenet evolved:
From James Ellis Tue Oct 16 08:43 PDT 1990 [...]
je> I do recall that for a long while after Berkeley and Research were
je> providing cross-country connectivity, the connections were often
je> very wasteful. One of the worst examples was that Tektronix, in
je> Oregon, couldn't send e-mail to some other site (Reed?) a local
je> phone call away because it was against policy to set up the
je> connection. But they could, and did, send mail via
je> Berkeley/Research/Duke going cross-country twice to reach a
je> local phone call away!
From Amanda Walker Tue Oct 16 09:11 PDT 1990
aw> Indeed. I suspect that there are any number of examples of this,
aw> but the most egregious in my experience was at CWRU. The ECMP
aw> department had a VAX 11/780 on Usenet ("cwruecmp"), and the campus
aw> computer center had a DEC-20 in the room next door. The machines
aw> were separated by a grand total of about 30 feet and a piece of
aw> wallboard, but the computer center was not at all interested in
aw> "catering" to "those CS types" by stringing an RS-232 line between
aw> them. So, it was possible to send mail between them, but only by
aw> sending via a route resembling:
aw>
aw> crwuecmp => decvax => ucbvax (UUCP)
aw> ucbvax => columbia (CU20A, I think) (ARPANET)
aw> columbia => cmu-cs-c => cwru20 (CCnet)
aw>
aw> Yup, that's three networks, and two coasts just to get through a
aw> piece of sheetrock :-). Took about a week, too.
[Truscott, 1993]
The "Great Renaming"
In 1986-87, Usenet underwent a thoroughgoing shakeup and
reorganization which has come to be known as the "Great
Renaming." At its inception, Usenet had only top-level
hierarchies, mod and net. This was later expanded by the
addition of the "fa" groups as well as some domains with only
local distribution. When a complete reorganization of Usenet was
proposed, a massive and now-legendary "flame war" (online
discussion/argument) commenced.
The most significant flame war of Usenet history was over
the "Great Renaming" when the seven main hierarchies
{comp,misc,news,rec,sci,soc,talk} were created and the
old groups {net,fa,mod} were all moved around. There
was great gnashing of teeth as groups were sorted and
tossed around and relegated to their polities.
[Woodbury, 1992]
The Great (or Grand) Renaming started July 1986 and ended
in March 1987, according to a posting from Gene Spafford.
[Truscott, 1993] One reason for the renaming was the increasing
number of groups made such a reorganization of the highest level
domains advantageous for organizational reasons. Another reason
was to put controversial groups in the "talk" domain which was
added towards the end of the Renaming, so that it would be easier
for administrators who wished to remove such groups from their
newsfeed to do so. This was considered more desirable and
practical than attempting to eliminate controversial newsgroups.
[Truscott, 1993]
The original Usenet backbone was first created by Gene
Spafford in 1983. The intent was to rationalize the
retransmission of Usenet news. The backbone was formalized
following the Great Renaming in 1986-1987 by Spafford:
From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> Eventually, by the time of the great renaming after the 1986 Usenix
gs> conference, I formalized the backbone in a regular posting with a
gs> map and a description of what constituted a backbone site --- good
gs> connectivity, carrying the mainstream groups, and a commitment to
gs> stable news and mail software. These were the same things I had
gs> encouraged earlier on, or the reasons I had put people on the
gs> mailing list.
[Truscott, 1993]
The demise of the original backbone was accompanied by several
changes in Usenet. An increasing percentage of Usenet traffic
was moving over ARPANET connections. This led to the widespread
replacement of UUCP by NNTP (Net News Transfer Protocol, a method
of transmitting Usenet news on TCP/IP connections). And rapid
growth in the number of sites was accompanied by increasing
pressure for democratization (or "anarchization") of the
newsgroup creation procedure.
The "breaking of the backbone cabal"
The "Breaking of the Backbone Cabal" occurred when
administrators of the Usenet backbone declined to carry
newsgroups dealing with recreational sex and drugs. Usenet
participants devised communications paths which avoided the
ARPANET and the alt hierarchy was born:
But the most profound change to the net occurred when
Richard Sexton proposed "rec.sex" (followed closely by
rec.drugs) and the group "passed" its "vote" but the
Backbone Cabal decreed that they would NOT carry the
group or create the group on the "backbone" machines.
Almost immediately, the "alt" distribution was set up,
using alternative routes that were "separate" from the
backbone (and theoretically avoided traversing the
ARPANET). Alt.sex, alt.drugs were the first groups
created, and the next day, Brian Kantor issued the
newgroup for alt.rock-n-roll (for aesthetic purposes, said
he!) Shortly thereafter, (within about 5 months), the
Backbone Cabal "officially" abdicated (due to some
dissension in the ranks over the control of routing and
newgroup guidelines) after installing the "Holey
Guidelines" and "Gene Spafford" as the new.group Tsar.
Following the abdication of the Backbone Cabal
oligarchy, Usenet was proclaimed to be the worlds
foremost example of a working cooperative "anarchy" and
it has remained so ever since.
[Wooodbury, 1992]
However, it was Brian Reid, not Brian Kantor, who participated in
the creation of the alternet:
The famous barbecue at which the alt net was created was held at
G.T.'s Sunset Barbecue in Mountain View California on May 7,
1987. John Gilmore and I were both unhappy with the
decisionmaking process of the "ordinary" net. John was
distressed because they wouldn't create rec.drugs, and I was
distressed because they wanted to force me to adopt the name
"rec.food.recipes" for my recipe newsgroup. Gordon Moffett of
Amdahl also sat with us. He had no specific beef or goal, but he
wanted to help. John's home computer was "hoptoad"; my home
computer was "mejac". We set up a link between us, and each of
us set up a link to amdahl, and we vowed to pass all alt traffic
to each other and to nurse the net along. In those days one sent
out numerous newgroup messages in the hopes that one would
"take"; by the end of May the groups alt.test, alt.config,
alt.drugs, and alt.gourmand were active. At the time I also
managed "decwrl", so I quietly added "alt" to the list of groups
that it carried.
Nearly a year later, there was a vote taken about "soc.sex" and
although it passed, Gene Spafford refused to create it. I
therefore created "alt.sex" on April 3, 1988, and sent the
following message to the USENET "backbone" cabal:
From: reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid)
Message-Id: <8804040154.AA01236@woodpecker.dec.com>
Date: 3 Apr 1988 1754-PST (Sunday)
To: backbone@purdue.edu, chiefdan@vax1.acs.udel.edu,
mejac!hoptoad!gnu@decwrl.dec.com
Subject: Re: soc.sex final results
In-Reply-To: Gene Spafford <spaf@purdue.edu> / Sun, 03 Apr 88 18:22:36 EST.
<8804032322.AA15650@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>
To end the suspense, I have just created alt.sex.
That meant that the alt network now carried alt.sex and
alt.drugs. It was therefore artistically necessary to create
alt.rock-n-roll, which I have also done. I have no idea what
sort of traffic it will carry. If the bizzarroids take it
over I will rmgroup it or moderate it; otherwise I will let
it be.
Brian Reid
T5 (5th thoracic)
"T5" is the name of a vertebra (the 5th thoracic vertebra). This
was my attempt to remind these people that I was an official
voting member of the backbone.
At the time I sent that message I didn't yet realize that alt
groups were immortal and couldn't be killed by anyone. In
retrospect, this is the joy of the alt network: you create a
group, and nobody can kill it. It can only die, when people stop
reading it. No artificial death, only natural death.
I don't wish to offer an opinion about how the net should be
run; that's like offering an opinion about how salamanders
should grow: nobody has any control over it, regardless of what
opinions they might have.
[Reid, 1993b]
It must be noted that as revolutions go, the "Breaking of
the Backbone Cabal" was a gentle revolt, for although a number of
harsh words were exchanged, at the end of the day, the old
"father of the Backbone," Gene Spafford, was installed as the new
group creation "Tsar." It is typical of the culture of the Net
that those who have been on the Net the longest have the highest
social status, regardless of the popularity of their views.
Since there is no "official" written history, most of what is
known about the past is in the minds and postings of these "old
ones."
Henry Spencer of the University of Toronto created the "C,"
version of news in 1988-1989. Usenet continues to evolve
rapidly. One important development in the early 1990s has been
the proliferation of client newsreader programs such as nn, trn,
and tin, which provide a full-screen interface for news and
facilitate following and replying to ongoing conversations, or
"threads."
It is interesting to note that changes in the social
structure of Usenet were traceable to changes in the software.
Although this was almost certainly unintentional, the software
used on the Net had already begun to redetermine human social
structures and methods of self-governance. We have noted how the
need for the ARPANET to be able to survive a limited nuclear
exchange led to its dispersal of administrative functions,
multiple connections, and in turn to its anarchic social and
self-regulatory structure. The closed nature of the ARPANET led
in turn to the development of several networks such as Usenet,
BITNET and Fidonet which used off-the-shelf technology in new and
unforeseen ways to emulate what was going on the ARPANET.
Indeed, these networks might be called the "poor man's
Internets."
So changes in technology are driving changes in social
structure, and the wishes of the people of the Net are reflected
in new self-generated software which in turn leads to more
changes. I will return presently to Usenet and its growth as it
has been of crucial importance to the emergence of the Net as a
self-determinate and independent culture.
Birth of the BITNET
Two years after Usenet began in North Carolina, another
important store-and-forward network came into being. BITNET, the
"Because It's Time NETwork," was started as a cooperative network
at the City University of New York (CUNY).
BITNET uses electronic mail systems and mechanism called a
"listserv" to distribute information. There are more than 4,000
discussion subject areas provided by BITNET or BITNET-style
listservs. Sending a message to a BITNET list results in that
message being replicated and sent to all of the subscribers of
that list. Persons may subscribe or unsubscribe to a list
automatically by sending a message to a particular address.
The user would subscribe by sending an email message to
listserv@host, with a text body of "subscribe <list> <name>".
BITNET is administered today by the BITNET Network
Information Center, or BITNIC, under the auspices of EDUCOM.
Unlike Usenet and the Internet, BITNET traffic and membership
peaked in 1990 and remains stable today. BITNET addresses have
the form userxxxx@sitename. BITNET addressing and mail
delivery systems are different from the domain-style addressing
of Internet and modern UUCP addresses and will probably
eventually be replaced.
Some lists are open, or unmoderated, while the membership of
other, moderated, lists may be administrated by one or more
moderators who must approve postings before they are "exploded"
or mailed out. This parallels the existence of moderated and
unmoderated newsgroups on Usenet. However, the culture of BITNET
is somewhat more conservative than that of Usenet in regard what
is and is not permitted on moderated lists. This may be because
BITNET has a formal administrative structure,
or may be because of different cultural development, or both.
Network etiquette, or "Netiquette," is different in the
world of BITNET than on the Internet or Usenet. Usenet
traditionally has been a very open free-speech forum. Arguments,
and "flaming" are not only tolerated, but form an important part
of the social and administrative tradition of Usenet. A "flame"
is a posting harshly criticizing a posting or the poster. A
"flame war" is a continuing argument in which the noise-to-signal
(in the sense of getting more and more emotional and less and
less informative) ratio gets progressively higher and higher
before dying out. In the opinion of this author, flame wars are
the most important means of social constraint on the Usenet
system. In the absence of any central administration or much
formal structure, flame wars provide a democratic way to air out
differences. Even minor shifts in policy or procedure are likely
to produce a flame war (as is just one person who had a bad day).
When a flame war begins, lurkers (people who read but never
post) and newbies (new users) run for cover. Personal aspersions,
outrageous exaggerations, and overheated rhetoric are the order
of the day (or week, or month). A person's past transgressions
(real or imagined), personal habits and proclivities (real or
imagined) and unsupported claims of personal privilege or
authority seem to rule the day, for a time. Eventually the
source of irritation is removed, removes themselves, cooler heads
prevail, or everyone just gets sick of it and moves on to another
subject.
By contrast, such conduct is discouraged on BITNET. If a
flame war begins, the cry of "take it to email" may be raised
until order is restored. In moderated groups, flame wars may be
permitted, but usually must retain some attitude of civility and
some relevance to the original subject. In Usenet, a topic or
thread may drift into completely unrelated fields. This is
facilitated by posting a particular message to several groups, or
"crossposting." Because of the relatively more sophisticated
interface of Usenet, it is generally more convenient to crosspost
on Usenet than on BITNET.
On the other hand, BITNET is available to anyone with email
capability connected to the Net, whereas to read most Usenet
groups requires access to a server and special client software.
These technological characteristics are both a product of the
culture which engendered them and at the same time determinators
of the social characteristics of the virtual communities which
grow up around them [Reingold, 1992].
In the early 1980s, both the Internet and USENET underwent
considerable reorganizations. At about the same time, a new
store-and-forward network was developing.
See FIDO run
The invention of the first computer bulletin board system,
or BBS, is commonly credited to Ward Christianson in 1977-1978.
Christianson was the author of the Xmodem file transfer protocol,
which was in itself a singular milestone in the history of the
Net as the first widely available file transfer method for
personal computers. Christianson and Randy Suess started a
dial-in BBS called RCPM (for "Remote CP/M", an operating system)
in 1978 in Chicago [Richard 1993]. Some scholars point to the
remote networking facilities established in 1972 at MIT, or the
establishment of a "pirate" phone phreak board in New York City
in 1975, or to the PLATO notes system at the University of
Illinois, also established in 1975, as precedents [DelPapa,
1993].
The technology for BBSes had existed for many decades, since
the introduction of automatic telegraphy in the early part of
this century. The essential changes which made BBSes possible
were first of all, the growing awareness of the potential of the
computer as a communications tool fostered by ARPANET, and
second, the availability for the first time in the late 1970s, of
personal computers.
One important early BBS was Fido BBS in San Francisco, CA.
The FidoBBS software was authored by Tom Jennings, the sysop of
FidoBBS, in late 1983. By late 1984 several dozen sites were
running the FidoBBS software. In June 1984, Jennings released
the Fidonet software. This software implemented a packet-based,
store-and-forward networking technology which allowed FidoBBS
users to send mail and participate in discussions much like
Usenet or BITNET. Unlike Usenet or BITNET, Fidonet ran on IBM
PC's and compatables running DOS 2.0 and higher. This meant that
anyone with a personal computer and a modem could be system
operator (sysop) of his/her own computer communications system,
or "node."
In 1986, there was a schism in Fidonet which was in some
ways parallel to the "Breaking of the Backbone Cabal" on Usenet.
At this time, there were thousands of FidoNet systems throughout
Europe and North America.
Around 1986 the fidonet split into various splinter groups
due to the incorporation of "Fidonet". Many people felt
that their network had been stolen.
[Porter, 1993]
Some renegade groups continued to use the Fidonet software
without incorporating themselves into the "authorized" structure.
In 1987, the release of the uupc software for MS-DOS machines
allowed the connection of Fidonet and Usenet. Today many Usenet
newsgroups are echoed onto Fidonet. However, Fido groups seldom
find their way back onto Usenet. For this reason, Fidonet is
considered by some to be on the borders of the Net. [Birdsall
1993]
As of June, 1993, there were 24,800 Fidonet nodes throughout
the world. It is estimated that Fidonet serves 1.56 million
users. The number of Fidonet nodes is currently growing at a
rate of 40% annually. [Presno, 1993]
Virtual communities, virtual culture
There is a growing recognition by authors and scholars that
the Net is not merely an assemblage of hardware linked together
with cables and operated by software. Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the Net is the new human culture which is
growing up within its premises. People on the Net act
differently than they would if they were to meet FTF (face to
face.) In fact, the Net contains within it not merely one new
human culture, but many. Different networks using different
technologies have evolved different sub-cultures. Only the most
foresighted scholars could have anticipated even part of the
magnificent and peculiar structure which has been erected upon
the modest foundations the origins of which have been outlined
here.
In this paper we have described a few salient aspects of the
history of a few networks: ARPANET, BITNET, CSNET, the Internet,
and Fidonet. Presno [1993] lists 93 networks and services, and
even this is but an eclectic selection. The Internet itself is a
collection of more than 13,170 regional, national, and
international networks [MERIT 1993g]. The following chart shows
the exponential growth in the number of host computers on the
Internet since August, 1981:
Date Hosts
08/81 213
08/83 562
10/85 1,961
12/87 28,174
10/89 159,000
10/90 313,000
10/91 617,000
10/92 1,136,000
07/93 1,776,000
[MERIT 1993a]
There are hundreds of servers such as Internet Relay Chat
and multi user domains such as MUDS, MOO's, MUSE's etc. each of
which serves hundreds or even thousands of users [Bartle, 1990;
Reid, 1991; Hardy, 1992; Reingold, 1992, 1993; Leslie 1993].
There are now thousands of BBSes throughout the world, and
hundreds of Internet accessible services ranging from weather
information to anonymous posting services (like an old-fashioned
maildrop). There are thousands of information servers for
services like WAIS, WWW, Gopher, Archie, Prospero, and others.
With the advent of gigabit networks, real-time interactive video
and virtual reality are only years or even months away from
general availability. All of this too is part of the Net.
The strength of the Net as a political culture is almost
unappreciated by the world's governments. During the 1991 coup in
the former USSR, and during the Tiananmen conflict, the Net was an
invaluable conduit for news and information [LaQuey 1993: 4-5,
10].
The Net also stayed up during the 1989 San Francisco quake, when
phones and other services become unavailable. The legacy of the
Cold-War command and control ARPANET is that the Net is today
invincible. Even if all fiber-optic and telephone lines in the
world were to fail at once, the Net would continue to survive
thanks to the tens of thousands of packet radio operators and the
Russian and American amateur packet satellites.
As an anthropologist, I have been personally aggrieved by
the genocide and/or assimilation of the last isolated and
"pristine" cultures on Earth. But the people of the Net present
the anthropologist, folklorist, historian, sociologist and
systems theorist with a completely unique opportunity: to study a
culture of tens of millions of people which is today only less
than 30 years old. Astonishingly little of the early history of
the Net is documented. But while this history is still within
living memory we can capture the genesis of an event which will
shape the world in as yet unforeseen ways: the birth of a new
world culture called the Net.
Acknowledgements
I wish to take this opportunity to thank first and foremost
the members of my committee: Prof. Alexander Nesterenko, Prof.
Joseph Helgert, and Ronald Suarez, Ph.D. Without their help and
encouragement this paper would not have been written (or ever
finished!).
I owe another very large debt of gratitude to the members of
hh-readers-l: Tony Audas, Greg Boynton, Mars DeRitis, Rhana
Jacot, Bruce Jones, Randym Jones, and Pat Preston. They have
provided me with many documents and ideas, wonderful
proofreading, encouragement, and some much-needed corrections and
criticism.
I would also like to thank Jon Zeeff, Jay Rouman, the
University of Michigan Computer Club (umcc.umich.edu) for the
superb facilities for education and research they have made
available.
Thanks are also due to the following for the use of
facilities: Grand Valley State University (GVSU) School of
Communications -- Deb Singer; GVSU Computer-Assisted Writing
Laboratory -- Prof. Ron Dwelle; GVSU Next Lab -- Prof. Carl
Erickson; Denver University Nyx Public Access Unix
(nyx.cs.du.edu) -- Prof. Andrew Burt; wybbs -- Daniel Wynalda;
free public dialin facilities -- MERIT, Inc.; WAIS server --
Thinking Machines Corporation; printing and computer facilities
-- Wendy Williams, Williams & Williams and Ron Suarez, Ph.D.,
Arbor Intelligent Systems; computer facilities -- Kevin L.
Ferguson, M.D.; Genesis LPMUD -- Lars Pensjo and Chalmers
Dataforenger, Chalmers Institute of Technology; research
assistance -- GVSU Library, University of Michigan (UM) Graduate
and Engineering Libraries; online library catalogs -- UM, GVSU,
Library of Congress; public computer sites -- GVSU; all online
catalogs, anonymous FTP sites, gophers, archie servers and other
research resources on the Net; transportation -- Mark Zapytowski.
Special thanks to Joe Wisdom for much volunteer system
administration, and Greg Boynton for spending hundreds of hours
and thousands of dollars assisting with river.allendale.mi.us
(RIP).
Thanks to Howard Reingold, Michael Hauben, Ronda Hauben, and
Mike Godwin for providing to me texts of their writings.
Finally, last but certainly not least, a *BIG* thanks to the
hundreds of net.citizens who have helped in many ways with
information, criticism, advice and encouragement.
Copyright (C) 1992, 1993 Henry Edward Hardy. Some portions
of this work were previously published in Hardy, "The Usenet
System," International Teleconferencing Association (ITCA)
Yearbook 1993, p. 140-151, copyright Henry Edward Hardy 1992.
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