Written by Ian Peter
Download audio version here
At the same time as the academic and research communities were creating a
network for scientific purposes, a lot of parallel activity was going on
elsewhere building computer networks as well.
A lot of the West Coast hackers belonged to the Homebrew Computer Club, founded
by Lee Felsenstein. Lee had actually begun networking computers before the
development of the PC, with his Community Memory project in the late 1970s. This
system had dumb terminals (like computer screens with keyboards connected to one
large computer that did the processing). These were placed in laundromats, the
Whole Earth Access store, and community centres in San Francisco. This network
used permanent links over a small geographical area rather than telephone lines
and modems.
The first public bulletin board using personal computers and modems was written
by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss in Chicago in 1978 for the early amateur
computers. It was about 1984 that the first bulletin boards using the IBM (Bill
Gates/Microsoft) operating system and Apple operating systems began to be used.
The most popular of these was FidoNet.
At that time the Internet technologies were only available on the UNIX computer
operating system, which wasn't available on PCs. A piece of software called
ufgate, developed by Tim Pozar, was one of the first bridges to connect the
Fidonet world to the Internet world. An alternative approach undertaken by Scott
Weikart and Steve Fram for the Association for Progressive Communications saw
UNIX being made available on special low cost PCs in a distributed network.
In the community networking field early systems included PEN (Public Electronic
Network) in Santa Monica, the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) in the Bay area
of San Francisco, Big Sky Telegraph, and a host of small businesses with online
universities, community bulletin boards, artists networks, seniors clubs, womens
networks etc. ..
Gradually, as the 1980s came to a close, these networks also began joining the
Internet for connectivity and adopted the TCP/IP standard. Now the PC networks
and the academic networks were joined, and a platform was available for rapid
global development.
By 1989 many of the new community networks had joined the Electronic Networkers
Association, which preceded the Internet Society as the association for network
builders. When they met in San Francisco in 1989, there was a lot of activity,
plus some key words emerging - connectivity and interoperability. Not
surprisingly in the California hippy culture f the time, the visions for these
new networks included peace, love, joy, Marshall McLuhan's global village, the
paperless office, electronic democracy, and probably Timothy Leary's Home Page.
However, new large players such as America on Line (AOL) were also starting to
make their presence felt, and a more commercial future was becoming obvious.
Flower power gave way to communications protocols, and Silicon Valley just grew
and grew.
PEN (The Public Electronic Network) in Santa Monica, may be able to claim the
mantle of being the first local government based network of any size. Run by the
local council, and conceived as a means for citizens to keep in touch with local
government, its services included forms, access to the library catalogue, city
and council information, and free email.
PEN started in February 1989, and by July 1991 had 3,500 users. One of the
stories PEN told about the advantages of its system was the consultations they
had with the homeless people of Santa Monica. The local council decided that it
would be good to consult the homeless to find out what the city government could
do for them. The homeless came back via email with simple needs - showers,
washing facilities, and lockers. Santa Monica, a city of 96000 people at the
time, was able to take this on board and provide some basic dignity for the
homeless -and at a pretty low cost. This is probably the first example of
electronic democracy in action.
Meanwhile, back in the academic and research world, there were many others who
wanted to use the growing network but could not because of military control of
Arpanet. Computer scientists at universities without defence contracts obtained
funding from the National Science Foundation to form CSNet (Computer Science
Network). Other academics who weren't computer scientists also began to show
interest, so soon this started to become known as the "Computer and Science
Network". In the early days, however, only a few academics used the Internet at
most universities. It was not until the1990s that the penetration of Internet in
academic circles became at all significant.
Because of fears of hackers, the Dept of Defence created a new separate network,
MILNet, in 1982. By the mid-1980s, ARPANET was phased out. The role of
connecting university and research networks was taken over by CSNet, later to
become the NSF (or national science foundation) Network.
The NSFnet was to become the U.S. backbone for the global network known as the
Internet, and a driving force in its early establishment. By 1989 ARPANet had
disappeared, but the Information Superhighway was just around the corner.
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credited as the source.
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