Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 366
Netizens-Digest Monday, October 2 2000 Volume 01 : Number 366
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TCP/IP
[netz] Response to Vint Cerf's statement about Gore's role in Internet(1of2)
[netz] Response to statement V. Cerf sent about Gore's role in Internet(2of2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:31:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TCP/IP
Announcing
Amateur Computerist Vol 10 No 1: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TCP/IP
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/text/ACN10-1.txt
Table of Contents
[1] Welcoming the Millennium
[2] Who Can Watch the Watchdog?
[3] Internet Pioneers Panel
[4] Citizens' Agenda 2000 Forum
[5] Cleveland Freenet Closed
[6] From the Internet: Some Background
[7] Oral History of the Internet
[8] 30 Years of RFCs
[9] Principles of the Internet
[10] ARPANET Mailing Lists
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
With this issue, the Amateur Computerist welcomes the new millennium.
It celebrates the 25th anniversary of "A Protocol for Packet Network
Intercommunication" by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. This paper marked
A significant change both in the development of packet switching networks
as they were developed up to its publication and in the notion of what
would make possible a global, ubiquitous computer communications
infrastructure for the future, the Internet.
The Open Architecture Network Environment welcomes diversity and makes
communication possible among different networks. The goal of making
resource sharing possible not only in a network, but among diverse
networks is a goal at the foundation of the Internet. The Internet
heralds in a new era and appropriately symbolizes the promise of the
new millennium.
This issue of the Amateur Computerist opens with an article on the
recently issued GAO report on ICANN. There is an excerpt from
testimony given by Robert Kahn to a U.S. Congressional subcommittee
describing the early development of the Internet. It also contains RFC
2555 about the early development of RFCs. RFC 2555 was issued to
celebrate the 30th anniversary of the RFCs and as a tribute to the
work of Jon Postel who died in Fall, 1998. The RFC includes comments
by Joyce Reynolds, Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf, Jake Feinler. Also, in
the issue is the article "Some Principles of the Internet" describing
in more detail the early technical issues of the Internet. There is a
report on the Internet pioneers panel held at the ACM SIGCOMM99 in
August 1999. Also, there is a report on a conference in Finland held
by the EU on how citizens can participate more in decision making by
those in government. A proposal for an oral history of the Internet
follows. Along with a note about the closing of the Cleveland
Free-Net, the issue ends with the continued serialization of an
article on the early mailing list on ARPANET, the MsgGroup mailing
list.
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/text/ACN10-1.txt
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
The Amateur Computerist is also available by free email subscription
or as a single file by sending email to jrh@ais.org.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 13:27:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: ronda@panix.com
Subject: [netz] Response to Vint Cerf's statement about Gore's role in Internet(1of2)
The statement Vint Cerf sent out about the important role played
by Presidential candidate Al Gore in Internet development is an
interesting commentary on the state of political awareness of
corporate America in the US.
Vint Cerf wrote:
VC> [Originally To: Declan McCullaugh <declan@well.com>, farber@cis.upenn.edu
VC> Cc: rkahn@cnri.reston.va.us]
VC> Dave and Declan,
VC> I am taking the liberty of sending to you both a brief summary of Al
VC> Gore's Internet involvement, prepared by Bob Kahn and me. As you know,
VC> there have been a seemingly unending series of jokes chiding the vice
VC> president for his assertion that he "took the initiative in creating the
VC> Internet."
VC> Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for
VC> his early recognition of the importance of what has become the Internet.
VC> I thought you might find this short summary of sufficient interest to
VC> share it with Politech and the IP lists, respectively.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf have a long and important experience as
Internet pioneers in the U.S. Therefore one would hope that they
would also recognize the responsibility this carries with it to
carry on the responsible role of a computer scientist and
pioneering engineers and inventors.
In other writing Bob Kahn has documented his recognition of this
responsibility by writing of the need to determine what the role
of government has been and should continue to be in the
development of the Internet.
(See http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-1.txt The article is "The
Role of Government in the Evolution of the Internet." from
Communications of the ACM, vol 37, no. 8, August 1994. )
Kahn's article points out the important role the US government
played in the early development of the Internet and the need for
a continuing role for both the US government and governments
around the world.
What, however, does the statement about "Al Gore and the
Internet" by Kahn and Cerf that Vint Cerf has circulated say?
==============================================================
>Al Gore and the Internet
>By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
>Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the
>Internet and to promote and support its development.
Instead of tracing the history and nature of the role of the U.S.
government in making Internet development possible, this
statement is, it seems, a statement claiming that whatever this
one candidate for office did, that is to be lauded.
Hence there are no principles established for what would be
appropriate support, nor is there any effort to establish what
the nature of the government role has been in Internet
development.
Instead there is a statement that this candidate is to be
applauded for what he has done.
>No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
>Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
>people in government and the university community. But as the two people
>who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
>Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
>Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
>our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of
>time.
It is interesting that this statement leaves out the important
role of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the creation of
the Internet. And of both Eisenhower and Kennedy in supporting
that development. It was under Eisenhower's presidency that ARPA
was created. And then under Kennedy's presidency that the
Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) was created.
These government institutions were crucial in making it possible
to provide scientific support for computer science researchers
who created interactive computing and then went on to build on
potential of time-sharing to create a computer network that would
link the various time-sharing communities that had been created.
The paper designing the tcp/ip protocol was done in 1973 and
published in May 1974.
(see http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt)
>Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role.
>He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
>initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
>argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
>there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
>initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
>Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
>promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
>is timely to offer our perspective.
If Gore had intended to raise the public question of what should
be the role of the US government in the creation of the Internet,
this would be the basis for an important and appropriate campaign
issue to be raised and spoken to by all candidates in the US
election.
Since this continues to be the real question, it is important to
explore it.
>As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
>telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
>improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
>to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact
>than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily
>forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial
>concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even
>earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as
>we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still
>in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided
>intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential
>benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he
>sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in
>areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural
>disasters and other crises.
In an article he wrote for Scientific American in the 1980's, Bob
Kahn explains how the Internet grew out of the efforts toward
the development of time-sharing.
The important point about this is that time-sharing efforts were
the effort to develop interactive computing, to develop a
relationship between the human and the computer.
In October 1960 JCR Licklider wrote an article called "Man-
Computer Symbiosis". That article explained that computer
development would progress most effectively if the effort was
made to make it possible for humans to interact with computers.
The vision for the development of this human-computer partnership
grew out of the notion that important potential of the computer
was as system that would make possible intellectual power for humans
but that the human brain was a very developed system that should
be augmented by the computer at the stage of development that one
could foresee at the time.
Licklider proposed the great benefit that would come from a
partnership between the human and the computer which would
provide society with the kind of intellectual power that neither
the human nor the computer on its own could provide.
This was the vision that led to the development of time sharing
communities. From these it became evident that computer
facilitated human to human communication was a new important
power for society.
>From this vision the notion of the developing network as an
intellectual public utility was raised by the time sharing
pioneers.
And that it was important to foster such human to human
cooperation and collaboration that grew from the human-computer
computer communications system development.
The beginnings of the ARPANET and then of the Internet were as a
resource sharing network, making possible the sharing of both
human and computer resources resources.
Is this what any of the candidates for the US presidency
recognize as the roots of the development of the Internet?
Is this what we are being told is the vision that Al Gore has
had and has worked to help implement?
>As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate
>what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks
>into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with
>officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured
>the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in
>1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education
>Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the
>spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.
It is important to look at what the vision of the NREN was. And
then what has happened since, keeping in mind the pioneering
vision of the Internet as a means of augmenting intellectual
power the way other technologies in the past were able to augment
muscle power.
(to be continue)
Ronda
ronda@ais.org
- -------------
For the development of ARPA and the IPTO, see
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 13:30:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: ronda@panix.com
Subject: [netz] Response to statement V. Cerf sent about Gore's role in Internet(2of2)
Part two of response to Vint Cerf's email about his and Bob Kahn's statement
about Al Gore's role in building the Internet.
They write:
>1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education
>Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the
>spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.
The NREN initiative was being discussed in the early 1990's.
It claimed it would be support for a research and education networking
inititive.
That initiative somehow disappeared, and instead the NSFNET (the backbone
of the Internet in the US) was given to private interests.
A major change in Internet policy was made without any public
discussion of why this would be desirable. And it was done at
a time when there was officially the claim there would be support
for a research and education network.
The only public discussion that seems to have been held about
this happening was the online NTIA conference held by the
U.S. Dept of Commerce in November 1994. During this conference
there were many people explaining why it was not appropriate to
privatize the public US backbone to the Internet.
The official from the NTIA lauded the conference and the citizen
participation in it.
(See chapter 11 and 14 - http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)
Somehow any trace of the development of a national research and
education network (NREN) disappeared in the US and the Internet
development in the US was put in the hands of private entities.
There was a mailing list that several Internet pioneers and NSF
officials participated in called com-priv (commericalization and
privatization) There were people on that list fighting over
who would get the spoils of the Internet privatization.
I later learned that ANS (a company which involved IBM and MCI which
worked with the MERIT network in Michigan) sold their interest
in the US NSF backbone to another company, The person mentioned
that they got $300,000 for it.
None of this was discussed openly before the privatization.
And it basically hasn't been discussed openly since.
But public property and public policy were privatized without
any concern for the interests of the public, who indicated
that many were opposed as they felt this would lead to
a situation where access would be available to the wealthy and
to the business world and not to the citizens.
Also people at the NTIA online conference pointed out that the
nature of the Internet would be changed if people are being
encouraged to feel they are customers, rather than contributors
to the Net.
However, Licklider's vision was that people are users, are part
of a human-computer symbiosis or dependency, and that each partner
of this symbiosis benefits from the relationship. What happens when
one begins to treat the humans as customers and claim the ttechnology
belongs to commercial companies which they control.
What happens to the scientific roots of the Internet. What happens
to the notion of user as architecture of the developing network?
>As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as
>well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government agencies
>that spawned it. He served as the major administration proponent for
One doesn't just "release" public property out of the "control of
government agencies".
There are supposedly safeguards for the protection of public
property and of the public interest by government.
Officials of the US government have an obligation to protect
public property.
The recent General Accounting Office (GAO) statement about
the effort of the US Dept of Commerce to transfer public property
from the US government to ICANN noted that it is unconstitutional
for the US governmnent to transfer US public property without
the proper statutory authority.
"Un the Property Clause of the Constition disposal of government
property requires statutory authority. U.S. Constitution,
Art IV, S 3, cl. 2"
.
To have such a big change of policy with so little public awareness
and public discussion, as the "releasing" of the public NSF backbone
of the Internet to private entities, shows the constitutional
crisis that exists in the US at the current time.
>continued investment in advanced computing and networking and private
>sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong proponent of
In the early 1990's there were a series of free-nets developing
around the US. These were a means of providing free access that
would be available to all.
There was discussion of the importance of some public policy that
recognized and supported such initiatives at the NTIA online conference.
It isn't that any US politician, to my knowledge, proposed the
importance of supporting such initiatives.
One wonders about the kind of scientific advice that politicans
get in the US. And who the advisors are.
Unfortunately, it seems the advisors are from the big communications
or computer companies that will benefit from giving advice to
support "private sector" Internet development.
Shortly after the privatization of the Internet, there was a big
governnment contract that went to an communications company,
probably one of the companies that was very active having its
officials lobby for privatization of the Internet.
While scientists who get public funds seem to have a provision of
the law that forbids them from lobbying in favor of funds for
science, it seems that private corporate contractors have no
such constraint.
It would be good to understand better this aspect of US law,
as it seems scientists and those who might provide public officials
with advice that could serve the public interest, are constrained
in their activities, while corporate entities don't seem to have
such constraints.
While public officials in the past seemed to recognize the need
to hear from those who don't have a commercial self interest on an
issue, it seems now that in the US only those with a commercial
self interest are considered to be the "stakeholders" that need
to be heard.
This is what has become the privatization of public policy in
the US in the recent past, particularly with regard to the development
of the Internet in the US.
>extending access to the network to schools and libraries. Today,
>approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the Internet.
I recently went to a meeting (a "town meeting" about the Internet
held by corporations - another example of the privatization of
public policy in the US.) People there reported that
there is a major campaign in NYC to have access to the net
for children in schools in return for them reading ads.
Up to now there has been an effort to keep the schools in NYC
from having ads.
The kind of access to the Internet that the US government has been
promoting is to a "commercially driven" entity where users
are put at the mercy of advertisers.
This is very far from the kind of "intellectual public utility"
that pioneers of the early time-sharing systems envisioned for
the future of the Internet.
Had the free-nets been developed, they were a non commercial means
of providing access for students in schools. Similarly, the NSF
backbone could have been extended to link the public schools
to an education and research network.
>Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy
>privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it
>to become a commercially-driven operation.
It would seem that there was a need for public discussion and
consideration of the public property and the public interest and
not "much-needed political support for the speedy privatization
of the Interenet".
And it seems that any "speedy privatization" is cause for
serious questioning of what has happened to the public interest
and public property.
Who determined that the "time arrived for it to become a
commercial-driven operation"?
That wasn't the public assessment as demmonstrated by the
NTIA online conference in November 1994 several months
before the privatization in May 1995.
If Al Gore was responsible for this, one wonders who was pressuring
for such a development, and why there was no effort to get
advice that would counter such pressure.
Does Al Gore also support the privatization of the essential
functions of the Internet infrastructure?
At a meeting at the Berkman Center at the JFK School of Government
at Harvard in January 2000, a staffer for Gore, Elaine Kamarck
described the importance of government to protect the kinds
of infrastructure where people's economic lives are at stake.
That in a government there are penalties for officials who
abuse their public obligations, while in a private corporate
entity like ICANN, there no such penalties.
Will Al Gore hear this kind of advice? Or are the pressures from
those who advocate on behalf of the computer or communications
corporations who benefit from "as much private as possible" too
strong to resist?
>There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid
>growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political
>support for its privatization and continued support for research in
>advanced networking technology.
In "The Net and the Netizens" written in 1992-1993, there is documentation
of how the Internet was spreading. This was not becasue of its
privatization, but to the contrary, because it was offering a general
nature communications human-computer system that was welcomed
by people around the world. And there was a continuing
effort to spread it through academic and public and community
means. Also the Acceptible Use Policy (AUP) of the NSFNet
welcomed the links to networks to other countries as long as
those countries reciprocated in providing access to their
developing networks to those on the NSFNet.
Also the free-nets had begun to spread to other countries.
This was the kind of effort similar to that proposed by JCR Licklider
who envisioned the challenge that the development of the network would pose
to society. He warned against putting development in the hands
of commercial entities who wouldn't understand the nature of what
was being developed.
If private entities are so capable, why didn't they develop their
own networking infrastructure and spread it.
But instead they campaigned vigorously to have the public networking
infrastructure given to them.
In the early development of the Internet, there was a desire
by the US Department of Defense to have an operational network.
And there was a research network.
It wasn't that the US Department of Defense seized the research
network. Instead they created a separate network and linked it
to the research network. This is the kind of development that
tcp/ip makes possible. So the early Internet was a linking
of MILNET (the operational DoD network) with the ARPANET (the
science and research network).
Yet this isn't what was done with in the connection of private
companies to the Internet. Instead the US NSF research and education
network was turned over to the private companies.
This is the kind of development that is contrary to the nature
of an Internet, not development that scales and spreads the
Internet.
This is the kind of development that aims to replace the Internet
with a corporate commercenet.
>No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in
>helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than
>the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this
>effort, both in the councils of government and with the
>public at large.
The climate that would create a thriving Internet is a climate
that recognized that the interests and voices of the citizens
in the US and around the world need to be part of the decision
making process regarding Internet development and policy.
That the role of the government with regard to Internet development
is a vital questions that needs to have resources and public discussion
devoted to its determination.
JCR Licklider recognized that there were socio-technical pioneers
who were developing online who were creating the kinds of new
developments that all users would benefit from. That these
socio-technical pioneers were creative users who needed protection
and support for their efforts.
The privatization of US portion of the Internet has led to the abuse
of all users.
And the kind of new development that creative users can foster
is hamstrung and left with little or no resources for its support,
while get-rich-quick-schemes proliferate.
The vision of fostering cooperative and creative computer facilitated
human-to- human efforts to identify the important social and
scientific questions, and extending the human-computer symbiosis to
solve them, is lost or rarely mentioned.
If Al Gore has any understanding of this pioneering vision, it
would be good to see some indication of it.
>The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value
>of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and
>consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American
>citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.
But JCR Licklider's vision for the development of the Intergalactic Network
that inspired computer pioneers to develop the Internet, was not primarly
a vision for "high speed computing and communication". It was
primarly a vision for fostering cooperative and collaborative human-to-
human communication and human-computer partnership to solve
the important social and scientific problems of our time.
It recognized the need to create a new online scientific environment.
Licklider's vision was that all have access to a network where
"intellectual amplification" would be seen as a right not a
privilege.
Licklider's vision for the development of a network was for
a general nature intellectual utility, not for a commercial shoping
mart or 500 channel tv.
Licklider recognized that industry would have its own agenda which
would be for short term purposes and its own self interest, rather
than the broader public interest.
And Licklider urged that citizens not give up on government, but
that they work to have government support the long term public
interest in technical and scientific development.
There seems, from the statement Vint Cerf has sent around online,
little way for a presidential candidate to hear or be
able to recognize what the public interest is in technical and
scientific development.
It doesn't seem that anyone with the ear of that candidate would
tell him about the NTIA online meeting and the fact that there
were many citizens opposed to the privatization of the NSF backbone
to the Internet.
And yet this is what the candidates need to know about.
It doesn't seem that there are scientific advisors who would
indicate that there was a support for basic research in the early
development of interactive computing and networking in the US.
(See for example:
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/arpa_ipto.txt
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/basicresearch.txt
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/centers-excellence.txt )
Don Price, in his book "Government and Science" explains the
need for scientific advisors to the president who will provide
government with the broad spectrum of views and information.
Instead it seems that there are thosee who function as a
scientific or technical advisor to government, to narrow
down what the government officials will know about and what they
will be encouraged to consider in determining public policy
regarding science and technology and important public and scientific
resources like the Internet.
This doesn't bode well for the future for whoever gets into
the presidency in the US.
The statement that Vint Cerf sent around online shows the
narrow set of information and views that a US presidential candidate
has access to.
Thus this presents a serious challenge for citizens around the world.
The concept of netizen, of those users who would take up such
challenges that the development and scaling of the Internet
raise, is needed more than ever.
>WorldCom
>22001 Loudoun County Parkway
>Building F2, Room 4115, ATTN: Vint Cerf
Ronda
ronda@ais.org
ronda@panix.com
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/internet.txt
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/birth_internet.txt
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #366
******************************
