Talk:The Computer Revolution/The Internet Revolution

=To Add=

off of the top of my head:
 * more history of usenet
 * spam and anti-spam
 * The Internet Cabal (the backbone Usenet sites that were able to pay international charges), its rise in ?? and demise in 1984?
 * Yanov and December lists
 * Archie
 * history of InterNic's contract or whatever was that monopolistic DNS company with the goverment contract; it expired in ?
 * registration of fuck.com, trademark and speculation issues with domain names, court cases
 * xxx.archiv.org? the preprint archive and the movement for free scientific publishing
 * First Monday - first internet scholarly journal about the internet
 * foremost authorities on internet Odzlynki, Clay Shirky
 * opencourseware
 * mailing lists, majordomo LISTSERV
 * web-based email
 * web-based groups (Yahoo, Google groups)
 * early CDs of the entire USENET
 * cypherpunks' list and cypherpunks
 * the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Gilmore was it?
 * PGP -- the guy's defense fund and then his selling out
 * RSA - public key cryptography
 * 64-bit DES? and triple DSS? crackable by the NSA of course
 * the cypherpunks' list kicking out its founder and host
 * repeated efforts for micropayments, electronic money
 * IPv6
 * the creation of POST; postel?
 * evolution of protocols like GGP and NNTP
 * competing protocols to IP: IPX?? ISO's x.25, x.400, and BITNET's whatever
 * history of broadband, ADSL; different technologies worldwide
 * MINITEL in France
 * China's successful censorship efforts, collusion by Yahoo and Cisco
 * ATM and QoS crap; video on demand
 * the ISO OSI's reference model pathetic/grudging concession to packet-switching
 * big companies persistent misunderstanding of the importance of content vs pipe (Graham Bell's conception of the phone network as a way to deliver music)
 * the phone network's switching to packet-switching
 * backbone interchange law
 * CompuServe; it bought supercomputers to handle traffic
 * AOL, its censorship policies and horrible reputation of hosting clueless losers
 * swings in internet activity; especially around September
 * campus internet access
 * attempts to suppress P2P on campuses
 * RIAA killing Napster
 * internet law:
 * ISPs getting regulated under Common Carrier law
 * the DMCA
 * anti-spam California law
 * voice over IP regulation issues in Europe getting shaken down
 * Voice over IP
 * electric utilities becoming broadband ISPs
 * the one city in the US that provided city wide wireless(?) (Philadelphia or Minneapolis?) internet before the shyster US government outlawed it in favour of the sacred market
 * failed FTTH (Fiber to the Home) efforts
 * major rags going on the net, yawn
 * indymedia.org and internet-based political activity
 * porn as a driver of the internet
 * the moderation of ASS
 * the Louvre
 * ASSTR
 * FTP by email (does anyone else remember that? oh man this brings up memories)
 * sunsite? I don't know how significant it was but I remember it a lot. Probably no more significant than Imperial college; just a site that provided lots of interesting anonymous services.
 * Freenets!
 * prices >> 20$ a month for unlimited dialup
 * wikis
 * blogs, livejournal
 * fanfic
 * star trek fanfic archive mismanagement
 * gossamer archive supplanting it
 * usenet newsgroups like atxc and asc
 * fanfiction.net
 * George Lucas' anti-democratic crackdown on Star Wars fans
 * the joint Apple / IBM / Bell study that showed the internet reduced the number and quality of relationships for its users -- its existence censored in North America of course
 * @Home distributed computing
 * the Internet's initial purpose of sharing universities' computing power
 * the Internet 2 for modern university supercomputers
 * fiber optic technology, dark fiber
 * the Last Mile problem
 * the dot com bubble; crash and burn, burn burn burn


 * precursors to IRC
 * how DNS came about (I'm interested because I think it will die eventually)
 * MUDs
 * Lucasfilm's Habitat, and The Lessons Of
 * MMORGs

sources:
 * http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_usenethist.htm
 * http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_bitnet.htm
 * http://www.livinginternet.com/

= Deletion of Internet Acquisitions List =

The Internet Acquisitions list is deleted from the module for the simple reason that it is:


 * completely useless (is this of interest to anyone? does it educate anyone? I know the answer is a resounding NO to the second question)
 * extremely misleading (it gives the utterly retarded impression that the dot-com bubble explosion was the internet, or at least the web's, revolution; exactly how stupid does one have to be to countenance such a belief?)
 * it is 'grossly incomplete. Hell, Google's acquisition of Deja's Usenet archive didn't even show up there.

The nail in the coffin of my decision to delete the list instead of archiving it as junk is my conviction that it can never be complete. 24.200.176.92 05:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The commercialization of the Internet
One thing that most people may even have a hard time believing now is that commercial activity on the internet not only didn't happen, it was prohibited. The first "crack" in the commercial aspects of the internet was the beginning of a non-profit "classified ad" type notice that was sent out on Usenet. It is hard to imagine now, but there was a time that Usenet didn't have spam and was generally a useful discussion forum for many topics. E-mail spam also at one time didn't exist either, as commercial activity would have not only cut off the internet access for the institution contributing the spam, but the user himself would have faced the equivalent of the internet death penalty. The majority of internet users were also, on the whole, much more skillful with operating systems and it is likely that the person sending spam would have found their hard drive wiped or been subject to a malicious hacker attack. Now it seems as though nobody cares.

The other aspect with the commercialization of the internet was the introduction of America On-Line to the internet. Once upon a time AOL was not connected to the internet and was not an ISP. Oh, they had "talk rooms" and information pages, as well as an internal e-mail system between different AOL subscribers. When AOL became connected to the rest of the internet, there was in some circle a general dread that the internet would never be the same again. And it was changed forever. Typically the cycle was that each fall semiester there would be a new group of new internet users (typically college freshmen trying out the internet for the first time) that would seemingly mangle everything on the internet. After some patience, the earlier group of internet users would try to teach some 'netiquette to these new users and generally these new users would become veterans with the whole process repeating itself each year. When AOL became a part of the internet, all hope was lost. A huge torrent of new users would simply overwhelm the internet and no 'netiquette could ever be taught again.

While not strictly true in practice, the tight-knit community of internet users trying on new ideas just because it was something cool to experiment on ceased to happen in general. Before the commercialization of the internet, all internet practicies were "legislated" from within the community by general concensus. After that commercialization, the legislation happened in national/state legislatures and became issues discussed in the general news media like television and newspapers. Issues like the role of domain naming became something that was commented on by the President of the USA and the UN Secretary-General. In the 1980's that would have been inconcievable to have occured, or even that the President would have even been aware that the internet existed at all.

Another big milestone development in the internet was the establishment of the e-mail address of president@whitehouse.gov

This was established by Al Gore when he became Vice-President, and one of the things I will actually give him credit for. Gore may not have invented the internet, but he did help invent the internet connection to the White House and the Executive branch of the U.S. government. Prior to the Clinton administration, nobody in the White House used the internet at all. After Clinton came into the White House, it became the #1 medium for exchanging memos and daily policy discussions. So much that Congress passed a law (see above) that required the White House to retain all e-mails as official correspondance, which is why President Bush can't send a private e-mail to his daughters.

I hope these details help out. --Rob Horning 01:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't have trouble believing it since I lived through it. But I was astonished to find out there was a period of time early on when ARPANET was xenophobic with dictators in charge of it all. The "internet was created by the Pentagon to survive nuclear attack" myth also needs to be countered, especially since the internet couldn't survive a targeted attack. 24.200.176.92 02:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)