https://wiki.preterhuman.net/index.php?title=A_short_history_of_the_Internet_(Feb_1993)&feed=atom&action=historyA short history of the Internet (Feb 1993) - Revision history2024-03-29T08:03:39ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.35.0https://wiki.preterhuman.net/index.php?title=A_short_history_of_the_Internet_(Feb_1993)&diff=29975&oldid=prevNetfreak: Created page with "<pre> Organization: California State University, Sacramento Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 10:44:38 GMT Subject: A short history of the Internet (Feb 1993) (Bruce Sterling) By Bruc..."2021-01-11T08:28:20Z<p>Created page with "<pre> Organization: California State University, Sacramento Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 10:44:38 GMT Subject: A short history of the Internet (Feb 1993) (Bruce Sterling) By Bruc..."</p>
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Organization: California State University, Sacramento<br />
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 10:44:38 GMT<br />
<br />
Subject: A short history of the Internet (Feb 1993) (Bruce Sterling)<br />
<br />
By Bruce Sterling<br />
<br />
bruces@well.sf.ca.us Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use From THE<br />
MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, February 1993. F&SF, Box 56, Cornwall<br />
CT 06753 $26/yr USA $31/yr other F&SF Science Column #5 "Internet"<br />
<br />
Some thirty years ago, the RAND Corporation, America's foremost Cold War<br />
think-tank, faced a strange strategic problem. How could the US authorities<br />
successfully communicate after a nuclear war?<br />
<br />
Postnuclear America would need a command-and-control network, linked<br />
from city to city, state to state, base to base. But no matter how thoroughly<br />
that network was armored or protected, its switches and wiring would always be<br />
vulnerable to the impact of atomic bombs. A nuclear attack would reduce any<br />
conceivable network to tatters.<br />
<br />
And how would the network itself be commanded and controlled? Any<br />
central authority, any network central citadel, would be an obvious and<br />
immediate target for an enemy missile. The center of the network would be the<br />
very first place to go.<br />
<br />
RAND mulled over this grim puzzle in deep military secrecy, and arrived<br />
at a daring solution. The RAND proposal (the brainchild of RAND staffer Paul<br />
Baran) was made public in 1964. In the first place, the network would *have no<br />
central authority.* Furthermore, it would be *designed from the beginning to<br />
operate while in tatters.*<br />
<br />
The principles were simple. The network itself would be assumed to be<br />
unreliable at all times. It would be designed from the get-go to transcend its<br />
own unreliability. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status to<br />
all other nodes, each node with its own authority to originate, pass, and<br />
receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets, each<br />
packet separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source<br />
node, and end at some other specified destination node. Each packet would wind<br />
its way through the network on an individual basis.<br />
<br />
The particular route that the packet took would be unimportant. Only<br />
final results would count. Basically, the packet would be tossed like a hot<br />
potato from node to node to node, more or less in the direction of its<br />
destination, until it ended up in the proper place. If big pieces of the<br />
network had been blown away, that simply wouldn't matter; the packets would<br />
still stay airborne, lateralled wildly across the field by whatever nodes<br />
happened to survive. This rather haphazard delivery system might be<br />
"inefficient" in the usual sense (especially compared to, say, the telephone<br />
system) -- but it would be extremely rugged.<br />
<br />
During the 60s, this intriguing concept of a decentralized, blastproof,<br />
packet-switching network was kicked around by RAND, MIT and UCLA. The National<br />
Physical Laboratory in Great Britain set up the first test network on these<br />
principles in 1968. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research<br />
Projects Agency decided to fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA.<br />
The nodes of the network were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed<br />
for supercomputers at the time). These were rare and valuable machines which<br />
were in real need of good solid networking, for the sake of national<br />
research-and-development projects.<br />
<br />
In fall 1969, the first such node was installed in UCLA. By December<br />
1969, there were four nodes on the infant network, which was named ARPANET,<br />
after its Pentagon sponsor.<br />
<br />
The four computers could transfer data on dedicated high- speed<br />
transmission lines. They could even be programmed remotely from the other<br />
nodes. Thanks to ARPANET, scientists and researchers could share one another's<br />
computer facilities by long-distance. This was a very handy service, for<br />
computer-time was precious in the early '70s. In 1971 there were fifteen nodes<br />
in ARPANET; by 1972, thirty-seven nodes. And it was good.<br />
<br />
By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became clear.<br />
ARPANET's users had warped the computer-sharing network into a dedicated,<br />
high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post- office. The main traffic on<br />
ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal<br />
messages. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade<br />
notes on work, and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had<br />
their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers, and their own<br />
personal addresses for electronic mail. Not only were they using ARPANET for<br />
person-to-person communication, but they were very enthusiastic about this<br />
particular service -- far more enthusiastic than they were about long-distance<br />
computation.<br />
<br />
It wasn't long before the invention of the mailing-list, an ARPANET<br />
broadcasting technique in which an identical message could be sent<br />
automatically to large numbers of network subscribers. Interestingly, one of<br />
the first really big mailing-lists was "SF- LOVERS," for science fiction fans.<br />
Discussing science fiction on the network was not work-related and was frowned<br />
upon by many ARPANET computer administrators, but this didn't stop it from<br />
happening.<br />
<br />
Throughout the '70s, ARPA's network grew. Its decentralized structure<br />
made expansion easy. Unlike standard corporate computer networks, the ARPA<br />
network could accommodate many different kinds of machine. As long as<br />
individual machines could speak the packet-switching lingua franca of the new,<br />
anarchic network, their brand-names, and their content, and even their<br />
ownership, were irrelevant.<br />
<br />
The ARPA's original standard for communication was known as NCP,<br />
"Network Control Protocol," but as time passed and the technique advanced, NCP<br />
was superceded by a higher-level, more sophisticated standard known as TCP/IP.<br />
TCP, or "Transmission Control Protocol," converts messages into streams of<br />
packets at the source, then reassembles them back into messages at the<br />
destination. IP, or "Internet Protocol," handles the addressing, seeing to it<br />
that packets are routed across multiple nodes and even across multiple<br />
networks with multiple standards -- not only ARPA's pioneering NCP standard,<br />
but others like Ethernet, FDDI, and X.25.<br />
<br />
As early as 1977, TCP/IP was being used by other networks to link to<br />
ARPANET. ARPANET itself remained fairly tightly controlled, at least until<br />
1983, when its military segment broke off and became MILNET. But TCP/IP linked<br />
them all. And ARPANET itself, though it was growing, became a smaller and<br />
smaller neighborhood amid the vastly growing galaxy of other linked machines.<br />
<br />
As the '70s and '80s advanced, many very different social groups found<br />
themselves in possession of powerful computers. It was fairly easy to link<br />
these computers to the growing network-of- networks. As the use of TCP/IP<br />
became more common, entire other networks fell into the digital embrace of the<br />
Internet, and messily adhered. Since the software called TCP/IP was<br />
public-domain, and the basic technology was decentralized and rather anarchic<br />
by its very nature, it was difficult to stop people from barging in and<br />
linking up somewhere-or-other. In point of fact, nobody *wanted* to stop them<br />
from joining this branching complex of networks, which came to be known as the<br />
"Internet."<br />
<br />
Connecting to the Internet cost the taxpayer little or nothing, since<br />
each node was independent, and had to handle its own financing and its own<br />
technical requirements. The more, the merrier. Like the phone network, the<br />
computer network became steadily more valuable as it embraced larger and<br />
larger territories of people and resources.<br />
<br />
A fax machine is only valuable if *everybody else* has a fax machine.<br />
Until they do, a fax machine is just a curiosity. ARPANET, too, was a<br />
curiosity for a while. Then computer-networking became an utter necessity.<br />
<br />
In 1984 the National Science Foundation got into the act, through its<br />
Office of Advanced Scientific Computing. The new NSFNET set a blistering pace<br />
for technical advancement, linking newer, faster, shinier supercomputers,<br />
through thicker, faster links, upgraded and expanded, again and again, in<br />
1986, 1988, 1990. And other government agencies leapt in: NASA, the National<br />
Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, each of them maintaining a<br />
digital satrapy in the Internet confederation.<br />
<br />
The nodes in this growing network-of-networks were divvied up into basic<br />
varieties. Foreign computers, and a few American ones, chose to be denoted by<br />
their geographical locations. The others were grouped by the six basic<br />
Internet "domains": gov, mil, edu, com, org and net. (Graceless abbreviations<br />
such as this are a standard feature of the TCP/IP protocols.) Gov, Mil, and<br />
Edu denoted governmental, military and educational institutions, which were,<br />
of course, the pioneers, since ARPANET had begun as a high-tech research<br />
exercise in national security. Com, however, stood for "commercial"<br />
institutions, which were soon bursting into the network like rodeo bulls,<br />
surrounded by a dust-cloud of eager nonprofit "orgs." (The "net" computers<br />
served as gateways between networks.)<br />
<br />
ARPANET itself formally expired in 1989, a happy victim of its own<br />
overwhelming success. Its users scarcely noticed, for ARPANET's functions not<br />
only continued but steadily improved. The use of TCP/IP standards for computer<br />
networking is now global. In 1971, a mere twenty-one years ago, there were<br />
only four nodes in the ARPANET network. Today there are tens of thousands of<br />
nodes in the Internet, scattered over forty-two countries, with more coming<br />
on-line every day. Three million, possibly four million people use this<br />
gigantic mother-of-all-computer-networks.<br />
<br />
The Internet is especially popular among scientists, and is probably the<br />
most important scientific instrument of the late twentieth century. The<br />
powerful, sophisticated access that it provides to specialized data and<br />
personal communication has sped up the pace of scientific research enormously.<br />
<br />
The Internet's pace of growth in the early 1990s is spectacular, almost<br />
ferocious. It is spreading faster than cellular phones, faster than fax<br />
machines. Last year the Internet was growing at a rate of twenty percent a<br />
*month.* The number of "host" machines with direct connection to TCP/IP has<br />
been doubling every year since 1988. The Internet is moving out of its<br />
original base in military and research institutions, into elementary and high<br />
schools, as well as into public libraries and the commercial sector.<br />
<br />
Why do people want to be "on the Internet?" One of the main reasons is<br />
simple freedom. The Internet is a rare example of a true, modern, functional<br />
anarchy. There is no "Internet Inc." There are no official censors, no bosses,<br />
no board of directors, no stockholders. In principle, any node can speak as a<br />
peer to any other node, as long as it obeys the rules of the TCP/IP protocols,<br />
which are strictly technical, not social or political. (There has been some<br />
struggle over commercial use of the Internet, but that situation is changing<br />
as businesses supply their own links).<br />
<br />
The Internet is also a bargain. The Internet as a whole, unlike the<br />
phone system, doesn't charge for long-distance service. And unlike most<br />
commercial computer networks, it doesn't charge for access time, either. In<br />
fact the "Internet" itself, which doesn't even officially exist as an entity,<br />
never "charges" for anything. Each group of people accessing the Internet is<br />
responsible for their own machine and their own section of line.<br />
<br />
The Internet's "anarchy" may seem strange or even unnatural, but it<br />
makes a certain deep and basic sense. It's rather like the "anarchy" of the<br />
English language. Nobody rents English, and nobody owns English. As an<br />
English-speaking person, it's up to you to learn how to speak English properly<br />
and make whatever use you please of it (though the government provides certain<br />
subsidies to help you learn to read and write a bit). Otherwise, everybody<br />
just sort of pitches in, and somehow the thing evolves on its own, and somehow<br />
turns out workable. And interesting. Fascinating, even. Though a lot of people<br />
earn their living from using and exploiting and teaching English, "English" as<br />
an institution is public property, a public good. Much the same goes for the<br />
Internet. Would English be improved if the "The English Language, Inc." had a<br />
board of directors and a chief executive officer, or a President and a<br />
Congress? There'd probably be a lot fewer new words in English, and a lot<br />
fewer new ideas.<br />
<br />
People on the Internet feel much the same way about their own<br />
institution. It's an institution that resists institutionalization. The<br />
Internet belongs to everyone and no one.<br />
<br />
Still, its various interest groups all have a claim. Business people<br />
want the Internet put on a sounder financial footing. Government people want<br />
the Internet more fully regulated. Academics want it dedicated exclusively to<br />
scholarly research. Military people want it spy-proof and secure. And so on<br />
and so on.<br />
<br />
All these sources of conflict remain in a stumbling balance today, and<br />
the Internet, so far, remains in a thrivingly anarchical condition. Once upon<br />
a time, the NSFnet's high-speed, high-capacity lines were known as the<br />
"Internet Backbone," and their owners could rather lord it over the rest of<br />
the Internet; but today there are "backbones" in Canada, Japan, and Europe,<br />
and even privately owned commercial Internet backbones specially created for<br />
carrying business traffic. Today, even privately owned desktop computers can<br />
become Internet nodes. You can carry one under your arm. Soon, perhaps, on<br />
your wrist.<br />
<br />
But what does one *do* with the Internet? Four things, basically: mail,<br />
discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file transfers.<br />
<br />
Internet mail is "e-mail," electronic mail, faster by several orders of<br />
magnitude than the US Mail, which is scornfully known by Internet regulars as<br />
"snailmail." Internet mail is somewhat like fax. It's electronic text. But you<br />
don't have to pay for it (at least not directly), and it's global in scope.<br />
E-mail can also send software and certain forms of compressed digital imagery.<br />
New forms of mail are in the works.<br />
<br />
The discussion groups, or "newsgroups," are a world of their own. This<br />
world of news, debate and argument is generally known as "USENET. " USENET is,<br />
in point of fact, quite different from the Internet. USENET is rather like an<br />
enormous billowing crowd of gossipy, news-hungry people, wandering in and<br />
through the Internet on their way to various private backyard barbecues.<br />
USENET is not so much a physical network as a set of social conventions. In<br />
any case, at the moment there are some 2,500 separate newsgroups on USENET,<br />
and their discussions generate about 7 million words of typed commentary every<br />
single day. Naturally there is a vast amount of talk about computers on<br />
USENET, but the variety of subjects discussed is enormous, and it's growing<br />
larger all the time. USENET also distributes various free electronic journals<br />
and publications.<br />
<br />
Both netnews and e-mail are very widely available, even outside the<br />
high-speed core of the Internet itself. News and e-mail are easily available<br />
over common phone-lines, from Internet fringe- realms like BITnet, UUCP and<br />
Fidonet. The last two Internet services, long-distance computing and file<br />
transfer, require what is known as "direct Internet access" -- using TCP/IP.<br />
<br />
Long-distance computing was an original inspiration for ARPANET and is<br />
still a very useful service, at least for some. Programmers can maintain<br />
accounts on distant, powerful computers, run programs there or write their<br />
own. Scientists can make use of powerful supercomputers a continent away.<br />
Libraries offer their electronic card catalogs for free search. Enormous<br />
CD-ROM catalogs are increasingly available through this service. And there are<br />
fantastic amounts of free software available.<br />
<br />
File transfers allow Internet users to access remote machines and<br />
retrieve programs or text. Many Internet computers -- some two thousand of<br />
them, so far -- allow any person to access them anonymously, and to simply<br />
copy their public files, free of charge. This is no small deal, since entire<br />
books can be transferred through direct Internet access in a matter of<br />
minutes. Today, in 1992, there are over a million such public files available<br />
to anyone who asks for them (and many more millions of files are available to<br />
people with accounts). Internet file-transfers are becoming a new form of<br />
publishing, in which the reader simply electronically copies the work on<br />
demand, in any quantity he or she wants, for free. New Internet programs, such<br />
as "archie," "gopher," and "WAIS," have been developed to catalog and explore<br />
these enormous archives of material.<br />
<br />
The headless, anarchic, million-limbed Internet is spreading like<br />
bread-mold. Any computer of sufficient power is a potential spore for the<br />
Internet, and today such computers sell for less than $2,000 and are in the<br />
hands of people all over the world. ARPA's network, designed to assure control<br />
of a ravaged society after a nuclear holocaust, has been superceded by its<br />
mutant child the Internet, which is thoroughly out of control, and spreading<br />
exponentially through the post-Cold War electronic global village. The spread<br />
of the Internet in the 90s resembles the spread of personal computing in the<br />
1970s, though it is even faster and perhaps more important. More important,<br />
perhaps, because it may give those personal computers a means of cheap, easy<br />
storage and access that is truly planetary in scale.<br />
<br />
The future of the Internet bids fair to be bigger and exponentially<br />
faster. Commercialization of the Internet is a very hot topic today, with<br />
every manner of wild new commercial information- service promised. The federal<br />
government, pleased with an unsought success, is also still very much in the<br />
act. NREN, the National Research and Education Network, was approved by the US<br />
Congress in fall 1991, as a five-year, $2 billion project to upgrade the<br />
Internet "backbone." NREN will be some fifty times faster than the fastest<br />
network available today, allowing the electronic transfer of the entire<br />
Encyclopedia Britannica in one hot second. Computer networks worldwide will<br />
feature 3-D animated graphics, radio and cellular phone-links to portable<br />
computers, as well as fax, voice, and high- definition television. A<br />
multimedia global circus!<br />
<br />
Or so it's hoped -- and planned. The real Internet of the future may<br />
bear very little resemblance to today's plans. Planning has never seemed to<br />
have much to do with the seething, fungal development of the Internet. After<br />
all, today's Internet bears little resemblance to those original grim plans<br />
for RAND's post- holocaust command grid. It's a fine and happy irony.<br />
<br />
How does one get access to the Internet? Well -- if you don't have a<br />
computer and a modem, get one. Your computer can act as a terminal, and you<br />
can use an ordinary telephone line to connect to an Internet-linked machine.<br />
These slower and simpler adjuncts to the Internet can provide you with the<br />
netnews discussion groups and your own e-mail address. These are services<br />
worth having -- though if you only have mail and news, you're not actually "on<br />
the Internet" proper.<br />
<br />
If you're on a campus, your university may have direct "dedicated<br />
access" to high-speed Internet TCP/IP lines. Apply for an Internet account on<br />
a dedicated campus machine, and you may be able to get those hot-dog<br />
long-distance computing and file-transfer functions. Some cities, such as<br />
Cleveland, supply "freenet" community access. Businesses increasingly have<br />
Internet access, and are willing to sell it to subscribers. The standard fee<br />
is about $40 a month -- about the same as TV cable service.<br />
<br />
As the Nineties proceed, finding a link to the Internet will become much<br />
cheaper and easier. Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for<br />
the savage UNIX interface of TCP/IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in<br />
user-friendliness. Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it,<br />
is wise. By the turn of the century, "network literacy," like "computer<br />
literacy" before it, will be forcing itself into the very texture of your<br />
life.<br />
<br />
For Further Reading: The Whole Internet Catalog & User's Guide by Ed Krol.<br />
(1992) O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. A clear, non-jargonized introduction to<br />
the intimidating business of network literacy. Many computer- documentation<br />
manuals attempt to be funny. Mr. Krol's book is *actually* funny.<br />
<br />
The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide. by John<br />
Quarterman. Digital Press: Bedford, MA. (1990) Massive and highly technical<br />
compendium detailing the mind-boggling scope and complexity of our newly<br />
networked planet. <br />
<br />
The Internet Companion by Tracy LaQuey with Jeanne C. Ryer<br />
(1992) Addison Wesley. Evangelical etiquette guide to the Internet featuring<br />
anecdotal tales of life-changing Internet experiences. Foreword by Senator Al<br />
Gore.<br />
<br />
Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide by Brendan P. Kehoe (1992)<br />
Prentice Hall. Brief but useful Internet guide with plenty of good advice on<br />
useful machines to paw over for data. Mr Kehoe's guide bears the singularly<br />
wonderful distinction of being available in electronic form free of charge.<br />
I'm doing the same with all my F&SF Science articles, including, of course,<br />
this one.<br />
<br />
[end]<br />
--<br />
= Daniel Davidson =<br />
San Francisco State University<br />
davidson@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu<br />
<br />
It is considered appropriate to sustain conditions which<br />
are against the best interests of almost everyone.<br />
<br />
<br />
-!- GEcho 1.01+<br />
! Origin: Helix - A Nuclear Free Zone - Seattle - (206)783-6368 (1:343/70)<br />
</pre><br />
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[[Category:Internet]][[Category:1993]]</div>Netfreak