From: LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET (Public-Access Computer Systems Forum)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Subject: Settling of the Internet
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:14:52 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

4 Messages, 126 Lines
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From: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
Subject: Re:  Settling of the Internet

Internet Wilderness Society
<a 501(c)(3) organization>

Net-dwellers awake!  Civilization is encroaching on the
fragile Internet. Overpopulation and over-regulation
threaten the existence we have enjoyed all these billions
of cycles. Telcos are staking claims to parts of this territory.
Lawyers already think it's in their pocket. Librarians are
putting up guard rails and sign posts, distributing little
guide books, while even some of our very own are installing
stop lights, electric fences, taser fields to control and monitor
traffic patterns, naughty packets, and new nodes.

Excessive use by cybertrash threatens the ecology, angers the
great Netmother, and ruins our view! Join us in our fight to:
o Preserve VT100 interfaces for the unborn
o Establish a subnet where new protocols, compression standards,
broadband switches and graphic interfaces are banned and
Net.gods are honored for the knowledge they have and must
keep intact.
o Limit unaffiliated users from gaining access to Our net
o Safeguard exisiting wilderness preserves for Pale White Geeks
o Operate a bit recycling center
o Use only emacs and vi when entering the Internet.
o Carry out as many bits as you bring into Cyberspace.
o Extreme danger from flames this summer. Use caution.

----
Next meeting of the WIS will be next Friday. Joey Strauss will
channel the spirit of J.C.R. Licklider who will guide us in our
quest for a pure network.  Prof. Emeritus Winston Hodges
of Duke University will have a slide show of his trip to USENET
in 1979 when there were only two news groups.
*-----

Subject: Re: Settling of the Internet
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@msen.com>

If you are "settling" the internet, which indigenous peoples are you
displacing along the way?

I have a tape (actually it's a tar file) of all of the discussion that
went on on USENET in 1981 and the beginning of 1982, about 18 megabytes of
text, the "A News" tape.  This is a record of people working with software
that's just barely working, using a mail system that only barely works to
connect through multiple gateways off of their net, and facing high
telecommunications costs, flaky modems, and strong restrictions on use
from high speed networks (ARPANET) to which they are partly attached.
None the less they managed to log quite a few messages.

In one paradoxical sense the past is the frontier - if you have a
historical perspective, no matter how settled and orderly the current
internet might be considered to be, this slice of history is just as
unsettled and chaotic as it ever was.  Even worse you have to guess that
it will never be completely understood, since to give a proper perspective
on how the Worldnet (as it was then called) has organized itself you'd
have to find and come to grips with all of the various pieces that it is
built out of.  Better yet that is just 1981!  Between now and then there
have been many divergent developments, which are still playing themselves out.

Perhaps (just perhaps) you have grown comfortable enough with the tools
that you have to communicate in order to think that your use of the net
has "settled".  Do not confuse this with the thought that the network
itself has been conquered.  There is much that is completely unknown and
perhaps unknowable about why the network is the way it is and not some
other way, what the social and economic forces are that will change it
in the future, and what if any the optimal roles of governments and
organizations to make it "better".  Perhaps that is part of the attraction
of the Internet - there is *always* a frontier, *never* a complete
reckoning of what all is there, and really no well understood tools to
analyze a system this complicated and dynamic.

  Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com
        Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 +1 313 998 4562
    "There's something wrong with the idea that
        'information' is a commodity like a desk or a chair."
*-----

From:         Brian Marranzini <ST92D39R@DUVM>
Subject:      Re: Settling of the Internet

Ok first off i would like to make clear that i am a very new user to the intern
et system and i really dont know much about it at all (to the person with the 3
 mb of hyperstack on how to use inter net could you possibly tell me where i ca
n locate these files?). I am a freshman at drexel university and compared to th
e rest of the freshmen at this point i am an internet genius they are still try
ing to figure out mail. I know almost nothing about the system or what i can us
e it for. what I would like to know is what are your main uses for internet? It
s very difficult to even understand what i can use internet for other than mail
 and files. Idont really see the use as a research aid ive located the large li
sts of servers but it seems that actual useful applications for most users dont
 exist or at least are not easily accesible. For useful applications i mean onl
ine reference systems where i could locate obscure facts that i might need for
a paper. i realize that my ignorance of the system is somewhat annoying to thos
e who have gotten accustomed to it and i appologize for any idiotic comments.
*-----

From:         Carol Goodson/West GA College <CGOODSON@UGA>
Subject:      Re: Settling of the Internet

>think I've done...I still don't have a successful product. Until we start
>designing systems for the *users*, rather than for the designers, I think
>we still have a problem.

**I totally agree with Elizabeth Lane's comments....using the internet, or
computers, period..... should be just about as easy as using the telephone...
Most of us don't know how it works...we just pick it up and start dialing.

| Carol Goodson, Coordinator/Off-Campus Library Services         |
| Ingram Library, West Georgia College                           |
| Carrollton  GA  30118                                          |
| PHONE: (706) 830-2360   FAX: (706) 836-6626                    |
| BITNET: cgoodson@uga    INTERNET: cgoodson@uga.cc.uga.edu      |
| COMPUSERVE: 70253,1146            cgoodson@sun.cc.westga.edu.  |
..................................................................
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 while the Democrats remind you that life isn't fair, the
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Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU