Netizens-Digest Thursday, October 14 1999 Volume 01 : Number 342 Netizens Association Discussion List Digest In this issue: [netz] (Fwd) Berkman Ctr Analysis of Proposed ICANN Agreements [netz] Long live the goal of Access for All of the Cleveland Freenet [netz] L.A. Times column, 10/11/99 [netz] kmm070: What the net is good for ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 13:18:05 -04 From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller) Subject: [netz] (Fwd) Berkman Ctr Analysis of Proposed ICANN Agreements - ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: "Ben Edelman" To: "Benjamin Edelman" Subject: ANNOUNCE: Berkman Center Analysis of Proposed ICANN Agreements Date sent: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 11:59:54 -0400 Affiliates of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society have been reviewing the recently-announced Tentative Agreements among ICANN, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Network Solutions, Inc. We've focused our analysis on the text of the Fact Sheet, locating text in the various agreements that relates to the facts, and occasionally providing our own analysis and questions. We hope ultimately to provide a useful roadmap (among many others from diverse sources) to the documents, which behind their legal language amount to sweeping policy for the legacy domain name system and the relationships among its current major parties. Our work in progress as it stands is at . We've also provided a threaded discussion space there (accessible via the web, email, and NNTP), and we'll be updating the page frequently as we continue to examine the documents. Comments and critiques -- the more specific the better -- are welcomed and solicited. Ben Edelman Berkman Center for Internet and Society Harvard Law School (You are receiving this message because you used the Berkman Center's Remote Participation system in one or more ICANN Public Meetings. We send relatively few messages to this list, on the order of one per month, and we hope you find this message helpful. But if you'd like to be removed from our list, please let me know.) - ------- End of forwarded message ------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 15:23:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronda Hauben Subject: [netz] Long live the goal of Access for All of the Cleveland Freenet Cleveland Freenet closed on October 1, 1999 Long Live Its Goal of Access to the Internet for ALL! by Ronda Hauben, (formerly au329@cleveland.edu) ronda@ais.org Cleveland Freenet closed on October 1, 1999 The Cleveland Freenet was something very special in the history of the development of the Internet as it made access to the Internet avaialable to all in the community. It made access available to school children in Cleveland as I learned when I gave at talk at a conference in Cleveland in 1988. The teacher introducing me told me how her students loved being online and communicating with other students. It made access available in special new forms. Unsung pioneers like Dr. Bohl of the St. Silicon Sports Medicine Clinic on the Cleveland Freenet would respond to questions from users with sports medicine problems from the earliest days of St. Silicon Hospital till the closing of the Freenet on October 1, 1999. Dr. Bohl would post the questions sent to him as anonymous posts and would provide a helpful response that was available for all who looked in on the clinic newsgroup. One user had an experience where an injury that more than 20 doctors in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas of Michigan were not able to diagnosis and treat was identified by Dr. Bohl. From the email the user wrote to him, he provided information about what the problem was likely to be, along with the proviso that this was general information not a particular diagnosis. Because of his online clinic it was possible to get the needed treatment to cure the injury, and then to even correspond with the doctor via email in an early use of email between patient and doctor. Also all who looked in on the online clinic newsgroup would be able to learn about the nature of sports medicine injuries and the varieties of their treatment from the helpful responses to individual questions posted on the newsgroup. The Freenet made an email mailbox available to each user so they could use and participate in email. Shortly after I signed onto the Cleveland Freenet I had the thrill of receiving a New Year's greeting from a friend in Australia. One of the most important aspects of Cleveland Freenet was when it provided a free and helpful means for its users to explore and to post to Usenet newsgroups. After a post on Freenet I was soon receiving email from numbers of people and also the posts generated interesting and sometimes prolonged discussion. It was only the fact that Cleveland Freenet provided totally free access that made it possible for me to participate in Usenet. And for years afterwards, Cleveland Freenet made it possible to have a connection to Usenet newsgroups. When the green card lawyers wrote their infamous book advising on how to spam the Net, they advised spammers to stay away from the Freenets, warning them of the acceptible use policy of the Freenets which required responsible use from its users. Sometime after I first got onto Cleveland Freenet, a U.S. government official from the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) posted requesting input on what users felt should be the role of the U.S. government in providing access to the Internet to citizens. Many people posted their responses. Several people responded that it was important that all have access, as citizens would be empowered by an ability to be online. Again in 1994 the U.S. government, this time via the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA), sponsored an online conference requesting input from users about their ideas on providing universal access to the Internet. On Cleveland Freenet this conference was carried as a local newsgroup making it easier to participate than in the mailing list form, as the volume of comments was very great. Learning from the experience of the Cleveland Freenet, Canadian Freenets were started. The Freenet movement in Canada soon became a grassroots movement to make access available to all Canadians. Also Freenets were set up in some in European countries, including Finland and Germany. The development of the Cleveland Freenet provided a model for how the U.S. government could encourage and support a low cost means of access to the Internet for all. The U.S. government has missed this opportunity and both the U.S. government and the people of the U.S. have lost something very important. The notion of a system of computer communications networks making email and Usenet access available to all has provided an inspiring and important goal. The global communications that the Internet makes possible and affordable is a very precious treasure and a signficant new development for our times. The Cleveland Freenet has provided a body of experience showing that such a goal is far from impossible. Those who recognize the importance of this goal need to redouble their efforts to make the vision of all having access to e-mail, Usenet newsgroups and a browser, a reality. A special thank you to all who contributed to make the experience of the Cleveland Freenet such an important one in the development of the Internet. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:58:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Jay Hauben Subject: [netz] L.A. Times column, 10/11/99 The netizens mailing list received the following post as a forward from: > From: Yannis Corovesis > Reply-To: ycor@ariadne-t.gr > Organization: NCSR 'Demokritos' > Subject: [Fwd: L.A. Times column, 10/11/99] > Forwarded message: Friends, Below is my Los Angeles Times column for yesterday, October 11, 1999. As always, please feel free to pass this on, but please retain the copyright notice. Not a whole lot of news to report here, but for those who are interested or in the Washington, D.C., area, I will be the keynote speaker at this year's conference of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, of the U.S. Department of Commerce, a conference titled "Networks for People," scheduled for November 1st in Arlington, Virginia. The agenda and registration info is at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/tiiap/index.html. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the fall season. Best, - -- Gary gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu ------------------------------------------ If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman (gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu), you are subscribed to the listserv that sends out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other published articles. If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to listproc@lists.cc.utexas.edu, leave the subject line blank, and put "Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message. If you received this message from a source other than me and would like to subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing are at the end of the message. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE -- the listserv is set up to reject replies to the sending address. You must use the command address, listproc@lists.cc.utexas.edu, to either subscribe or unsubscribe, or use the address gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu to send back comments. ------------------------------------------ October 11, 1999 DIGITAL NATION Many Deserve Credit for Creating the Internet By Gary Chapman Copyright 1999, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved UCLA celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Internet last month, in observance of the first time that digital bits were passed between machines using a computer called an Interface Messaging Processor, or IMP, in the Boelter Hall laboratory of computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock. UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale said at the Sept. 2 event, "The Internet has many fathers who claim to be responsible for this child," and photographs of several of these "fathers" were shown on a large screen. After the celebration, however, a few of these "fathers" expressed some annoyance over how the early history of the Internet is being described these days. "The UCLA event furthered some controversy that has been stirred up over the past six years," said Bob Taylor, a retired research laboratory director who headed labs for both Xerox Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. Taylor led the effort that produced the ARPAnet, the forerunner of the Internet and the project that funded and built the IMP computers at UCLA and other institutions. "The team concept is not getting enough credit," said Taylor, who cited the contributions of the team in Cambridge, Mass., at Bolt, Beranek & Newman that built the first IMP computers in early 1969. Another early founder of the ARPAnet, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote recently: "As the staggering impact of the Internet has become apparent, a number of individuals have been shamelessly elbowing their way into the limelight, claiming far more than their share of credit for helping to bring it all about. Many people contributed to the experiment that blossomed into the Internet. Although a very few prescient individuals actually had a vision, albeit somewhat imprecise, of what the future might hold, most just worked from day to day on their part of the effort. "Watching a few individuals and institutions now puffing themselves up beyond all recognition and trying to bend history to the needs of their personal ambition is both disheartening and irritating. In part, such behavior is the product of a society in which notoriety has become a sort of summum bonum. And the media, contributing to this foolishness and craving oversimplification, tend to heed the loudest voices." "In my opinion," said J. Strother Moore, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, "Bob Taylor is not getting enough credit. I rarely see his name in the newspaper when the history of the Internet is discussed. He, perhaps more than anyone, deserves the credit for the vision that created the Internet." Severo Ornstein, one of the original Bolt, Beranek & Newman team that built the first IMPs, concurred. "It was Taylor's vision, his tenacity, and his perseverance that built the ARPAnet, the precursor to the Internet," Ornstein said. "Without him, we probably would not have developed the system." Taylor was named director of the Information Processing Technologies Office of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1966. He worked with ideas developed by his predecessors in that position, J.C.R. Licklider and Ivan Sutherland, to promote a visionary project based around the then-novel concept that computers are primarily communications devices, not just number-crunching machines. Taylor and Licklider wrote a famous and landmark white paper, "The Computer as a Communications Device," (http://memex.org/licklider.pdf) in April 1968. When Taylor took over the office in 1966, he convinced ARPA Director Charles Herzfeld that the agency should fund a project in computer communications, and that project became the ARPAnet. "The ARPAnet began in 1966, not 1969," Taylor told me last week. "There's some revisionism going on today." To be sure, most of the "fathers" of the Internet are generous in their praise and acknowledgment of all the numerous people who contributed to its development. But institutional public relations departments have tended to promote their own affiliated individuals as the key contributors, fostering a "celebrity model" of technological history instead of the team effort it was. Many people feel Taylor is not getting enough credit, however. He doesn't have a public relations machine working for him. "I'm doing fine," he said with a chuckle. "Not enough other people are getting their share of credit." In the 1970s, Taylor went on to lead the famous Computer Systems Laboratory of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the most renowned and prestigious lab in the history of computer science. There he assembled the all-star team that created computer networking, desktop publishing, laser printers, the graphical-user interface and modern word processing, among other innovations. "Taylor has a sixth sense about what needs to be done and how to do it," Ornstein said. Moore said that when he reflects on who should get credit for the Internet, he thinks first not only of Taylor at ARPA but of Taylor's lab at Xerox PARC. "Bob Taylor is the finest research laboratory manager this country has ever produced," he said. What does Taylor think of the Internet today? "I'm surprised it's taken so long to get to where we are," he says. The industry made many mistakes in the past that slowed development of the Internet, such as the fact that it's only been recently that networking has come to personal computers, he said. "Everything the Internet is being used for today was anticipated," he said. "Except for its pornographic implications -- I didn't anticipate that." Taylor believes that the biggest challenge ahead is to make using the Internet "a right and not a privilege." "We sometimes refer to the Internet as the 'information superhighway,' " he said. "But using the highway is a right, not a privilege. Now, using the Internet is a privilege, and that should change." Taylor thinks the government has a role in helping change this, perhaps by making the Internet part of universal service for all citizens. UCLA has every reason to be proud of its early contributions to the Internet. But all Americans should be grateful for the vision of Bob Taylor and many other technology innovators who deserve to be household names. Gary Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu. ------------------------------------------ To subscribe to a listserv that forwards copies of Gary Chapman's published articles, including his column "Digital Nation" in The Los Angeles Times, send mail to: listproc@lists.cc.utexas.edu Leave the subject line blank. In the first line of the message, put: Subscribe Chapman [First name] [Last name] Leave out the brackets, just put your name after Chapman. Send this message. You'll get a confirmation message back confirming your subscription. This message will contain some boilerplate text, generated by the listserv software, about passwords, which you should IGNORE. Passwords will not be used or required for this listserv. Mail volume on this listserv is low; expect to get something two or three times a month. The list will be used only for forwarding published versions of Gary Chapman's articles, or else pointers to URLs for online versions of his articles -- nothing else will be sent to the list. To unsubscribe from the listserv, follow the same instructions above, except substitute the word "Unsubscribe" for "Subscribe." Please feel free to pass along copies of the forwarded articles, but please retain the relevant copyright information. Also feel free to pass along these instructions for subscribing to the listserv, to anyone who might be interested in such material. Questions should be directed to Gary Chapman at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:23:04 -04 From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller) Subject: [netz] kmm070: What the net is good for Taylor and Licklider (1968), "The Computer as a Communications Device." An early vision of computers as communications devices, not just number-crunching machines. (http://memex.org/licklider.pdf ) "It may be rather arrogant and presumptuous of me to assume that my thoughts have brought joy to those who have been following this column. Nevertheless , I would like to imagine that my scribbling has brought an element of hope to at least one person out there , has made at least one soul feel less lonely and more understood in the confusion of this world." - Nilufer, 1999, in a near-vacuum at http://www.internetindia.com/culture/impress1.html ============ 1. As the Internet wave sloshes over the tablelands of culture, one tries to come to terms with its fundamental characteristic, the exposure of ambiguity in practically everything. One clings to any terms that comes along, in fact, clambering on in hopes of drawing a breath of more familiar air. (Make-money-fast was one of the first bits of flotsam, but equal-access, information-divide and invasion-of- privacy have shown up in turn, and we're hardly through the breakers yet.) But as each apparently solid spar fribbles away to dust (or rather mud), the councillors of the global village are slotting it in for destruction by IPv6 in order to save it. Seeing that the fastest money is being made among fast women, access to court records has been equalizing with a vengeance, and what was thought to be privacy turning out to be only a lack of attention, a home truth is being embarrasingly revealed: the lowest common denominator is undiscriminatingly equal in its loathsome lowness and its commonplace vulgarity -- and *we don't like it.* We want standards (that is, fences) and our rights (that is, privileges). We want to be able to say 'we' without including you. We want to keep some criteria decently concealed: make the world safe for democracy, for sure, but who the _deimos_ is is not in question. So where does the dove of peace find land? Where can she drop the twig that may grow a shrub to yield a beam to support our cultural freight? There is only one way to map the answer: strip away the baggage, jettison the ormulu clocks and solid silverware that make up so much of it, and get down to the nita-Gita of it all. Where that essential drop lands is where the sheaves will become full. I dont mean the 6 videos you would want to have on a desert island holiday, or the shaving mug that was your grandfather's, or any kerchief of 'decency.' I mean the capsule (literally, little head, like the apple in your eye), the hard core, the cyst from which the spores of community (the kinder face of commonality) are to be propagated, cultivated, enculturated. Well, look around: what do propaganda, cults and well-hung 'high' culture share ('have in common')? Isnt it their use of symbols, markers, cornerstones, hallmarks, hexagrams, chicken scratches -- in short, language? Anything that is not just itself, but stands for and represents ('makes known') something else, is fair game for the cultural- survival gene. All is lang-syne grist for the millwheel of language, whim-meal for the 40 or so theses and thats which will duly fruit and be saluted as 'characteristics' of one hotchpotch or pot-au-feu, calamari or Kalamanja or another, which will then be tied together, summed up, packaged and made known to the 'world' as The Culture of &H. (It must be so, for any overt discriminant by which one thing is selected over another is already a cultural accretion and therefore must be abandoned. Language, in contrast, relies on what is left *unsaid, on the boundary which is clear to everyone who understands ('us') -- which is between, if we have to say it in so many words, what *is and what *is not*. 2. Now, before you rush off following your several mad directions regarding the difference between what is (so) and what is (said), can we twist the *function of language (its flowers of speech and its - -- our -- acculturated fruit) to look at the capsular or embedded *form of language? What boundaries might be *represented if we pretend to actually say something about what is not? In particular, what is this Net which so neatly and mechanically simulates the business of language that we know so well? (What the next generation will know, growing up on this homogenized stuff as a steady diet, is anybody's guess.) a) Writing is not speech. b) A message is not a communcation. c) Backchannel is not on-list, and onlist is not at a website (as Nilufer discovered, after a year of weekly posts). d) One's speech is not protected by a right of privacy; that is, one is now liable for *what (*you,*) the people understand*. I could go on to point out that tests of performance are now _criteria (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba990623.htm ), and that the decay of learning (remembering, or making fit; see also http://www.liv.ac.uk/~pbarrett/present.htm ), religion (another kind of fitting or tying together), and of what used to be called *style ('line drawing') have all come together in one generation -- but it wouldn't be nice to rant, would it? Surely there's enough downloaded obscenity (that which is not to be seen) on everyone's desktop already. This is Licklider's legacy, then: a crop of what-nots in place of what's-is. If he missed out on the honours at UCLA's '30th birthday' of the net, he can well be immortalized as the first genetic engineer, so far as the production of viable cultural crops -- humankind's one and only sustainable development -- is concerned. kerry, ------------------------------ End of Netizens-Digest V1 #342 ******************************