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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 342
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" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>
To: "Benjamin Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>
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
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/fall99contracts/>. 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 <ronda@panix.com>
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 <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [netz] L.A. Times column, 10/11/99
The netizens mailing list received the following post as a forward from:
> From: Yannis Corovesis <ycor@epmhs.gr>
> 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
------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------
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.
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------------------------------
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
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