INTERNET HISTORY NEWSLETTER - FEBRUARY 2005
Welcome to the Internet History Newsletter, brought to you by the
www.nethistory.info website. In this edition:
=> MAC's 20th BIRTHDAY AND ITS PLACE IN COMPUTER HISTORY
=> AOL DROPS USENET
=> INTERNET PIONEERS AWARDED TURING AWARD
=> CERTIFICATE COURSE IN INTERNET HISTORY
=> Subscribe/unsubscribe details
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MAC's 20TH BIRTHDAY
January 24 saw the twentieth anniversary of perhaps the most important computer
advance of the personal computer age - the release of the Macintosh computer by
Apple Inc in 1985.
You would have had to used a computer before the Macintosh to realise what an
advance it was. For a start, it was the first personal computer to bring to
market the "Windows" software invented by the Xerox Palo Alto Laboratories. (PCs
waited until 1995 to adopt the same basic technology). It did many other things
as well - it was probably the first computer with a friendly interface, the
first to play music, the first to allow you to draw pictures and to introduce
voice technologies. It was a remarkable step forward which, when accompanied by
the desktop publishing software Apple introduced a few years later, saw the
personal computer revolution take a giant step forward.
To celebrate, Wired Magazine published a number of articles with more detail on
this - try http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61730,00.html as a starting
point.
To quote Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "It's real easy to see that every
computer in the world's a Macintosh now. There was a time when Windows wasn't
Windows. They had Microsoft DOS, and DOS was lines you had to type. And the
funny thing is, when they switched over -- Windows 95, Windows 98 -- now they've
got a Macintosh."
The revolutionary advances of the Macintosh would be enough to get it into my
list of the 100 top gadgets ever invented, but apparently everyone doesn't see
it that way. Mobile PC Mag just published such a list of the 100 greatest
gadgets of all time, and as might be expected it's top heavy with notebook
computers and handhelds. Quite fun to read though, and a great idea, even if I
don't entirely agree with their findings.
http://www.mobilepcmag.com/features/2005_03/top100gadgets.html
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AOL DROPS USENET
Another link to our past disappears in the next few months with AOL announcing
its intention to drop the USENET newsgroups which once dominated the Internet.
Just as the Mac pioneered computers as socially useful tools, the USENET
pioneered social interaction between groups on the Internet - as such it can be
seen as the forerunner of chat sites, on line forums, online conferencing and
collaboration software.
Usenet dates from about 1979. AOL picked it up about 1994 - remember that AOL
and Compuserve and other on line companies at first did not see the potential of
the Internet and took some time to realise that their proprietary approaches to
email provision and online services were going nowhere. So AOL was something of
a late adopter.
Newsgroups were prolific, starting from computing science groups, and spreading
to fan clubs, sport, you name it there was a newsgroup for it. Organisations
like the Association for Progressive Communications started to produce their own
more private newsgroups, and some more advanced software, and these text based
forums for exchange of views were second only to email in the early days of the
Internet as a form of social exchange. They began the phenomena of "virtual
communities" which Howard Rheingold and others were to popularise some years
later. They also gave birth to the online phenomena of "flaming" - a form of
behaviour contributed to by the lack of subtle meaning conveyed by text
messages, particularly before emoticons, and also by the lack of social skills
of computer scientists. Flaming became a much written about art form before it
gradually became to be seen as immature behaviour.
USENet more than anything was responsible for the social culture of the
Internet, which with the World Wide Web took on new dimensions.
Ronda and Michael Hauben have written a great book on the Usenet phenomena; you
can get a link from http://www.nethistory.info/Resources/internet%20history.html.
Alternatively, if you just want a quick taste before ordering the book, First
Monday published a number of chapters of the book a few years ago and you can
get a good overview from these links.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_7/chapter3/index.html
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_7/chapter2/index.html
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_8/chapter10/index.html
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TURING AWARD TO INTERNET PIONEERS
Congratulations to Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, awarded the prestigious Turing Award
for their contribution to networked computing.
In previous newsletters we have explored the question of who invented the
Internet from a number of perspectives - there are a number of legitimate claims
to the title and a number of worthwhile contributions.
What Cerf and Kahn gave us was TCP/IP, the protocol on which the Internet runs.
Katie Hafner has written an excellent article on this in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/technology/16internet.html. Or check the
newsletters in our archives as regards the various contributors.
What cannot be denied, however, in the long and particularly valuable
contributions Bob and Vint have made to the Internet.
Vint Cerf in particular has been pivotal during many phases of its evolution,
playing major roles in the beginnings of IETF, the Internet Society, and
continuing his dedication to this day as the Chair of the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Vint's contribution has been a lifetime
of dedication.
Back in the early 1990s, Vint lead the "IP on Everything" revolution. At the
time, governments were toying with the idea of a protocol for communications
based on the OSI standards, without much agreement and consequently without any
accompanying software or hardware development, and major industry players were
building and marketing their own proprietary standards while attending trade
shows and talking about high level futuristic goals such as "connectivity" and
"interoperability". And personal computer enthusiasts were building their own
network called FidoNet based on the dominant MS DOS software from Microsoft.
The Internet changed all that. Eventually, the Internet Protocols won out and
were widely adopted, laying the foundation for the world wide web to be
developed as a truly useful global network.
Bob Kahn was active through this time as well. This was an enormous
contribution, and the award is highly deserved.
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NEW - CERTIFICATE COURSE IN INTERNET HISTORY
This year we are expanding the ways you can learn about the History of the
Internet by offering an Internet History Certificate Course.
This course will be run over 10 weeks, and you can commence at any time. Once
you subscribe, a lesson will be sent to you every
7 days. You should allow up to one hour per week for reading the lessons,
reviewing them, and of course you may of course wish to supplement this with
extra research.
After you have received all ten lessons, the last message you will receive
contains your Internet History Assignment for you to complete. No essays are
involved: just a series of questions to ensure you have taken in the information
provided during the course
Graduation grades are PASS, CREDIT, and DISTINCTION. If you fail, you are
entitled to sit again in order to obtain a pass result at no extra charge.
On completion, you will be mailed your personalised Graduation Certificate.
FAQs
1. If I have to go away for a few weeks in the middle of the
course, does that matter?
No, you can finish it in your own time. The courses will be sent regularly to
your mailbox, but the choice is yours as to when you submit your final
examination assignment
2. Am I allowed to look at my course notes while doing the
assignment?
Yes, but we do suggest see how much you can complete from memory before going
back to the notes.
3. Does the course have academic standing?
This course has not formal academic standing with most educational institutions,
but many may choose to recognise it as evidence of your studies in this field.
4. What does it cost?
The complete course costs $US36.00, including 10 lessons, assessment, and
postage of your graduation certificate.
5. How do I join?
Look for the link from www.nethistory.info
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This newsletter was brought to you by the Internet History Project. For more
information, visit www.nethistory.info.
We welcome your feeback! Drop us a note at mailto:feedback@nethistory.info
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