Cultural Studies 3 Lecture 4 Histry of the net

Cultural Studies 3: 

Cultural Studies 3 Lecture 4 From Arpanet to the World Wide Web: A brief history of the Internet Liam Greenslade http://ncad.culturalstudies.googlepages.com http://ncadculturalstudies3.blogspot.com

The Internet: A brief history 1960s: 

The Internet: A brief history 1960s JCR Licklider MIT (1962) proposes ‘galactic network’ of interconnected computers Development motivated by fears of nuclear war leading to the need for decentralised computer resources

The Internet: A brief history 1970s: 

The Internet: A brief history 1970s 1969 ARPANET emerges 4 hosted computers linked together UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of Utah, UC Santa Barbara 1972 1st public demonstration of internet International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC) at the Washington D.C. Hilton with demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines. First computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC, as psychotic PARRY (at Stanford) discusses its problems with the Doctor (at BBN).

The Internet: A brief history 1970s: 

The Internet: A brief history 1970s First ARPANET mailing list is created by Steve Walker. A science fiction list, SF-Lovers, was to become the most popular unofficial list in the early days John Vittal develops MSG, the first all-inclusive email program providing replying, forwarding, and filing capabilities.

From Arpanet to Internet: 

From Arpanet to Internet “This ARPA program has created no less than a revolution in computer technology and has been one of the most successful projects ever undertaken by ARPA. The full impact of the technical changes set in motion by this project may not be understood for many years.” -- from ARPANET Completion Report, January 3, 1978

The Internet: A brief history 1980s: 

The Internet: A brief history 1980s 1983 Drew Major and Kyle Powell write Snipes, an action game to be played on PC’s over the network. 1984 Novelist William Gibson coins the term cyberspace in Neuromancer. 1988 The Morris WORM burrows on the Internet into 6,000 of the 60,000 hosts now on the network. This is the first worm experience and DARPA forms the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to deal with future such incidents.

Usenet. The beginning of Web 2.0: 

Usenet. The beginning of Web 2.0 "The initially most significant service will be to provide a rapid access newsletter. Any node can submit an article, which will in due course propagate to all nodes. A `news' program has been designed which can perform this service. The first articles will probably concern bug fixes, trouble reports, and general cries for help. Certain categories of news, such as `have/want' articles, may become sufficiently popular as to warrant separate newsgroups. (The news program mentioned above supports newsgroups.)“ Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis 1979

Usenet : 

Usenet Usenet operated as a series of (big) linked computers whose "wizards" agreed to pass on all 'post' sent to them to the next recipient) and so on through the 'network'. Around 1983, within the network, there developed a 'backbone' of reliable, larger computers through which most of the traffic flowed (if only because it was likely to arrive earlier than through other routes). The wizards of the backbone sites - a group of people using the lists and developing software - were in regular contact and became known as the "Usenet Cabal". It was the cabal that decided what would be carried, and how it would be catalogued.... ie. what groups should be created. For the first years, with a limited community, there was little need for censorship. The Usenet network was subsidised (often unknowingly) by the machine owners, who picked up the phone-bill. On-line time could cost up to $6/minute

Slide9: 

"I am beginning to wonder about USENET. I thought it was supposed to represent electronic mail and bulletins among a group of professionals with a common interest, thus representing fast communications about important technical topics. Instead it appears to be mutating into electronic graffiti. If the system did not cost anything, that would be fine, but for us here at Tektronix, at least, it is costing us better than $200 a month for 300-baud long distance to copy lists of people's favorite movies, and recipes for goulash, and arguments about metaphysics and so on. Is this really appropriate to this type of system?"

The ‘Great Renaming’: 

The ‘Great Renaming’ Worries about cost and the nature of usage led to a rationalisation of Usenet Within the groups, the cabal had already in August 1985, banished the carrying to 'chain letters' In March 1986 the first 'netiquette' had appeared. Among the sins it condemned were the practices of SHOUTING (ie using capitals) 'flaming' (sending unnecessarily immoderate messages to a newsgroup) which could lead to 'flamewars' and 'mailbombing'

Alt.net: 

Alt.net The ‘Great Renaming’ led to the creation of named groups, the first being comp... computer oriented misc... miscellaneous rec.... recreation sci.... science soc.... social (this carried a lot of boy-meets-girl stuff) talk... gossip This enabled some universities to drop the 'talk' and 'social' groups and cut costs This led to users creating alternative groups in which social and leisure interests could be transmitted The word ‘Alt’ was intended to represent 'outside the system'. The first group was alt.gourmand. Alt.sex and alt.rock-n-roll soon followed. The availability of new routes (particularly NSFNET - named after US National Science Foundation - backed up by five super-computers) swiftly removed the bottleneck in newsgroup traffic. IN 1987, UUnet was set up - a non-profit-making news carrier, which had every incentive to carry and distribute the alt. group and others.

Usenet traffic flows 1993: 

Usenet traffic flows 1993

The World Wide Web (1989): 

The World Wide Web (1989) Tim Berners-Lee addresses the issue of the constant change in the currency of information and the turn-over of people on projects Instead of an hierarchical or keyword organization, Berners-Lee proposes a hypertext system that will run across the Internet on different operating systems. This was the World Wide Web.

The Internet: A brief history 1990s: 

The Internet: A brief history 1990s 1991 The ‘Gore Bill’ funds research in high performance computing and communication 1993 Mosaic graphical web browser developed at University of Illinois using Gore Bill funding 1994 Mosaic superceded by Netscape Navigator 1994 Webcrawler first full-text search engine appears 1995 Yahoo and Altavista commercial web search tools appear 1995- Massive expansion of internet based commerce leads to the ‘dot.com’ bubble 1998 Google founded 2000 ‘dot.com’ bubble bursts

Further Reading: 

Further Reading Internet Society (2007) Histories of the internet http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/ Howe W (2007) A brief history of the Internet http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html