Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/reports/pioneer.vision.behind.net

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From: [e-mail] (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson))
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To: telecom
Subject: Pioneering Vision Behind the Net


Ronda Hauben <[e-mail]> 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: [e-mail] (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  [e-mail]
or  [e-mail]


  Cybernetics, Human-Computer Symbiosis and On-line Communities:
                      The Pioneering Vision
         and The Future of the Global Computer Network"
                                             by Ronda Hauben
                                             [e-mail]

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, [e-mail] or [e-mail]
"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]