International and Scientific Origins of the Internet
        and the Emergence of the Netizens
                          by Ronda Hauben
                          rh120@columbia.edu
   
 	"Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize the Net from
 	their home, workplace, school, library, etc. These people
 	are among those who populate the Net, and make it a from 
        resource of human beings. These netizens participate to 
        help make the Net both an intellectual and a social resource."
                           from "Further Thoughts about Netizens"
         http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netizen_thoughts.html
        March 22 1997) 

I am happy to be here today and to be presenting the opening paper in 
this session of the PPF conference. This conference session is titled 
"Computer Networks, the Internet and Netizens: Their Impact on Science and 
Society"

It is an honor to have this session as a side event connected to the
2nd phase of the UN's World Summit on Information Society (WSIS),
where the importance of access to the Internet becoming available to 
all the world's peoples is being affirmed. 

Secondarily, even as this conference session is taking place, there is a 
struggle ongoing involving a number of countries around the world to try 
to determine the management model that is needed for the international 
administration of the Internet's infrastructure. But to solve this problem 
it is useful to have some idea of how the Internet was developed and 
what are the salient aspects of that development.

In my talk today, I want to explore these aspects and in turn try to 
unravel some of the myths about the Internet and its origins that hide its 
actual character. I have a draft paper I have prepared where I explore the 
issues in greater detail than I will speak about today

First, a common view of the Internet is that it was created within the US 
by the US Department of Defense as a way to have a communication system 
that would survive a nuclear war. 

This is a fallacious view of the origin of the Internet. It is inaccurate in 
many aspects. (1)

Notably:

1) The Internet is a result of scientific and technical collaboration
   that was international in its earliest stages.

2) There was a vision guiding and inspiring its international  
   collaborative development

3) The Internet is a solution to the Multiple Network Problem - to
   connect dissimilar networks.


More specifically, the goal of Internet research was to make communication 
possible across the boundaries of different networks. During the period of 
the birth of the Internet (1973-1983), countries like Great Britain, France, 
Canada and others were either actually creating their own national or 
specific computer networks, or were developing plans to do so. These 
networks would all be different technically and would be owned and 
operated by different political and administrative entities. How to 
provide for communication across the boundaries of these diverse networks 
was the problem to be solved.

The research that solved this problem was the work to create the protocol
called TCP/IP. The protocol TCP/IP makes it possible to communicate across
the boundaries of dissimilar networks. This graphic shows the research
collaboration by Norwegian researchers connected with NORSAR, which was a
network site in Norway, with British researchers, connected by a site at
the University College London, and American researchers working as part of
the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) on the ARPANET.(2)

In my talk today I want to focus on what I propose are some of the 
scientific origins of the research that have made the Internet possible. 
And I want to argue that though these scientific origins are poorly 
understood and not often recognized, they are critical to an understanding
of the nature of the Internet and supporting of its future development.

To understand these scientific origins of the Internet's development, we 
need to look back to the early post World War II period. During this 
period there was scientific ferment to understand the science of 
communication. A community of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and 
social scientists were interested in exploring the processes of 
communication. One means some of the researchers adopted was to participate 
in an interdisciplinary community of researchers who met bi yearly or yearly. 
Essentially these researchers pursued different disciplines and spoke 
different scientific languages.

Their effort was to try to bridge the boundaries that separated their
disciplines. The meetings of the group were known by different names, but
during one period they were called the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation
conferences on Cybernetics. The phenomenon was also known as "feedback" or
"self organizing systems". The meeting not only studied communication but
also endeavored to develop a practice more conducive to communication. A
conference session was held on a weekend. Only two or three papers were
presented at each conference and people were encouraged to ask questions
during the paper presentation if they didn't understand the points being
raised or if they wanted clarification. After the paper there would be a
more general conversation and discussion issues raised. The conference
sessions were transcribed and the transcription sent to the participants
after the conference. They could make corrections or clarifications. 
The publication of the conference proceedings would include the
publication of the discussion, along with the publication of the paper
presentations. There were 10 Macy conferences from 1942 until 1953. Five
volumes of the conferences proceedings were published.

JCR Licklider (or Lick as he asked people to call him) was a research 
scientist who had made certain scientific advances in communication 
research. His PhD thesis broke new ground by mapping where in the brain of 
the cat, different pitches of sound were received and how this led to the 
perception of different frequencies of sound.

Also Licklider had made an engineering breakthrough which is referred to 
as "clipped speech". He was able to identify what small part of a the 
place on the soundwave was critical for the sound to be perceived. (This 
was helpful to the US military during WWII in identifying how pilots could 
get help hearing vital sounds despite lots of background noise.)

Licklider was deeply interested in the study of communication. Though he 
only attended one of the 10 Macy Foundation meetings on Cybernetics, he, 
along with other scientists, got support from the National Science 
Foundation(NSF) in the US to have a meeting in 1954 at MIT similar to the 
Macy Foundation meetings on Cybernetics that had ended in 1953.  The title 
of the NSF conference was "Problems in Human Communication and Control". 
The notes of the meeting were then transcribed. Licklider edited the notes. 
The proceedings were published, much in the same way the Macy Conference 
proceedings were published.

During this period, computer scientists and engineers were interested
in understanding the workings of the brain (and nervous system) and
scientists like Licklider who were studying the brain were interested in
the workings of the computer. There was an intuition that insight into 
the mechanisms of the brain could be gained from research in computers.
Similarly, computer science researchers believed that learning about
how the brain functioned would make possible scientific breakthroughs
in computer science.

An important interest of Licklider's was in the workings of the brain and 
how more advanced computer development could help the research 
collaboration of scientists and engineers. Of particular interest was a 
form of modeling. In a paper written with Robert Taylor in 1968, Licklider 
and Taylor wrote:

 	"By far the most numerous, most sophisticated and most
         important models are those that reside in men's minds.
                             (p. 9 paper)

An example of how the computer could help represent models for Licklider 
was the program Sketchpad created by Ivan Sutherland. Describing a 
demonstration he had seen of Sutherland's modeling program, Warren 
Teitelman, then a graduate student at MIT, writes:

         "Sutherland sketched the girder of a bridge and indicated
         the points at which members were connected together by
         rivets. He drew a support at each end of the girder and
         a load at the center. The model showed the girder
         sagging under the load and a number appeared on each member
         showing the tensions there."

Sutherland was able to add the support needed using the modeling program. 
Then the bridge was, according to the computer simulation program, able to 
maintain the weight. This is an example of the encouraging potential that 
Licklider envisioned if the scientific research community could acquire 
the technology they needed for their modeling.

Licklider not only felt that modeling was critical for scientific 
research, but for society as well. Describing the modeling that Licklider 
believed characterized the functioning of the brain, he and Taylor write:

 	"In richness, plasticity, facility and economy, the
         mental model has no peer, but in other respects it
         has shortcomings."

The primary shortcomings of such a model is that it is stored in the brain 
of only a single individual. Hence:

 	"It can be observed and manipulated only by one person"

In order for such models to serve a social function, there is a need, 
for the models in the heads of individuals to become part of a 
collaborative process. This is because, as Licklider and Taylor write:

 	"Society rightly distrusts the modeling done by
 	a single mind."

More specifically:

 	"Society demands (...) [what-ed] amounts to the requirement
         that individual models be compared and brought into some
         degree of accord. The requirement for communicating which we
         now define concisely [as-ed] 'cooperative' modeling --
    	[is-ed]cooperation in the construction, maintenance and use
         of a model"

Licklider and Taylor then explain that like the process they believe is 
ongoing in the brain, what is needed for such cooperative modeling is:

 	"a plastic or moldable medium that can be modeled, a dynamic
 	medium in which processes will flow into consequences."

Most important for such a medium is that it supports collaborative 
contributions and processes - that it be:

 	"a common medium that can be contributed to and experimented
 	with by all."

Licklider and Taylor envisioned that the developing online community would 
find the capability for such collaborative modeling as the Internet 
developed and that having access to this plastic collaborative environment 
would be a boon to the advancement of society and of science.
As the Internet has developed, it has made possible new forms of
scientific collaboration and modeling much as Licklider and Taylor
proposed would become possible.


Along with the need for such a moldable medium for scientific 
collaborative development, Licklider also maintained that there would be a 
need for a collaborative community with this capability to support 
continuing network development and to intervene to help with the problems 
that would develop if government officials who don't understand the 
nature of computer technology, are charged with making the decisions 
needed for its development.

Licklider was part of a community of scientists who had seen the
consequences of poor technical and political decisions made by governments. 
(For example the bombing of civilians during WWII by the Allies). 

In 1960, a series of talks were held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
MIT. The British scientist and writer, CP Snow, was invited to give a talk
discussing this problem. The title of the talk was "Scientists and
Decision Making."

During his talk, Snow described the gap that would exist between 
understanding the nature of the new computer technology and the 
understanding of government officials who would have the 
responsibility for decisions about how to support the development of 
this new technology. Snow explained how such a problem required a 
situation similar to a phenomenon that in physics is called Brownian 
Motion.(1) Referring to what happened in Great Britain after World War II 
when the whole society began discussing the need for national health care, 
Snow outlines the phenomenon:

 	"I believe that the healtiest decisions of society
 	occur by something more like Brownian movement.
 	All kinds of people all over the place suddenly
 	get smitten with the same sort of desire, with the
 	same sort of interest at the same time. This forms
 	a concentration of pressure and of direction. These
 	concentrations of pressure gradually filter their way
 	through to the people whose nominal responsibility
 	it is to put the legislation into a written form."


Shortly after Snow's talk at MIT, Licklider was invited to join the 
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). He was to set up an office for 
research in computer science and an office for research in behavioral science. 
He called the office for research in computer science the Information 
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). (1962-1986). Licklider was its first 
director and he was followed by Ivan Sutherland. There were several 
subsequent directors, and then in 1974, Licklider was invited to return as 
director.

In his writing and talks after he left the IPTO in 1975, Licklider 
describes the problems he encountered to get support for basic research in 
computer science within the US Department of Defense and the need for 
citizens who will actively take up the problems when they develop.

Licklider is not asking for citizens to vote on every issue. Instead he 
outlines how voting is insufficient as a way to work to promote the public 
interest. He writes:

 	"(V)oting in the absence of understanding defines only
 	the public attitude, not the public interest. It means
 	that many public spirited individuals must study, model,
 	analyze, argue, write, criticize, and work out each issue
 	and each problem until they reach consensus or determine
 	that none can be reached -- at which point there may be
 	occasion for voting."
                        (Licklider, 1979, p. 126)

Licklider describes the need for citizen involvement in government 
decisions to help determine how to support the continuing development of 
computer technology. More significantly, Licklider proposes that people 
will not be interested in government processes until they have a means to 
participate in those processes. He foresees how computer developments will 
provide that means. He writes:

 	"Computer power to the people is essential to the realization
     	of a future in which most citizens are informed about, and
 	interested in, the process of government."
                        (Licklider, 1979, p. 126)

The process for citizen involvement in the development of computer 
technology that Licklider outlines is a process that characterizes the 
kind of discussion that I found on some of the earliest mailing lists and 
Usenet newsgroups that developed in the early 1980s. This process 
functioned for needed technical discussion, such as with the ARPANET 
TCP/IP Digest when the cutover to TCP/IP was carried out. (3)

Such discussion also helped to develop and spread the vision for 
ubiquitous computer neworking that was discussed on the Human Nets mailing 
list and other mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups during the early 1980s. 

But more fundamentally, the emergence of such a public spirited online 
citizenry that Licklider believed so important to the continued support 
and development of computer and networking technology was identified 
through the research done by a college student in the early 1990s.

In 1992-3, as part of research done for a college assignment, the student, 
Michael Hauben, posted a series of questions and some preliminary research 
about the developing network on Usenet newsgroups. (Usenet is a worldwide 
discussion forum.) He also posted his questions on a few Internet mailing 
lists. Michael was surprised as replies to his questions began to arrive 
in his mailbox. Through subsequent posts, and analyzing the replies, he 
recognized that a new form of consciousness, a new identity was being 
acquired by many of those online who who wrote him. A number of the 
replies he received indicated how people online were not only interested in 
how the developing Net was contributing to their own lives, but also many 
were seeking to spread access to the Internet to others.

Michael had seen the word 'net.citizen' referred to online.  Thinking 
about the social concern and consciousness he had found among those who 
wrote him, and about the non-geographical character of a net based form of 
citizenship, he contracted 'net.citizen' into the word 'netizen'. Netizen 
has come to reflect the online social identity he discovered doing 
his research.

He wrote a paper titled, "The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net 
has on People's Lives" describing the research he had done and the 
contributions he received from many parts of the world. This research 
was done in 1992-1993 just at the time that the Internet was spreading to 
countries and networks around the world which were connecting to 
the Internet. Michael posted his paper on Usenet and several Internet 
mailing lists on July 6, 1993 in 4 parts under the title "Common Sense: 
The Net and Netizens: the Impact the Net is having on people's lives". 
People around the world wrote that they found his paper of interest and 
the term netizen quickly spread, not only in the online world, but soon
it was appearing in newspapers and other publications offline.

I collaborated with Michael, also doing research and writing that was
posted online. One of the people who found our writing of interest
suggested we gather them into a book. We collected our papers into an
online book titled "Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net" which was
put online in January 1994. In 1997 a second version of the book was
published in a print edition titled "Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet." The book was also translated into Japanese
and distributed Japan.

Netizens, as Michael wrote, are those who embodied the social conscious 
and public purpose similar to that which Licklider had considered 
important for the continued development of computer technology and of the 
public policy to support that development.

Michael was invited to speak at a conference in Beppu Bay in Japan in 
November 1995. In his speech he explained why he felt it was important to 
distinguish between the more general usage the media has promoted, that 
anyone online is a netizen, and the usage that he had introduced, 
reserving the title 'netizen' for the online user who actively 
participates to make the net and the world it is part of a better place. 
He explained:

 	"Netizens...are people who understand it takes effort and
 	action on each and everyone's part to make the Net a
        regenerative and vibrant community and resource. Netizens are
        people who decide to devote time and effort into making the Net,
        this new part of our world, a better place."

                    Michael Hauben, talk given on November 24, 1995
                    at the Hypernetwork '95, Beppu Bay Conference in Beppu,
                    Japan. The theme of the conference was "The Netizen
                    Revolution and the Regional Information
                    Infrastructure."

Individuals from around the world adopted and helped to spread the 
consciousness and identity of the netizen. A specially interesting 
development at the present time are the netizens of South Korea. When asking 
a number of people I met during a recent visit to South Korea if they are 
netizens, all responded yes, or "I hope so".

South Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world. Over 80% of the 
population has access to high speed Internet. Along with the spread of 
high speed Internet access in Korea is the development of netizenship 
among the Korean population. 

In a way that is similar to how Michael described the interactive, 
collaborative online processes that he and those who wrote him in the 
early 1990s, researchers in South Korea are documenting similar processes 
and the impact of netizens on Korean society. One particularly interesting 
aspect of these developments is that online processes are being adopted by 
formerly offline institutions and that online clubs have developed offline 
organizational forms as well.  Another speaker in this session will
discuss the development of the Internet and the Netizen in South Korea.

Implications and Research Questions Raised by Work

The online plastic collaboration which makes possible interactive modeling 
that Licklider and Taylor describe in their 1968 paper is a helpful 
analogy through which to view the online world that has evolved as the 
Internet has developed and spread around the world. It is similarly 
important to recognize the social consciousness of users as online citizens, 
as netizens that has evolved and spread.

In this conference today we will hear other talks which will explore the 
rich scientific and technical history that has contributed to the birth 
and development of the Internet.

I want to argue for the need for specific studies, whether historical or 
contemporaneous, of how the interactive, collaborative modeling that 
Licklider proposed as essential to further social and scientific 
development of technology is being explored via the Internet.

Also I want to argue for the need to bring this area of study into the 
public policy activities of those who are trying to contribute to the 
continued development of the Internet and the management of its 
infrastructure. For example, the WSIS meetings being held here in Tunis
demonstrate the need for an appropriate model for the management of the 
Internet's infrastructure. I want to propose that there is a need for the 
kind of plastic, collaborative, interactive and international online 
public process to form the basis for the model needed to administer the
Internet's infrastructure.  Instead outdated models developed prior to the 
Internet have been dominating the discourse among those involved in the 
WSIS process.

There are a number of research questions that arise from my paper and study. 
I hope those interested in these issues will find a way to continue the 
discussion begun in this conference after the Congress as well. 

In conclusion, not only has the Internet developed and spread around the
world with an amazing speed and impact, but the Netizens, the online
citizens who have emerged from the environment fostered by the Internet
have also developed and spread around the world. Along with the benefits 
of the online, plastic, collaborative, interactive environment that has 
developed as the Internet has developed and spread, so too the benefits 
of the new form of consciousness and identity, of netizens, have developed.
I want to argue that it is critical to the continuing development
and spread of the Internet, that the contributions and participation
of the netizens be recognized, and encouraged.

As Michael observed(4):


        "Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize the Net from
        their home, workplace, school, library, etc. These people
        are among those who populate the Net, and make it a resource
        of human beings. These netizens participate to help make the
        Net both an intellectual and a social resource."
                         from Michael Hauben, "Further Thoughts about
                         Netizens"




Notes:


(1) The myth that the Internet was created by the US Department of 
Defense as an effort to create a military communication system
that could survive a nuclear war, appears to have its origins in
both a misconception about what the Internet is and how it differs
from the Arpanet, and also in understanding the origins of the 
packet switching technology pioneered by the researchers who created
the ARPANET. (see paper architectural conception)

The myth grows from the false attribution of research that Paul
Baran did, a researcher at the RAND Institute, as research that
created packet switching. This is inaccurage. Baran's research
was not related to the early work to create either the ARPANET
nor the Internet. Larry Roberts, who headed the research to 
create the ARPANET as the head of the Information Processing 
Techniques Office (IPTO) in 1967-1972, writes, describing this
confusion.

(I)n 1965, a...meeting took palce at MIT. Donald Davies, from
the National Physical Laboratory in the UK was at MIT to give
a seminar on time sharing. Licklider, Davies and I discussed
networking and the inadequacy of data communication facilitirs
for both time sharing and networking. Davies reports that shortly
after this meeting he was struck with the concept that a store
and forward system for very short messages (now called packet
switching) was the ideal communication system for interactive
systems. (See chapter of bk)


Roberts continues. Davies " wrote about his ideas in a document
entitled "Proposal for Development of a National Communication
Service for On-Line Data processing" which envisioned a communications
network using trunk lines from 100K bits/sec in speed to 1.5 megabits/sec
T1), message sizes of 128 bytes and a switch whouch could handle up
to 10,000 messag3es/saec (Historical note: this took 20 years to 
accomplish). Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, 
"Proposal for a Digital Communication Network" in which he coined the word
packet, - a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and
also introduced the concept of an "interface computer" to sit
between the user equipment and the packet network. His design also 
included th econcept of a Packet Assembler and Disassembler (PAD) to 
interface character terminals, today a common element of most packet
networks."

Roberts explains that "As a result of distributiing his 1965 paper,
Donald Davies was given a copy of an internal Rand report "On
Distributed Communications," by Paul Baran of the Rand Corporation,
which had been written in August 1964. Baran's historical paper
also described a short message switching network using
Ti trunks and a 128 byte message size..." But Baran's report was
about a voice network. Roberts states the influence of Baran's
work was "mainly supportative, not sparking its development."
from March 22 1997 (give url)

While Davies contributions to the creation of packet switching has
not seemed to get the credit they deserve, the myth about the 
development of packet switching refers to the creation of the 
ARPANET, not to the creation of the Internet. The Internet is
a network of networks created via an international research
process to create the tcp/ip protocol. (For further background,
see url paper)

(2) You may notice, perhaps, that this description by C.P. Snow of a form of 
Brownian Motion for society, sounds similar in some ways to the concept of 
the 'public sphere' that the German philospher Jurgen Habermas explores in 
his writing.

(3)See for example, Ronda Hauben, "A Study of the ARPANET TCP/IP Digest 
and of the Role of Online Communication in the Transition from the ARPANET 
to the Internet", http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt

(4) http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netizen_thoughts.html
See also "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet"
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/