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Re: internet historiography
by Jonathan Sterne 29 Nov '02

29 Nov '02

Hi Folks, First, congrats to Barry on his coedited book, which started this whole discussion. Second, I'd like to second David on his point that the "whys" behind periodization are at least as important than the "whats." Too often, matters of classification are treated as "merely technical" considerations, but they carry with them a good deal of philosophical and ideological baggage. Do we periodize the internet according to patterns of use? Organizations of the technology? Practical understandings of the net? Scholarly approaches? The answer, of course, is that it depends. But the overwhelming majority of histories I've read of the 'net thus far have tended toward considering periodization as merely "technical" and as a result, they accept the whig interpretation of Internet history, with all the standard "great men" and institutional players playing the standard roles. There are exceptions, of course, but it seems to me that this periodization question is actually quite central to how we tell the history of the internet and to what end. The nice thing about Barry's stages is that at least they break open the idea of the internet as a closed system. Do I smell a panel or roundtable for Toronto? Best, --Jonathan, who's glad he can finally stop using that damned capital "I" in the word.

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"Re: [Air-l] The History of that "Other" Internet: PLATO"
by Quentin (Gad) Jones 29 Nov '02

29 Nov '02

William Stewart wrote: > This is a thread made for me to contribute to... EIES actually started > in 1974. Murray Turoff has reviewed and contributed to the following > page: http://livinginternet.com/r/ri_eies.htm The idea for EIES actually came from earlier work hinted at on your web site that was finished in 1970 - "Then five years later I went into a rather unique government situation as a senior operations research analyst and had a chance to work with the very latest technology in time sharing systems. That is where I had a chance to build the first Groupware system that had ever been created (1970), although we called it Computer Conferencing in those days." Quentin

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The History of that "Other" Internet: PLATO
by Brian Dear 29 Nov '02

29 Nov '02

The current AoIR thread on the history (or histories) of the Internet is interesting. I couldn't resist mentioning a project I'm working on that is at the same time related and unrelated. I'm writing a book on the history of "another" internet, one that developed independently of, and parallel to, the ARPAnet back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s: the PLATO network. Ironically, it was funded by the same agencies: ARPA, ONR, NSF. Incredibly, its actual history, significance, and massive influence are for all intents and purposes, completely unknown to most people. For a while in the 70s, the PLATO network was larger, in terms of number of actual users, than the ARPAnet. And during that same while, and arguably for some time thereafter, PLATO was more advanced than the ARPAnet and offered capabilities some of which would not appear on the Internet for 10 to 15 more years. It's as if PLATO was this separate species, developing in a heretofore unknown geographical region, that catapulted up the food-chain in a remarkably fast way, only to die out just as remarkably quickly. Survival of the fittest, or luckiest? One question I'm investigating. During the 1970s, PLATO developed at a tremendously accelerated pace, something we would not see until the late 80s, early 90s on the Internet. Every day on PLATO, new tools and new applications would appear: many originated by the PLATO systems staff, but many more by the user community itself. PLATO's programming language, called TUTOR, was designed for people to create computer-assisted instruction lessons, but the prevailing philosophy on PLATO, one of "anything goes" and "be flexible, you never know what the needs of the next developer will be" were such that TUTOR became extremely open-ended and well-documented, enabling mere mortals to develop all kinds of things the PLATO creators had never envisioned: games, simulations, multiuser communication and collaboration tools, text editors, scientific applications, interfaces to all kinds of different hardware devices, etc. The result was -- nearly overnight -- a rich, vibrant online community, remarkably similar to online communities that would pop up everywhere over the ensuing decades. The PLATO system, while mainframe-based, was viewed by its users as a very "personal" computer in the sense of "a tool that lets you communicate and collaborate with other people". Sun Microsystems would grasp the notion (with its "the network is the computer" slogan) early in the 80s, but this was not a common conception in the 1970s --- to Apple and Microsoft, for example, "PC" would for many years simply signify "personal desktop machine to do my number-crunching, document-preparation, and BASIC programming". Many who came into contact with PLATO in the 1970s would have their lives and careers permanently altered by the experience, and by the realization of what computer networks really implied about the future of daily life. PLATO people were in the 1970s already living the always-on, always-accessible "digital lifestyle" that has only recently become commonplace. You didn't "use" PLATO, you "lived" PLATO. Lotus Notes (a product designed for office-workers to "live" in all day long) is but one case of a technology that came about precisely because its inventors, Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell, had previously been exposed to and immersed in the PLATO system -- and the PLATO Notes application, among others -- while students at the University of Illinois. The PLATO culture is a fascinating microcosm of and precursor to today's Internet, both socially and technically. Study the PLATO world of the 1970s and you find issues ranging from the Hacker Ethic to free speech and government censorship; from open-source arguments to security and privacy concerns; from online collaboration to blog-like multi-user content management systems; from the evolution of chat and email to the rise of graphical-smileys and "emoticons"; from message forums on thousands of subjects, years before Usenet, to the dawn of MUDs and massively multiplayer games; from multimedia to complex scientific simulations; from online dating, relationship counseling, romances, and marriages to stalking, divorces, suicides.... You name it, and it happened on PLATO, during the same era where Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Case, and Scott McNeally were still all in high school, and Nixon was still president. Is all this significant? Should we care? Absolutely it's significant. Absolutely we should care. It's my hope that by writing this book on the history of PLATO two things will happen: 1) a huge gaping hole in the history of the Information Age will finally be at least a tiny bit "plugged", and 2) we will understand and appreciate the Internet, the Web, AOL, and Cyber-culture in general in new and much richer ways. After all, it turns out that much of what happened on the Internet already had happened -- a long time ago, in a cyberspace far, far away. Why that is so, how that came to be, and why the Internet "won" and PLATO "lost" are three major questions I hope to answer in this book. I welcome your thoughts, questions, and ideas. - Brian Brian Dear PLATO History Project La Jolla, CA brian(a)platopeople.com http://www.platopeople.com

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eCitizens Numbers - Research request, e-democracy abstracts link
by Steven Clift 28 Nov '02

28 Nov '02

I recall at the AOIR conference in Minneapolis a handful of presentations with juicy numbers about citizen perspectives on the use of the Internet in community/government/politics. If this rings a bell from that conference, your recent conference in the Netherlands, or any of your work, drop me a copy of anything appropriate: clift(a)publicus.net Below is a more specific list of questions that I am rushing to answer. I should note that I am an "e-democracy" practitioner who likes to build bridges between academics and e-democracy builders around the world. Keep me informed and I'll credit your work if I use it in one of my many speeches (hundreds across 25 countries thus far). Also, I released a compilation of abstracts from the APSA conference on DO-WIRE yesterday: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/msg00574.html I am looking for more abstract sources as well. eCitizen Numbers Next week I'll make a presentation to a foundation(s) titled the "Eye on the eCitizen." I am currently scouring the net and my contacts for the following things (expanded from my do-wire note linked above): - general statistics that illustrate that citizens become engaged when they "think it matters" or when they "think it will influence the outcome" - general breakdown/population estimates of the types of citizens - such my own framework: + active citizens (vote always, active in governance/community) + informed citizens (follow the news, vote mostly) + passive citizens (sometimes vote, avoid political news) + disengaged citizens (rarely vote, news? what's that) - what people do online in general - time spent doing X, visiting Y - any studies about user habits in their e-mail boxes versus web surfing - usages trends related to political/media/government sites - what people say they want in terms of political/governance information and services online and how they actually use such information/services currently and related trends - any numbers demonstrating a change in page views following usability improvements on government/political/media web sites - any numbers that help create a baseline related to e-democracy - any online usage trends related to the recent elections anywhere My goal is to help layout a framework for strategic involvement in e-democracy. Based on what we know, what can we do between elections with online tools and political/community involvement and what opportunities might exist in future elections. That is my goal. Anything related to above would be most helpful: clift(a)publicus.net Thanks, Steven Clift http://www.publicus.net Democracies Online Newswire http://www.e-democracy.org/do

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Internet History / Correction
by William Stewart 28 Nov '02

28 Nov '02

An extensive history of the Internet, Web, Email, Usenet, IRC, and MUDs is covered here, and has been reviewed by many of the people that helped build the technologies: http://livinginternet.com/i/ii2.htm One correction - many references claim that Leonard Kleinrock first invented packet switching, which is the technology underlying the Internet Protocol. In fact, as described at the site, Paul Baran and Donald Davies first invented packet switching, independently, at about the same time. Kleinrock worked on digital message switching, and played an important part in the development of the ARPANET, but did not discover the magical properties of packets (many users of the same infrastructure, network robustness, etc). I've read the original papers on this subject, and corresponded with both Kleinrock and Baran. Davies published a paper on this matter posthumously a couple of years ago, and it was covered by the NY Times. This canard should not be further propagated - those involved in the academic community will appreciate the importance of proper credit -- it belongs to Baran and Davies. Cheers, Bill ____________________________________________________________ | | William Stewart | billstew(a)livinginternet.com | | Fun: http://LivingInternet.com/fun/ | | "That's our new computer. We can pinpoint any fire in town with that. | It's perfect for us, because, you know, we're the fire department." | - Andy, movie "Roxanne", 1987 |____________________________________________________________

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Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life
by Ulla Bunz 28 Nov '02

28 Nov '02

last week at the national communication association Steve Jones was featured in a keynote conversation. He talked about "internet" versus "Internet." Steve, are you willing to repeat the main thoughts here briefly? Ulla > > From: david silver <dsilver(a)u.washington.edu> > Date: 2002/11/25 Mon PM 07:12:30 EST > To: air-l(a)aoir.org > Subject: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life > > Hi Folks, > > i just returned after giving a class lecture which featured an abbreviated > history of the internet and found barry's post quite interesting. besides > information about his and caroline haythornthwaite's book, he included the > following excerpt from the introduction: > > *** > > Excerpts from the Editors' Introduction, > Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite: > > _The Internet in Everyday Life_ is about the second age of the Internet as > it descends from the firmament and becomes embedded in everyday life. The > first age of the Internet was a bright light shining above everyday > concerns. In the euphoria, many analysts lost their perspective. The rapid > contraction of the dot.com economy has brought down to earth the > once-euphoric belief in the infinite possibility of Internet life. > > *** > > i'm curious about this notion of two stages of the internet. if i'm > reading the paragraph correctly, the authors suggest the net has had two > stages: before and after the dot.com crash. i'm interested in hearing > what others think about this concept of a two-staged internet history. > > in my own lecture this morning, i tracked a number of stages, all of which > contain, i believe, significant differences between them. for example > (and this is the abridged version): > > 1960s/early 1970s - ARPANET > > 1975 - a more social internet with lists like SF-Lovers > > 1979 - a more public internet (here i'm defining the internet more > expansively) with the introduction of usenet groups > > late 1980s/early 1990s - mass influx of users via prodigy/compuserve/aol > > 1991 - a more distributive (and later graphical) turn with berners-lee's > world wide web, followed by mosaic (1993), and netscape (1994) > > 1995 - netscape goes public, wall street goes crazy, dot.com daze begins > > etc etc etc. > > (like all historical stages, these are complex and reflect an interesting > intersection among social and cultural contexts, technological > developments, economic conditions, etc.) > > thoughts? > > david silver > http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l >

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Re: Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life
by Rune Dalgaard 27 Nov '02

27 Nov '02

David, interesting discussion yet I am wondering whether we need to specify some sort of perspective within which such stages are relevant.

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AoIR 2004 & 2005 - Call For Hosts
by Steve Jones 27 Nov '02

27 Nov '02

CALL FOR HOSTS CONFERENCES of the ASSOCIATION OF INTERNET RESEARCHERS (2004 and 2005) Association Web site: http://aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers (A.(o).I.R.) invites applications from sites willing to host the association's annual conference, held each year in September/October. In keeping with the association's international membership and orientation applicants from outside the U.S. are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Sites are being sought for the 2004 and 2005 conferences. The current and previous conference web sites are linked from http://aoir.org FORMAT OF PROPOSALS All proposals should be submitted via e-mail to: sjones(a)uic.edu Proposals will be evaluated by the AoIR executive committee. Please answer all questions below in the format in which they are presented. Applications may be of any length but should be as complete as possible. The association's executive committee may ask for clarification and/or additional information. Feel free to include information and details yourself. DEADLINE First preference for 2004 sites will be given to proposals received by January 31, but all proposals will be considered until a suitable site is found. Members of the AoIR executive committee will be available at the AoIR 2002 conference in Maastricht (October 13 - 16) to meet with those intending to submit a proposal, and will be available via email at any time to answer questions. QUESTIONNAIRE Please include answers to the questions below in the site proposal: 1. What is your location's accessibility? Is it convenient for those travelling from points around the world? Is there a major airport nearby (how distant is it)? Describe the specific site (i.e. building(s)) in which the conference would be held. What number of rooms are available and what are their capacities? What technological support is available in those rooms (e.g. ethernet, projectors, etc)? Please provide indication that these rooms are actually available during the dates you propose for the conference. What is your site's maximum capacity? Has there been previous conferences at your site? If so, please list a few examples. Do you have references or reviews of those previous conferences? If so, please provide them. 2. What kind of support will your site provide? Is there a commitment for funds for the conference? If so, to what level of funding is the commitment? Is the commitment firm (evidence of commitment letters, verbal agreements, etc., should be provided)? Are there conference coordinating agencies available on whom you could draw to help manage registration and the events? 3. Is the site affordable? Will you be able to provide quality accommodations at reasonable cost? Please give an estimate of the cost of hotel rooms and meals. Provide indication that adequate hotel rooms are actually available during the proposed conference dates. How many participants will your site/hotels be able to accommodate? What is the state of local transportation at the conference site? 4. Are there special attractions, tours, locations, at which dinners/receptions might be held, or that attendees might like to visit? 5. Is there opportunity for partnerships and sponsorships that your site can uniquely provide? Please list and explain. 6. Is there a specific year for which you are proposing your site? If not chosen for next year, would your site be willing to host the conference in a subsequent year? Are there specific dates you would like to propose (typically the conference runs three full days)? 7. Is there a person you can identify as a "local host/liaison" who will serve on the local conference committee and liason with aoir? do you have a representative or set of representatives that you would like to put on the AoIR program committee? Have they had experience managing conferences before or are there people immediately available that can guide and assist them? Do you have someone in mind in AoIR from another location than the hosting location that you would like to have Chair the conference? 8. Have you read the AoIR conference guidelines? Are there any exceptions to those guidelines that are desired for you to be able to host the conference in the way that you would like? 9. Are there any special ways that your institution furthers the interdisciplinary, international nature of the Association of Internet Researchers? _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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contact for Guillermo Gomez Pena
by parrishka 27 Nov '02

27 Nov '02

anyone know the current whera-abouts/contact for Guillermo Gomez-Peña? pls. back-channel. and thanks to those who sent me information re: digital image & sound. much appreciated! Katherine Parrish OISE/U of Toronto

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faculty opening in Digital Communication & Aesthetics, Copenhagen
by Lisbeth Klastrup 27 Nov '02

27 Nov '02

apologies for cross-posting... -------------------------------------- Assistant or Associate Professorship in Computer Games at the IT University of Copenhagen The IT University of Copenhagen invites applications for one position as Assistant or Associate Professor in computer games in the Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication (http://www.it-c.dk/English/research/diac/) The position is available from June 1st, 2003. The Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication (DiAC) addresses aesthetic, cultural, social and communicative aspects of IT. The job involves: - research in communicative, narrative and social aspects of computer gaming and virtual worlds; gaming culture; player motivation; learning in game playing; and personality and gaming. - teaching within use, reception and narrativity in digital media; concepts and methods in reception of computer games and virtual worlds; target group analysis; humanistic and social perspectives on technology. The Associate Professorship is a tenured position and the Assistant Professorship is an untenured position for a 3-year period. Both positions include research and teaching obligations. Further information about the IT University is available at www.it-c.dk Applications and enclosures must be submitted in English on the basis of the complete text for the vacancy available at http://www.it-c.dk/Internet/jobs/8eqJBn/. Application deadline: January 6th 2003, 12:00 noon Appointment and salary will be in accordance with the Ministry of Finance's agreement with the AC (the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations). The IT University invites all qualified researchers regardless of age, gender, religious affiliation or ethnic background to apply for the positions. For further information about the position, please contact Head of Department Anker Helms Jørgensen, anker(a)it-c.dk ----------------------------------------------------------------- Lisbeth Klastrup Ph. D. Scholar, Research Assistant Dept. of Digital Aesthetics and Communication IT University of Copenhagen klastrup(a)itu.dk

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