Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa24907; 25 Jan 95 8:33 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA23284; Wed, 25 Jan 95 00:05:26 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA23273; Wed, 25 Jan 95 00:05:23 CST Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 00:05:23 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501250605.AA23273@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom Subject: Pioneering Vision Behind the Net Ronda Hauben sent me the enclosed paper she is writing and asked if telecom readers would care to comment on it. Because of its size I am sending it out as a special mailing, and suggest that if you wish to discuss Ronda's work you do so directly in email with her unless you think something might be of particular interest to readers of the Digest. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Editor From: ronda@panix.com (Ronda Hauben) Subject: Paper on Pioneering Vision Behind the Net Date: 13 Jan 1995 12:27:21 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC I am interested in comments on the following draft I am working on. Ronda ronda@panix.com or rh120@columbia.edu Cybernetics, Human-Computer Symbiosis and On-line Communities: The Pioneering Vision and The Future of the Global Computer Network" by Ronda Hauben rh120@columbia.edu Part I - Foundations of the Cybernetic Revolution In 1961 MIT was to celebrate its centennial anniversary. Martin Greenberger, who had joined the MIT faculty in 1958, describes how a call went out for interesting ways to celebrate. In response, "I proposed a series of lectures," he recalled, "on the computer and the future."(1) "We threw open the hatches," he remembered, "and got together the best people we could assemble -- whatever their fields. We asked these thinkers to project ahead and help us understand what was in store."(2) Charles Percy Snow, a British scientist and author, was one of the invited speakers. In his talk on the need for democratic and broad based participation in the decisions of society, he observed, "We happen to be living at a time of a major scientific revolution, probably more important in its consequences, than the first Industrial Revolution which we shall see in full force in the very near future."(3) The pioneers at this conference expressed their concern that the challenges of the computer be understood and taken seriously. They cautioned that the computer represented a significant but difficult challenge to our society. They felt that government decisions regarding the development and application of the computer needed to be entrusted to people who understood the depth of the arguments regarding the problems they were dealing with. Also, they were concerned that the smaller the number of people involved in important social decisions, the more likely it would be that serious errors of judgment would be made. Thus they expressed their support for opening up the decision making process to as broad a set of people as possible. Present at this gathering were several of the pioneers who had helped to set the foundation for the developing cybernetic revolution. What was the revolution they were describing? In an article he wrote for "Scientific American" in 1972, John Pierce of AT&T, who had been one of the speakers at the gathering at MIT, described the theoretical foundations of the developing revolution. He wrote that "In 1948, two publications" appeared which created "an intellectual stir which has not yet subsided."(4) He identified the works as "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon which was published in the July and October 1948 issues of the "Bell System Technical Journal," and Norbert Wiener's book "Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine." Describing Shannon's contribution, John Pierce explained that Shannon had changed communication theory from guess work to science. Pierce wrote: "Shannon has made it possible for comunication engineers to distinguish between what is possible and what is not possible. Communication theory has disposed of unworkable inventions that are akin to perpetual motion machines. It has directed the attention of engineers to real and soluble problems. It has given them a quantative measure of the effectiveness of their system. Shannon's work has also inspired the invention of many error-correcting codes, by means of which one can attain error free transmission over noisy communication channels."(5) In 1936, Alan Turing had determined that it was possible to design a universal or general purpose machine that could solve any problem that a human could solve. Shannon had built on Turing's contribution showing how Boolean algebra and logic could be used in the analysis and synthesis of switching and computer circuits. John Pierce also described the contribution of Norbert Wiener to the development of the new science of cybernetics. Wiener's work, Pierce explained, had to do with the means by which needed feedback is communicated to help correct problems that develop in an organism. Pierce described how the need to know what is wrong in a process is crucial to its health.(6) Pierce notes the crucial role that Wiener's book "Cybernetics" played when it appeared in 1948. In his book "Cybernetics," Wiener defined three central concepts to define the crucial issues in any organism or system: communication, control and feedback. Wiener coined the term "cybernetics" to designate the important role that feedback plays in a communication system. He took the word from the Greek term "kyber" meaning "governor" or "steersman" explaining that the feedback mechanism is essential. He explained, "In choosing this term, we wish to recognize that the first significant paper on feedback mechanisms is an article on governors, which was published published by Clerk Maxwell in 1868....We also wish to refer to the fact that the steering engines of a ship are indeed one of the earliest and best- developed forms of feedback mechanisms."(7) Explaining his theory and the importance of accurate information and feedback, Wiener, in an interview in 1959, explained: "It is like driving a car and, instead of seeing where you are going, somebody puts a picture in front of you. Clearly, it won't be very long before you hit the curb. This is true in other spheres. Facing the contingencies of life depends on adequate and true information. The more that information is conditioned by the people who are doing the controlling, the less they will be able to meet emergencies. In the long run, such a system of misinformation can only lead to catastrophe."(8) Wiener believed that the digital computer had raised the question of the relationship between the human and the machine, and that it is necessary to explore that relationship in a scientific manner. He wrote what "functions should properly be assigned to these two agencies" is the crucial question for our times.(9) Crucial to Wiener's vision was that the more complex the machine, like the developing digital computer, the more, not less, direction and intelligence were required on the part of its human partner. Wiener often pointed to the literal way in which the computer interpreted the data provided to it. He explained the necessity for increased human guidance and forethought when directing computers to do work. He wrote: "Here I must enter a protest against the popular understanding of computing machines and similar quasimechanical aids. Many people suppose that they are replacements for intelligence and have cut down the need for original thought....People imagine that by throwing a great bulk of data together significant results will come out automatically. This is not the case. If simple devices need simple thought to get the most out of them, complicated devices need a vastly reinforced level of thought....Moreover, this work cannot be put off until the machines have already processed their data. It is very rare, and to say the least, by no means normal, that data that has been thoughtlessly selected can be organized by an after thought so as to produce significant results."(10) In his introduction to his book "Cybernetics," Wiener describes some of the important influences on his development as a scientist and on his thinking in the field of cybernetics. He writes about how in the 1930's, he was invited to attend a series of private seminars on the scientific method held by Dr. Arthuro Rosenblueth at the Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA. Wiener maintains that he and Dr. Rosenblueth "shared in common an interest in scientific methodology" and they also both believed that "science should be a collaborative effort."(11) Scientists involved in a variety of fields of study were invited to the seminars to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of communication in machine and animals that participants in the seminars explored. Describing the methology of the seminars, Wiener writes: "In those days, Dr. Rosenblueth...conducted a monthly series of discussion meetings on scientific method. The participants were mostly young scientists at the Harvard Medical School, and we would gather for dinner about a round table in Vanderbilt Hall. The conversation was lively and unrestrained. It was not a place where it was either encouraged or made possible for anyone to stand on his dignity. After the meal, somebody -- either one of our group or an invited guest -- would read a paper on some scientific topic, generally one in which questions of methodology were the first consideration, or at least a leading consideration. The speaker had to run the gauntlet of an acute criticism, good-natured but unsparing. It was a perfect catharsis for half-baked ideas, insufficient self- criticism, exaggerated self-confidence, and pomposity. Those who could not stand the gaff did not return, but among the former habitues of these meetings there is more than one of us who feels that they were an important and permanent contribution to our scientific unfolding."(12) Wiener writes that he was a member of this group until WWII when the confusion of the war led to the end of the seminars. After the War, however, Wiener began a set of seminars near MIT modeled on his experience in the seminars conducted by Dr. Rosenblueth. These seminars led by Norbert Wiener have been cited as a seminal influence in the work of some of the pioneers of cybernetics and of the developing computer revolution. Jerome Wiesner, another MIT computing pioneer, describing the important role Wiener's seminar's played in the future work at MIT in developing the RLE (Research Laboratory for Electronics) wrote: "Much of the communication work was inspired by Norbert Wiener and his exciting ideas about communication and feedback in man and machines. Wiener's theories, and those of Claude Shannon on information theory, spawned a new vision of research for everyone interested in communications, including neurophysiology, speech, and linquistics investigation. The work was both theoretical and experimental as well as basic and applied. For example, many early ideas about coding were developed in the RLE. So were broadband communications systems and the much earlier work about signal systems, as well as the interesting and exciting new ideas, such as the use of correlation functions to enhance weak signals, and the use of noise to measure system functions. The mix of new ideas and their reduction to practice remains a hallmark of the present-day RLE." Wiesner describing the seminars that Wiener set up after WWII, wrote: "In the winter of 1947, Wiener began to speak about holding a seminar that would bring together the scientists and engineers who were doing work on what he called communications. He was launching his vision of cybernetics in which he regarded signals in any medium, living or artificial, as the same; dependent on their structure and obeying a set of universal laws set out by Shannon. In the spring of 1948, Wiener convened the first of the weekly meetings that was to continue for several years. Wiener believed that good food was an essential ingredient of good conversation, so the dinner meetings were held at Joyce Chen's original restaurant, now the site of an MIT dorm. The first meeting reminded me of the tower of Babel, as engineers, psychologists, philosophers, acousticians, doctors, mathematicians, neurophysiologists, philosophers, and other interested people tried to have their say. After the first meeting, one of us would take the lead each time, giving a brief summary of his research, usually accompanied by a running discussion. As time went on, we came to understand each other's lingo and to understand, and even believe, in Wiener's view of the universal role of communications in the universe. For most of us, these dinners were a seminal experience which introduced us to both a world of new ideas and new friends, many of whom became collaborators in later years."(13) Part II - Interactive Computing, Time-sharing and Human-Computer Symbiosis The interdisciplinary and practical work of the RLE helped to set a foundation for the upcoming developments in digital computers. Also important to the future of computing was the experience that several members of the MIT community had had with a new form of computing -- interactive computing -- in their work with the Whirlwind Computer. Whirlwind research began at MIT in 1947, providing experience in digital computing. Whirlwind came on line around 1950 and was used through 1957 when the MIT Comutation Center began using an IBM 704 computer. The IBM 704 was upgraded to an IBM 709 around 1959 or 1960. It was then upgraded to the first transistorized computer in that IBM family, the IBM 7090. In the meantime, the IBM System/360 family was introduced around 1965, and became the main work horse at MIT for batch processing.(14) By the end of the 1950's the method of computing common at MIT and elsewhere was a method known as batch processing. Under batch processing, the person with a program to run had to submit punch cards to a central computer center and then wait, sometimes two to four hours, sometimes days, to get a printout of the results of the computer run.(15) IBM, which was a main source of computers during this period, promoted batch processing and saw it as the form of computing for the future. Reseachers at MIT, however, had a different vision. Some had worked on the Whirlwind Computer and had experienced a form of interactive computing that would allow a computer user to use the computer directly, rather than having to submit punch cards to a central computer center and await the results. The experience of real time activity at the computer had been a significant advance over the frustration of awaiting the results of one's program which was run on the batch system. Computer resources during this period were, however, very expensive. Therefore, the cost prohibited a single person from using a computer in real time. A few farsighted researchers, however, had the idea of a time-sharing system which would take advantage of the speed of the computer to allow several users to work with the computer at the same time, while the computer scheduled their different work in a way that gave the illusion that the computer was being used by each independently. In 1959, John Strachey, a British researcher, gave a talk at a UNESCO conference proposing time-sharing. Also, in 1959, John McCarthy, who had joined the MIT faculty after visiting from Darthmouth, wrote a memo describing a new form of computing that time sharing would make possible and proposing that MIT begin to plan to implement this form of computing once the IBM 7090, the new transistorized computer that they were expecting from IBM to replace the [IBM] 704, arrived. McCarthy was advocating a "general-purpose system where you could program in any language you wanted."(16) In his memorandum to Professor P.M. Morse in January 1959, McCarthy writes: "This memorandum is based on the assumption that MIT will be given a transistorized IBM 709 about July 1960. I want to propose an operating system for it that will substantially reduce the time required to get a problem solved on the machine.... The proposal requires a complete revision in the way the machine is used.... I think the proposal points to the way all computers will be operated in the future, and we have a chance to pioneer a big step forward in the way computers are used."(17) At the same time as McCarthy was proposing a new form of computing, -- time-sharing and interactive computing -- another pioneer, J.C.R. Licklider, who would play an important role in the developing computer revolution, was working on a paper exploring the concept of human-computer interaction that Norbert Wiener had stressed was so crucial. Licklider had done his graduate degree in psychology and after WWII, did research at Harvard and worked as a lecturer. "At that time," he explains, "Norbert Wiener ran a circle that was very attractive to people all over Cambridge, and Tuesday nights I went to that. I got acquainted with a lot of people at MIT."(18) Licklider also described the Summer Projects at MIT that he began attending in 1951. The following summer there began a series of interdisciplinary summer projects at MIT which he remarked "were so wonderful. They brought together all these people -- physicians, mathematicians. You would go one day and there would be John von Neumann, and the next day there would be Jay Forrester having the diagram of a core memory in his pocket and stuff -- it was fantastically exciting."(19) He described how he became involved with MIT and Lincoln Laboratory and "computers and radar sets and communications. They had a token psychologist," he noted, "just one; you need a lot of physicists and mathematicians and engineers, and stuff. So it was a fantastic opportunity." The lab he worked at was run by RLE [Research Laboratory for Electronics], and he describes how it "gave me a kind of access to the most marvelous electronics there was." By 1958-9, Licklider was working with Bolt Beranek and Newman doing acoustical research. There he had access to digital computers, first a [Royal McGee] LGP-30, and then a [DEC] PDP-1 (the prototype). Licklider learned how to program on the LGP-30 and when the PDP-1 arrived, one of the earliest time sharing systems was created for it, and Licklider had a grand time exploring what it made possible. Describing this period, Licklider explained: "Well, it turned out that these guys at MIT and BBN. We'd all gotten really excited about interactive computing and we had a kind of little religion growing here about how this was going to be totally different from batch processing." During this period, Wiener carried out an experiment to try to determine how the computer could aid him in his intellectual work. "More significantly," he explained, "from my point of view, a lot hinged on a little study I had made on how I would spend my time. It showed that almost all my time was spent on algorithmic things that were no fun, but they were all necessary for the few heuristic things that seemed to be important. I had this little picture in my mind of how we were going to get people and computers to really think together."(20) Also, Licklider described how he tried to set up a Wiener like circle to conduct a study for the Air Force. He explains: "Oh, yes. We had a project with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop the systems concept. Now it's corny, but then it was an interesting concept. We were trying to figure out what systems meant to the engineer and the scientific world. That involved some meetings in which we brought [together] good thinkers in several fields. We wanted a kind of Wiener circle....we put a lot of hours into trying to do that."(21) This study is described in the article "Man-Computer Symbiosis" (IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Elctronics," volume HFE-1, pgs 4-11, March 1960) by Licklider which has become a seminal article in the thinking of many computer pioneers. Norbert Wiener had proposed that man-computer symbiosis was a subset of the man-computer relationship. Licklider took that observation seriously and wrote an article that was published in March 1960 exploring the meaning and import of man-computer interaction and interdependence. "Man-computer symbiosis," he wrote, "is an expected development in cooperative interaction between man and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and electronic members of the partnership. The main aims," he outlined, "are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable man and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs."(22) The paper became an important and pathbreaking formulation of a vision of computing that set the basis for the developing computer revolution in time-sharing and networking. Unlike others, Licklider did not promote the computer as a replacement for humans nor see humans as servants to computers. Instead he proposed that research was needed to explore the role of each in the effort to have a symbiotic relationship between the human and computer partners that would aid intellectual activity. Part III - CTSS and Project MAC One of those who was to play an important role in implementing the vision of human-computer symbiosis was Robert Fano. Robert Fano worked at RLE (the Research Lab for Electronics) after doing his Ph.D. at MIT in June 1947. In his introduction to his book on "Transmission of Information" published by the MIT press, he described his early contact with Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon. He explained how he had taken seriously theoretical questions raised by Wiener and Shannon and went on to do research to help explore the theory they had pioneered. By 1960, Fano was a senior faculty member at MIT. Gordon Brown, then Dean of the Engineering School of MIT, arranged for several faculty members to take a course in computing taught by Fernando Corbato and John McCarthy. Fano, remembering his excitement in taking their course recalled, "I wrote a program that worked," while taking the course.(23) Gordon Brown, Fano explained, understood that the computer was going to be very important and encouraged his senior faculty to become familiar with it. In 1960, the MIT administration appointed a committee to make recommendations about the future needs of MIT regarding computers. Fano was one of the faculty members appointed to the committee. This committee created a technical committee made up of Fernando Corbato, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Doug Ross, Jack Dennis, with Herb Teager acting as Chair. In Spring of 1961, the celebration of the MIT centennial described earlier in this paper, was held. There were eight talks planned, and when one of the speakers cancelled at the last minute, John McCarthy from The Long Range Planning Committee was invited to speak. In his talk, McCarthy described the rationale behind time sharing and the important vision for the future of computing that it represented. Other participants at the conference included Norbert Wiener, John Kemeny, Robert Fano, Alan Perlis, and J.C.R. Licklider.(24) In the course of the conference, Wiener explained that "a computing machine is a general-purpose device that can be programmed to do very specific jobs." But, Wiener warned, if you fail to give a necessary instruction to a computer, "you cannot expect the machine itself to think of this restriction."(25) Wiener explained that humans had to oversee the computer. "An unsafe act thus," Wiener cautioned, "may not show its danger until it is too late to do anything about it."(26) J.C.R. Licklider described how a human being "must not so clutter his mind with codes and formats that he cannot think about his substantative problem."(27) In his comments as a discussant at the Conference, Licklider described his vision of the future of the computer: "In due course it will be part of the formulation of problems; part of real-time thinking, problem solving, doing of research, conducting of experiments, getting into the literature and finding references...And it will mediate and facilitate communication among human beings."(28) He expressed his hope that the computer "through its contribution to formulative thinking...will help us understand the structure of ideas, the nature of intellectual processes."(29) And he proposed that the "most important present function of the digital computer in the university should be to catalyze the development of computer science."(30) A participant at the conference, the linquist Y. Bar-Hillel, pointed out that with regard to computer development, no one at the conference knew what was going to happen in the long term future, or even in the short term. Despite this uncertainty, he maintained that it was important to decide what type of future it would be worthwhile to encourage. He observed that there were two paths to choose from and posed the question as to which path should be taken. "Do we want computers that will compete with human beings and achieve intelligent behavior autonomously, or do we want what has been called man-machine symbiosis?"(31) "I think computer people have the obligation to decide which of the two aims they are going to adopt," he proposed. He recommended that the best path was that of man-machine symbiosis because he held that the human brain was more developed than it would be possible to make a machine brain at the current stage of technological development. "I admit that these two aims do not definitely exclude each other," he acknowledged. However, he added, "but there has been an enormous waste during the last few years in trying to achieve what I regard as the wrong aim at this stage, namely, computers that will autonomously work as well as the human brain with its billion years of evolution." Robert Fano went on a sabbatical in the Summer of 1961 to Lincoln Labs because he hoped to learn more about digital computers there. "I had become convinced," he explained, "that one ought to start thinking about communications no longer in the form of `How can I put together certain communication components, like an amplifier, or oscillator to make a communication system'."(32) Instead he felt one had to think about communication in the general purpose way that the digital computer was making possible. In the meantime, the Long Term Computation Study Group published its reports. There were two proposals for how to proceed. One, from Herbert Teager, who had been Chairman of the Committee, and a second Report from the rest of the committee. Fernando Corbato, a member of the committee and then Associate Director of the MIT Computing Center set out to implement an "interim" solution to the kind of computer the majority report proposed. Corbato describes the subsequent events, "I started up with just a couple of my staff people Marjorie Daggett...and Bob Daley. We hammered out a very primitive prototype. We started thinking about it in Spring of 1961. I remember that by the summer of 1961 we were in the heat of trying to work out the intricacies of the interrupts."(33) He explains how he and the other programmers were acting on the vision that had been developed by the majority of the Long Term Study Group Committee. "I sketched out what we would try to do," he explains, "and Marjorie, Daley and I worked out the hairy details of trying to cope with this kind of poor hardware. By November, 1961," he notes, "we were able to demonstrate a really crude prototype of the system. What we had done was [that] we had wedged out 5K words of the user address space and inserted a little operating system that was going to manage the four typewriters. We did not have any disk storage, so we took advantage of the fact that it was a large machine and we had a lot of tape drives. We assigned one tape drive per typewriter." (34) They gave a seminar and demonstration with their crude operating system in November 1961. "That's the date that's branded in my mind," Corbato notes. "It was only a four-Flexowriter system. People were pleased that there were finally examples surfacing from [the work]. They did not view [it-ed] as an answer to anybody's problem. We made the [first] demo in November 1961 on an [IBM] 709," he recalls. "The switch to the [IBM] 7090 occurred in the spring of 1962 at the Computation Center."(35) Corbato describes how CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System) as the operating system he was working on was called, couldn't go into operation until the programmers made massive changes. It was only when the [IBM] 7090 hardware could be used and had arrived in early spring of 1962 that they could begin to deal with the real problems to make a working system. Corbato gave a talk at a Conference about CTSS in May, 1962, but they still didn't have a working system running. However, by October, 1962, J.C.R. Licklider had accepted a position with ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) under the U.S. Department of Defense on the condition that he would be allowed to implement the vision of interactive computing and time sharing. In November, 1962, Licklider and Fano both attended an unclassified meeting held for the Air Force in Hot Springs, Virginia, outside of Washington D.C. Fano had been invited to chair a session on Communication. And he and Licklider both attended some of the sessions on command and control. On the way back from the conference on the train returning to Washington D.C., several people from the meeting were in the same car. They all chatted about what had happened and moved from seat to seat to talk to different people. "And I did spend quite a bit of time with Lick," Fano recalled, "and I understood better what he had in mind."(36) Fano spent Thanksgiving Day 1962 thinking over the discussion he had had with Licklider. The day after Thanksgiving he had a meeting set up with the Provost at MIT, Charlie Townes. When he told the Provost what he had been thinking, he was told "Go ahead." Fano wrote out his thoughts in a 2 page memorandum that he distributed broadly around MIT. In the proposal he put forward three goals: 1) time sharing 2) a community using it and 3) education, which meant supporting research projects. The following Tuesday he met with the Dean and he was surprised that the question posed was what building he would use for the project, thus encouraging him to go ahead with it. In reviewing the period, Corbato described how Licklider went to ARPA with "a mission," that of developing time sharing and interactive computing. Lick added that while his superiors called for Command and Control, he made clear he was going to be involved with "interactive computing."(37) "I just wanted to make it clear," Lick noted, "that I wasn't going to be running battle planning missions or something. I was going to be dealing with the engineering substratum that [would] make it possible to do that stuff [command and control]." When asked how he felt when he learned that there would be funding to develop CTSS as part of the Project MAC program that Licklider was funding at MIT, Corbato recalled, "Well, it was a cooperative thing. Nobody had license to run wild -- but you had license to try to make something happen."(38) "My goal," he clarified, "was to exhibit it. I wasn't trying to start a company or anything like that; my goal was to exhibit it." Fano developed a proposal for Project MAC. It was submitted. The contract was signed by July 1, 1963, the day the 1963 summer study began at MIT to demonstrate and create enthusiasm for time sharing and interactive computing. "Time sharing," Martin Greenberger recalled, "on the Computation Center machine was available on the opening day of the summer study project."(39) By mid October a second time sharing computer was available for Project MAC. And it was operating within a week. Reviewing the reasons for the success of Project MAC, Greenberger explained, "CTSS was an open system. It challenged the user to design his own subsystem, no matter what discipline he came from, no matter what his research interests."(40) Fano acknowledged one of their failures. "One of our goals," he explained, "was to make the computer truly accessible to people wherever they were. We did not succeed. For people who lived in the community that used the system, it was fine. In any system like that, you keep learning things, you keep using new things, and so you keep having troubles. If you can go next door and say, `Hey, I was doing this and something strange happened, do you know what I did wrong?' usually somebody in your neighborhood will be able to help you. If instead you are far away, you are stuck....We tried to develop some way of helping remote users.... Well, we never did. So in fact, we failed to make the computer truly accessible regardless of the location of the user."(41) Despite the problems, Greenberger observed, "I think one of the greatest successes was that CTSS gave so many people, with such widely different backgrounds, a system and experience that they would not have gotten any other way at that point." Recalling how Project MAC created an on-line community, Fano remembered, "friendships being born out of using somebody else's program, people communicating through the system and then meeting by accident and say `Oh, that's you.' All sorts of things. It was a nonreproducible community phenomenon," he concluded. (42) Offering his summary of the achievements, Corbato explained: "Two aspects strike me as being important. One is the kind of open system quality, which allowed everyone to make the system kind of their thing rather than what somebody else imposed on them....So people were tailoring it to mesh with their interests. And the other thing is, I think, we deliberately kept the system model relatively unsophisticated (maybe that's the wrong word - uncomplicated), so we could explain it easily."(43) Licklider's observations, described in a paper he published in 1968 with Robert Taylor, show how the achievements of Project MAC and the other time-sharing systems built as a result of Lick's tenure at ARPA, led to the vision that helped to guide the development of the ARPANET. In the paper, "The Computer as a Communication Device," Licklider and Taylor predicted, "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face."(44) "To communicate is more than to send and receive," they wrote, "We believe that communicators have to do something nontrivial with the information they send and receive....We believe that we are entering into a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information -- not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it." While they acknowledged that the switching function was important in the transfer of information, that was not the aspect they were interested in. Instead they proposed that there was a power and responsiveness that online interaction with a computer made possible that would significantly affect the communication possible between humans using the computer. Though they were familiar with commercial facilities that called themselves "multiaccess," they explained that these had not succeeded in creating the kind of multiaccess computer communities that the noncommercial timesharing systems spawned. They described these time-sharing communities, of which Project MAC was one of the early examples: "These communities are socio-technical pioneers, in several ways, out ahead of the rest of the computer world: What makes them so? First some of their members are computer scientists and engineers who understand the concept of man- computer interaction and the technology of interactive multiaccess systems. Second, others of their members are creative people in other fields and disciplines who recognize the usefulness and who sense the impact of interactive multiaccess computers on their work. Third, the communities have large multiaccess computers and have learned to use them. And fourth, their efforts are regenerative." Elaborating on what they meant by regenerative, they wrote, "In the half-dozen communities, the computer systems research and development and the development of substantative applications mutually support each other. They are producing large and growing resources of programs, data, and know-how, but we have seen only the beginning. There is much more programming and data collection -- and much more learning how to cooperate -- to be done before the full potential of the concept can be realized." They go on to caution that, "Obviously multiactive systems must be developed interactively." And they explain that "The systems being built must remain flexible and open-ended throughout the process of development, which is evolutionary." They also describe how there were systems that were advertising themselves via the same labels as "interactive," "time-sharing" and "multiaccess." But these were commercial systems and they describe the distinct difference between the commercial systems and the noncommercial ones. The noncommercial "differ by having a greater degree of open-endedness, by rendering more service, and above all by providing facilities that foster a working sense of community among their users." "The commercially available time-sharing services," they observed, "do not yet offer the power and flexibility of software resources -- the `general purposeness' -- of the interactive multiaccess systems of Systems Development Corporation in Santa Monica, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. -- which have been collectively serving over a thousand people for several years."(pg 31) They discussed their vision of the future. They predicted that linking up the existing communities would create a still more powerful and important development -- supercommunities made up of the existing communities created by the time-sharing systems. "The hope," they explained, "is that interconnection will make available to all the communities the programs and data resources of the entire supercommunity." "This collection of people, hardware and software," they wrote, "the multiaccess computer together with its local community of users -- will become a node in a geographically distributed computer network...Through the network of message processors, therefore, all the large computers can communicate with one another. And through them, all the members of the supercommunity can communicate with other people, with programs, with data, or with selected combinations of these resources." They predict that the future will bring "a mobile network of networks -- ever changing in both content and configuration." And just as Licklider realized that a timesharing system was more than a collection of computers and software, Fano recognized that "a time sharing system was more than just a set of people using common resources; it was also a means of communicating and sharing ideas."(45) Another time-sharing pioneer, Doug Ross, observed that Project MAC made CTSS available rather than waiting for the ideal technical system as others had favored. By producing a prototype and encouraging others to contribute to it, CTSS had a significant impact on others who therefore had the ability to build into the system what they needed and to contribute so it would serve their needs. "I always say," Ross concluded, "you can't design an interface from just one side."(46) This quality of putting an open system out and encouraging people to contribute to it to make it what they needed, was building a human centered rather than technology centered system.(47) Summing up the achievement of the Project MAC pioneers, John A. N. Lee, editor of the two special issues of "The IEEE Annals of the History of Computing" about the development of time-sharing and Project MAC at MIT, writes: "With the development of computer networking, which almost naturally followed on the development of time-sharing and interactive computing, it is as if the whole world now time shares myriad computers, providing facilities which were beyond the dreams of even the MIT researchers of 1960...But this is where it started -- with the ideas of John McCarthy, the implementation skills of Fernando Corbato, the vision of J.C.R. Licklider, and the organizational skills of Robert Fano."(48) Part IV - The Implications What is the significance of these early days of cybernetics and the development of time-sharing and interactive computing toward the current developments in networking in the U.S. and towards U.S. policy to direct those developments? The pioneers of cybernetics and multiaccess computing who gathered at the MIT centennial in the Spring of 1961 to discuss the future of computing, proposed that the crucial issue one must determine in trying to solve a problem is how to formulate the question. They expressed concern that the computer would bring great changes into our world and that people who understood the issues involved be part of setting government policy regarding these developments. The pioneers also observed that there were opposing directions in contention with regard to what the future should be. One road was that of human-computer symbiosis, of a close interaction between the human and the computer so each could function more effectively. "The hope is that, in not too many years," J.C.R. Licklider wrote, "human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today."(49) The other road was that of creating computers that would be able to do the thinking or problem solving without human assistance. Though pioneers like Lick explained that "man-computer symbiosis is probably not the ultimate paradigm for complex technological systems" and that in the future at some point "electronic or chemical `machines' will outdo the human brain in most of the functions we now consider exclusively within its province...There will nevertheless be a fairly long interim during which the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working together in intimate association."(50) Thus though Lick was willing to concede, "dominance in the distant future of celebration to machines alone," he recognized the creative and important developments that such a partnership between the human and computer would make possible. The years of human-computer symbiosis, Licklider predicted "should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind."(51) The vision of human-computer symbiosis as an intellectual advance for humans was presented. And online human-computer, and computer facilitated human to human communication was seen as the embodiment of this symbiosis. In the years following the development of CTSS and Project MAC and the linking of different time-sharing systems to create a super-community of on-line communities which became known as the ARPANET, the firm foundation set by Project MAC and the helpful vision and direction set by Licklider and Fano gave birth to the sprawling and impressive networking communities that today we call the Internet. Though commercial time-sharing systems appearing in the later part of the 1960's used the same labels as the academic and open multiaccess systems, these commercial operations didn't form the same sort of community that Project MAC pioneered. Today, in the mid 1990's, there are commercial systems that are claiming they are the inheritors of the community networking tradition, but though these commercial on- line services may for a fee provide an email account or access to read Netnews, they don't make possible the same kind of open access multiaccess community that has built the Internet and will be necessary to sustain it and continue its development. Instead of proposing that networking in the U.S. be expanded by building on the experience of the past where the connecting of the multiaccess communities into one supercommunity network made it possible to build the Arpanet and then the Internet, the NII (National Information Infrastructure of the U.S. government) has falsified the history claiming that commercial sites built the Internet and has encouraged commercial sites and interests to swamp the Internet and attack the cooperative culture and community that has taken such a hard effort over many long years to build. Rather than encouraging such commercial activity, the U.S. government policy should be one of identifying the community of users who exist on the Net and who have made efforts to help to build the Net. There should be funding to study the successful sites that have built cooperative multiuser community. The problems of such sites need to be identified so they can be solved. And the achievements need to be documented so they can be extended and built upon. In the same way as Licklider, a person with both experience and enthusiasm for human-symbiosis, was put in charge of a government program to develop time-sharing and interactive computing, those with an understanding of human-computer symbiosis and how it has shaped the history and development of networking advances, with a vision of how to continue to apply this foundation to future network developments, and with a love for the cooperative online community that has been built via the Internet and other Network achievements like Usenet News, need to be put in charge of helping to build and extend the Net. Instead the U.S. government appointed to the NII a committee of people, many of whom had little or no networking experience and are not online and those few who have had networking experience are only interested in converting the Internet into a forprofit model pioneered by Compuserve. And the NII is funding projects which aim to remove the human-computer partnership foundation of the Net and replace it with the commercial model of providing the user with entertainment or supposed services. In contrast to the meeting of people at MIT to discuss the future of the computer in 1961, the future of the network was discussed at a "by invitation only meeting " held at Harvard University at the Kennedy School of Government in March 1990. Plans were made at the meeting to commercialize the Internet. Instead of that meeting searching for the question and principles to help advance development of the Net, those invited to the meeting met with a preconceived agenda of commercializing the Internet and only discussed how to carry it out.(52) Norbert Wiener often warned that the age of the computer would bring with it situations where it was possible to make big mistakes and that it was therefore necessary for human society to apply more intellect not less to the problems raised by the computer. He also encouraged the governed to fight to make their views known to those governing if there is not to be disaster. There have been people challenging the narrow pro commercial view of the future of the Net. In November, 1994, the U.S. government responded to some of these challenges by holding an online virtual conference to discuss the future of the Net. The comments expressed in several of the newsgroups created as part of this online conference demonstrate that there is a vision for the future of networking that would make access available to all at little or no cost.(See summary of online conference in appendix) This online conference showed that the vision of the computer pioneers of the 1960's of human-computer symbiois, and of creating a multiaccess, interactive, network of networks, or a supercommunity network as they termed it, is the vision that still should be guiding our work in building and extending the computer network in the U.S. today. ------------------------- Footnotes (1) IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol 14, no 2, 1992 p 15. (2) Ibid. (3) Martin Greenberger, ed, "Management and Computers of the Future", Cambridge, 1962, p. 8. (4) John R. Pierce, "Communication," "Scientific American", Sept. 1972, vol 227, no 3. (5) Ibid., p. 33. (6) He gives the example of a large community "where the Lords of Things as They Are protect themselves from hunger by wealth, from public opinion by privacy and anonymity, from private criticism by the laws of libel and the possession of the means of communication." It is in such a society, he explains, that "ruthlessness can reach its most sublime levels." And he points out that the creation of such an unstable society requires "the control of the means of communication" as "the most effective and important" element."(from Pierce, p. 41) (7) Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine", Cambridge, MA, pg. 11-12. (8) from "Challenge Interview: Norbert Wiener: Man and the Machine", June 1959, in "Collected Works of Norbert Wiener with Commentaries", vol 4, 1985, p. 717. (9) "God and Golem," p. 71. (10) "A Scientist's Dilemma in a Materialist World," by Norbert Wiener, p. 707, in "Collected Works," p. 709. (11) Norbert Wiener, "I Am A Mathematician," Cambridge, 1956, p. 171. (12) Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics," Cambridge, 1948, p. 1. (13) from "The Legacy of Norbert Wiener: A Centennial Symposium," 1994, p. 19. (14) Chronology from IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 14, No 1, 1994, p. 18 (15) See "Annals", vol 14, no. 1, 1992, p. 38 for a description of the frustrations of batch processing. (16) See Annals, vol 14, no. 1, 1992, " John McCarthy's 1959 memorandum, p. 20-21. See also J.A.N. Lee "Claims to the Term Time-Sharing", p. 16-17. (17) John Mc Carthy's 1959 memorandum, p. 20. (18) Annals, vol. 14, no. 2, 1992, p. 16. (19) Ibid. (20) Ibid. (21) Interview with J.C.R. Licklider conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute. (22) J.C.R. Licklider, "Man Computer Symbiosis," IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HGR-2, pagesT 4-11, March 1960, in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider 1915-1990", Palo Alto, August 7, 1990. (23) Interview with Fano by the Charles Babbage Institute. (24) The book was first published under the title "Management anb the Future of the Computer" by MIT press in 1962 and later in in hardback and paperback under the title "Computers and the World of the Future". It was edited by Martin Greenberger. (25) "Management and the Future of the Computer", ed by Martin Greenberger, Cambridge, 1962, p. 24. (26) Ibid., p. 32. (27) Ibid., p. 204-5. (28) Ibid. p. 205. (29) Ibid., p. 206. (30) Ibid., p. 207. (31) Ibid., p. 324. (32) Annals, vol 14, no 2, 1992, p. 20. (33) Annals vol 14 no 1, p. 44. Teager's recommendations are described in "IEEE Annals of the History of Computing," vol 14, No. 1, 1992, p. 24-27. Excerpts from the Long Range Computation Study Group's recommendation for a time-sharing systems which resulted in Corbato's work on CTSS are in the same issue on page 28-30. (34) Ibid., p. 45. (35) Ibid., p.45-46. Corbato describes how he thought CTSS would be running on the IBM 7090 by the time he was to give a talk on it at the AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference in May, 1962. But that they were not able to get it running by the time the paper was presented. Despite his disappointment, the paper is an important historical document. See "An Experimental Time-Sharing System," by Fernando J. Corbato, Jarjorie Merwin-Daggett, Robert C. Daley, "Proceedings of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies," Spring Joint Computer Conference, May 1-3, 1962, vol 21, pg. 335-344. (36) Annals, no 2, p. 21-22 (37) Ibid., p. 24 (38) Ibid. (39) Ibid., p. 26. (40) Ibid. (41) Ibid., p. 31. (42) Ibid. (43) Ibid. Annals, no. 2, p. 33. (44) "The Computer as a Communication Device," IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960, and reprinted in "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider: 1915- 1990", Palo Alto, August 7, 1990, p. 21. (45) Annals, Vol 14, no 1, p. 48. (46) Ibid., p. 51. (47) Ibid., one of the interviewers, Robert Rosin noted, "You see, if what you're trying to do is optimize technical resources (physical resources), Herb's point of view was exactly right. If you try to optimize the use of human resources, then the point of view you were taking was a lot closer to reality." (48) Ibid, p. 3-4. (49) "Man Computer Symbiosis," p. 3. Licklider proposes the role that each partner will play in the symbiotic relationship. The human partner will "set the golas, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations." The computers "will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking." ("Man-Computer Symbiosis", p. 1) (50) Ibid., p. 2-3. (51) Ibid., (52) See RFC (Request for Comments) 1192 describing the meeting. APPENDIX The recent NTIA online meeting (National Telecommunications Information Administration) held the week before Thanksgiving, in November, 1994, is a demonstration that there is a battle on for the future of the Net and that those online who care about the Net will work to try to influence the decisions that are made. The discussion that appeared on two of the ntia newsgroups created on Usenet News (alt.ntia.avail, alt.ntia.redefus) and on two mailing lists ("avail" and "redefus") was concerned with how to broaden and extend network access. Following is a sample of on-line comments from these two groups that were part of the NTIA conference. On-line efforts like these two conferences are needed to build and expand the Net. Draft Summary of NTIA Online Conference on the Future of the Net During the week before Thanksgiving (Nov. 14 to 23, 1994), an online conference initiated by the NTIA (the National Telecommunications Information Administration functioning under the U.S. Dept. of Commerce) to demonstrate the potential of the computer network to help create more democratic government took place. In that online conference a paper was posted by a student who summed up the potential to advance that we are experiencing today. He wrote: "Welcome to the 21st century. You are a Netizen, or a Net Citizen, and you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider everyone as your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you are in contact with much of the world via the global computer network." "The situation I describe," he continued, "is only a prediction of the future, but a large part of the necessary infrastructure currently exists...Every day more computers attach to the existing network and every new computer adds to the user base -- at least twenty five million people are interconnected today..." "We are seeing a revitalization of society," he observed. "The frameworks are being redesigned from the bottom up. A new more democratic world is becoming possible." The sentiments expressed in this paper were echoed over and over again in the comments of the people who participated in the online NTIA conference. The NTIA statement welcoming participants to the conference listed several purposes for the conference. Among those purposes were: "1) Garner opinions and views on universal telecommunications service that may shape the legislative and regulatory debate. 2) Demonstrate how networking technology can broaden participation in the development of government policies, specifically, universal service telecommunications policy. 3) Illustrate the potential for using the NII to create an electronic commons. 4) Create a network of individuals and institutions that will continue the dialog started by the conference, once the formal sponsorship is over." "This conference," the NTIA explained, "is an experiment in a new form of dialog among citizens and with their government. The conference is not a one-way, top down approach, it is a conversation. It holds the promise of reworking the compact between citizens and their government." What was the response to the call? In the process of the week long discussions a number of voices complained about the multinational, large corporations that the U.S. government under the NII (the National Information Infrastructure) is encouraging to take over the U.S portion of the backbone of the Internet. Many expressed concern that the ideology of the supposed "marketplace" was being used to create a situation which they felt would never succeed in making access broadly available in the U.S. For example, one participant: "I want to add my voice to those favoring greater, not less, government intervention in the development of the NII... to protect the interest of the people against the narrow sectarian interests of large telecommunications industries. Why the federal government gave up its part ownership in the Internet backbone is a mystery to me. An active interventionist government is essential to assure universal access at affordable prices (for)... people living in (the) heart of cities or in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan." A number of people from rural and remote areas explained their concern that they not be left out because connecting them to the Net would not be profitable for the large corporations. For example, in response to a post from someone in Oregon, a librarian from a remote area of Michigan wrote: "I'd like to hear more from the Oregon edge of the world. Being from a small, rural library in the Upper Penisula of Michigan, with a very small tax base...faced with geographcial isolation and no clout...how do we get our voices heard and assure our patrons equal and universal access to these new and wonderful services..we have no local nodes..every hook up is a long distance call. What are you doing over there?" A poster who works with a scientific foundation echoed this concern. He wrote: "When faced with the resources and persuasive power (legal and otherwise) of enormous multinational corporations with annual incomes that are orders of magnitude greater than some of the territories they serve, only a capable and commiteed national guarantee of access, and a national cost pool can povide access to these new technolgy resources. "And THE INTERNET IS SPECIALLY IMPORTANT to areas with limited access to technical and scientific resources. As one of the leading non-profit educational foundations devoted to the environmental problems of small tropical islands, we (Islands Resources Foundation) are amazed at the richness of the Internet resource, and terribly concerned that our constituents throughout all of the world's oceans are going to (be) closed of from access to this resource because of monopoly pricing policies." "To the NTIA," he wrote, "we ask careful attention to the equity issues of access, and a federal guarantee of access and availability." Realizing that many wouldn't be able to participate who didn't have computers and modems already available, a limited number of public access sites were set up in public libraries with terminals available. One poster from San Francisco explained that this made it possible for this person to participate. The person wrote: "I am sitting in the corner of the card catalogue room at the San Francisco main library, blasted with the heat from the oft-unused ventilator, doing what I hope I will be able to do for the rest of my years: use computers freely. Internet, on-line discourse, rather is invaluable; the role of the computer-friendly mind is becoming ever greater and the need to communicate within this medium needs to remain open to all. If not, we will fall into the abyss of the isolated world so heralded by the fearful critics of the first personal computers. We could become isolated in a cubicle existing only through our computer. It is true, but only if we choose this. I would choose otherwise. Keep computers part of the schools and libraries, and definately make (the) Internet free to any who wish to use it. Otherwise we are doomed." Another poster expressed concern that the business interests would make library access and participation impossible. He wrote: "If things go as it looks they are going now, libraries will lose out to business in the war for the net. Yes, this means that we will be drowning in a deluge of what big business tells us we want to hear and the magic of the net will vanish in a poof of monied interests. Some estimates that I have read say that it should cost no more than $10 a year per user for universal access to the national network, including library sites so that those without phones or home comptuers have access. The NSF has decided against funding the internet anymore and all the talk of (...)(late) is about the privatizing of the net. No one seems to get the point involved (or, worse: They *do* get the point.). The backbone of the net should be retained by the government. The cost is relatively inexpensive and the benefits are grand. Paying large fees (some plans call for charges based on the amount of data consumed and others by time spent net- surfing) defeats the nature of the net. We have possiblities for direct democracy. At the very least, for representation of mentally distinct groups as opposed to physical. That is, now we are represented in Congress by geographical area, not what our opinions support...." Several people complained how Net access was not only difficult because of the cost of modem connections, but that for many people it was a financial hardship to even have a computer. As one poster from Virginia wrote: "As a newcomer to the net, I don't feel I have much relevant to say. All this chatter about Info Superhiways strikes me as so much political doubletalk. The hiway exists. But to drive on the damn thing you need a car. Computers (macs or pcs, etc.) are not items that someone making 6 or 7 dollars an hour can easily obtain." Others described the efforts in their areas to provide public access to the Net. In Seattle, we learned that the Seattle Public Library and the Seattle branch of Computer Professions for Social Responsibility had set up a system that made email access and an email mailbox available to anyone in Seattle who wanted it. We learned that in Blacksburg, Virginia, federal funds had helped to set up the Blacksburg Electronic Village which was wiring all new apartments being built so the people would have direct access to the Internet. Canadian posters described how the Blue Sky Freenet in Manitoba, Canada was providing access to all of Manitoba with no extra long distance phone charges to small rural areas. We were told that in Manitoba, "they have basically a hub in each of the different calling areas...some places will be piggybacking on CBC radio waves, others on satellite connections." Also proposals were made to provide access to other forgotten segments of the society like the homeless. A poster from San Francisco proposed that terminals with network access be installed in homeless shelters. The person explained: "Provide homeless shelters with online systems frozen into Netnews and email, or email and gopher. A 386 terminal running Linux, Xwindows and Netscale, and linked into a user group such as email and gopher, etc., would permit defining the lowest level of involvement. People need communication to represent themselves, and email for that reason, as well as Netnews." People from other countries also contributed to the discussion providing a broader perspective than might normally be available in a national policy discussion. From the Netherlands came the following observation: "After attending the Virtual Conference for two days now, I would like to give my first (contribution) to the discussion. Since I work for the government of the Netherlands, at the Central Bureau of Statistics, which is part of the Department of Economic Affairs, the question of availability of statistical figures intrigues me. As a result of safety-precautions there is no on-line connection possible with our network. There should, however, be a source for the public to get our data from, we get paid by community-money so the community should benefit (from) the results of our efforts. I am wondering how these matters are regulated in the other countries who participate in the Virtual Conference." "With kind greetings,"he ended. And a Psychology Professor from Moscow State University in Russia wrote: "Hi, netters: (He explained how he had subscribed to the two mailing lists dealing with network access called avail and redefus, since he didn't think there would be many messages and he could save time. "I'm glad I'm wrong," he admitted. "I can't follow the massive traffic of discussions, he wrote. Sometimes my English is too poor to grasp the essence, sometimes I don't know the realities, legislation etc. Some themes I'm greatly plaesed with...I agree gladly with Larry Irving -- (who had said he was-ed) thrilled with the volume of traffic & quality of discussions. I am, too. Perhaps I'll find more time later to read the messages more attentively. I shall not unsubscribe, though." "The people in the 2nd & 3rd worlds," he continued, "are just now trying to find our own ways to use the Internet facilities & pleasures. I am interested in investigation of these ways, in teaching & helping them in this kind of activity. Besides, my group is working on bibliographic database construction and letting the remote access to it. For several days only we got an IP access to the WWW, we are not experienced yet to access. So I use ordinary e-mail. Good luck to all subscribers," he ended. "I wish you success." As part of the discussion several participants discussed how they felt the ability to communicate was the real advance represented by the Global Network, rather than the means of providing information as many had previously believed. Titling her message "Not just information -----------> Communication," a participant from Palo Alto asked, "Who said that the NTIA is building a one-way highway to a dead end when they take the word Telecommunications out of their rhetoric." She listed several points for people to consider, among which were: "1. Information is always old already 2. Telecommunications, properly algoritmed, provides dynamic information about who we are as the human race... 3. Telecommunications is the road to direct democracy and a future for this planet. 4. Downstream bandwidth is just another broadcast medium. Upstream bandwidth is power for the people." Another participant who is a college senior wrote: "To start off, I take issue with the term "service." As I have stated...the terminology being used is being adapted from an out-dated model of a Top-Down communications system. The new era of interconnection and many-to-many communication afforded by Netnews and Mailing lists (...) brings to the forefront a model of bottom-up rather than top-down communication and information. It is time to reexamine society and welcome the democratizing trends of many-to-many communication over the one-to-many models as represented by broadcast television, radio, newspapers and other media. Rather than service, I would propose that we examine what "forms of communication" should be available. So instead of talking about "Universal Service" we should consider "Universal Interconnection to forms of communication." These were just some of the many concerns raised in this week long online conference supported and sponsored by a branch of the U.S. government. The people participating for the most part raised serious questions as to whether the real issues needed to make access possible for the many rather than a multimedia plaything for the few possible, would be considered and examined. Many were concerned for those who didn't now have access to the Network, either because they didn't have modems or even more fundamentally becuase they couldn't even afford computers. Thus there was a significant sentiment that computers with network access be made available in public places where people could have access like public libraries. One participant noted that current policy was favoring a few people having video connections rather than the many having email capability. He asked the US government to,"redirect some of the funding for high end technology into getting the mainstream public onto the net. Instead of funding an hour of video between two users, we should use the money to let 100,000 users send an email message." Summing up the sentiment expressed during the conference, a participant wrote: "I find it hard, to believe a state can function in the 21st century without a solid information infrastructure and citizens with enough technological savvy to use it." The conference was a very significant event. From cities to rural and remote areas, people made the hard effort to express their concern and commitment to having everyone have access and to protest the U.S. government policy of giving big business the Net as being a policy that is in conflict with the public and social goal of universal network access to all. Despite hardships that people experienced to participate -- mailboxes got clogged with the volume of email that people couldn't keep up with, newsgroups appeared late on Usenet and at very few sites so it was hard to get access to them, the lack of publicity meant that many didn't find out till the conference was almost over, etc. the people who participated did what they could to contribute to and speak up for the means for everyone to be able to be part of the net as a contributor not just as a listener. A new government form was created which is very different from what has existed thus far. Up to now the NII has had some open public meetings where one can go and sit thorugh the meeting without most of the documents that are being discussed and watch what is happening. There has been very limited means for the public to be able to provide any input into the process. Yet people have gone to the meetings and spoken up when they were able to express concern that the process was so closed and that very few of those who the U.S. government appointed to the NII had any experience on the global net and yet they were charged with making recommendations for its future development. When I spoke up at the meeting of the NII at the N.Y. Public Library in September asking why the Committee was not online with Usenet Newsgroups being able to discuss what they were doing, I received a hostile answer which discouraged me from staying at the meeting any longer. Yet my complaint and others that I have learned about from around the country exerted pressure to make the online conference happen. From the experience of the online conference, it is clear that the real issues in developing and spreading the network around the U.S. are not being raised or considered by the NII committee but they were raised and discussed by those participating in the online conference. This conference made clear that the hard problems of our time can only be solved if the most advanced technology is used to involve the largest possible number of people in the decisions that will affect their lives. The conference demonstrated that the vision of the pioneers of the cybernetic revolution like Norbert Weiner and J.C.R. Licklider that there must be participation and feedback from the governed if the governors will be able to solve the real problems, is still the needed vision for our times. The conference demonstrated that only in the involvement of the many can the important problems of our times be analyzed so they can be solved. And the Internet and Usenet News, the Global Computer Network, are providing very important means for the people of our society to have the ability to speak for themselves and to fight the needed battles to better the society. Thus even though the conference meant a much broader section of people than ever before were able to participate in the policy discussion over the future of the Net, one of the participants explained why this process had to be expanded so more could be part of it. He wrote: "I think this conference was accessible to more than just 'elite technocrats.' I, for instance, am a graduate student at the U of MN. I have access because everyone who attends the University has access, and can apply their access via numberous computer labs that are open to all students. I think a lot of people don't realize that we're at a very critical point with determining the future of resources such as the Internet. I join you in hoping that no irreversible decisions are made on the basis of this conference -- there needs to be a much wider opportunity for public comment." --------------------- Notes: The record of the conference is available on-line, but it should also be put into a printed form and made widely available, so that people interested in the future of the Net can study and understand what is possible via the net and why access should be extended. The Usenet discussion groups were only available temporarily and at a limited number of sites. The newsgroups should be made permanent as there should be continuing on-line discussion over the questions and proposals to plan the future direction of the Internet. Also, there need to be more public access sites set up and the problems of such sites explored as part of government funded research so that the kind of broader public access that is needed to extend the Net can be begun. Robert Fano's dream of aiding remote users is still an elusive goal which Usenet begins to make possible, but public libraries or other public access sites like universities may make it possible to solve the problem he identified. Thus a prototype of a permanent conference online with permanent public access sites need to be set up to begin to discuss online how to extend and expand online access to the Net around the U.S. And the vision of human-computer symbiosis,of the computer as a partner to the human to aid in intellectual work and decision making is still a helpful vision that needs to guide computer and networking research. The development and extension of human-computer symbiosis will make it possible to extend the Net and make it into more of a significant resource than it is today. ---------------------- Ronda Hauben, rh120@columbia.edu or ronda@umcc.umich.edu "The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net: An Anthology on the History and Impact of the Net" via http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/project_book.html Also http://scrg.cs.tcd.ie/scrg/u/rcwoods/netbook/contents.html ---------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you would like to discuss Ronda's work, please do so directly with her unless you feel there are points which should be discussed with the larger Digest readership. PAT]