Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet A round trip through Global Networks, Life in Cyberspace, and Everything... by Adam Gaffin with Joerg Heitkoetter This is *Texinfo* edition 1.02 of `bdgtti.texi' as of 27 September 1993. Created by Joerg Heitkoetter on August 27, 1993. The *Texinfo* edition originated from plain ASCII text file `/pub/EFF/papers/big-dummys-guide.txt' ¡ ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/papers/big-dummys-guide.txt on The Electronic Frontier Foundation's server `ftp.eff.org'. Copyright (c) 1993 EFF, The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Published by The Electronic Frontier Foundation 1001 G Street, N.W., Suite 950 East Washington, DC 20001, USA Phone: (202) 347-5400. FAX: (202) 393-5509. Internet: Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this publication provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this publication under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this publication into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  * Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet * ********************************* A round trip through Global Networks, Life in Cyberspace, and Everything... by Adam Gaffin with Joerg Heitkoetter Copyright (c) 1993 EFF, The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Published by The Electronic Frontier Foundation 1001 G Street, N.W., Suite 950 East Washington, DC 20001, USA Phone: (202) 347-5400. FAX: (202) 393-5509. 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Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail. If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19YY NAME OF AUTHOR Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program. You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names: Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. SIGNATURE OF TY COON, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License. Welcome ******* *Welcome to the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet.* The genesis of the Big Dummy's Guide was a few informal conversations, which included MITCH KAPOR of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and STEVE CISLER of Apple Computer, Inc. in June of 1991. With the support of Apple Computer, EFF hired a writer (ADAM GAFFIN) and actually took on the project in September of 1991. The idea was to write a guide to the Internet for folks who had little or no experience with network communications. We intended to post this Guide to "the Net" in ASCII and HyperCard formats and to give it away on disk, as well as have a print edition available for a nominal charge. With the consolidation of our offices to Washington, DC, we were able to put the Guide on a fast track. You're looking at the realization of our dreams - version one of the Guide. At the time I'm writing this, we're still fishing around for a book publisher, so the hard-copy version has not yet been printed. We're hoping to update this Guide on a regular basis, so please feel free to send us your comments and corrections. EFF would like to thank the folks at Apple, especially Steve Cisler of the Apple Library, for their support of our efforts to bring this Guide to you. We hope it helps you open up a whole new world, where new friends and experiences are sure to be yours. Enjoy! Shari Steele Director of Legal Services and Community Outreach Electronic Frontier Foundation July 15, 1993 August 27, 1993 *G'day, folks!* I came across this guide while reading "EFFector Online Volume 5 No. 15, 8/20/1993" (A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ISSN 1062-9424), that is available via `comp.org.eff.news' and immediately decided to get my hands on it. After browsing through the raw ASCII text file, I thought that such a useful thing, should have a more beautiful "face" (and fewer "bugs"). As Shari points out, the EFF is still "fishing for a publisher." In other words, it's far from being clear when this guide will be available as hard copy, unless you want to print out the "buggy" ASCII file. Thus, I started over to make the bulk a *Texinfo* document, loosely modelled after BRENDAN KEHOE's "Zen and the Art of the Internet", originally written for Widener University's, Computer Science Department, and later published as: Kehoe, B.P. (1992) "Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet." 2nd Edition (July). Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 112 pages. The 1st Edition, (February, 2nd) is still available via anonymous ftp from `ftp.cs.widener.edu' and many other Internet archives. It was the first comprehensive book on the Internet available. (Despite the "traditional" postings in `news.announce.newusers' originated by ex-Net.god GENE SPAFFORD of Purdue University and the `news.answers' archive maintained by Net.demi-god JANATHAN I. KAMES of MIT). Situation has changed dramatically, since. More and more books get into the stores, and hopefully facilitate the life of "newbies" on the Net. Just to mention two IMHO excellent examples: Krol, E. (1992) "The Whole Internet: Catalog & User's Guide." O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA. 376 pages. LaQuey, T. and Ryer, J.C. (1992) "The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking." Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, MA. 208 pages. But, "the Net" in its present form would have never been evolved without the hundreds of un-paid voluntary efforts (de facto Internet still *is* run on a voluntary basis), so here are *my* two cents: The output of several night-shift editing sessions. "The BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET is now available at your local laser printer..." See ya on the Net! p.s.: Although this guide is almost complete, and I really, really, honestly, don't have the time to go over it once again, feel free to report "bugs", or any inconsistencies you find. Drop me "more quotes," further additions, requests for moral support, or "whatever-you-want"... Just an e-mail away. p.p.s.: I'd like to say a BIG "thank you" to SHARI STEELE, for her immediate excitement on this project. ADAM GAFFIN, who generously accepted my changes to his initial ASCII version. HOWARD RHEINGOLD, who let me include his article, now serving as superb afterword of long-year first hand experience in cyberspace (and yes, I mentioned your new book, Howard `;-)'). And, Last not least, thanks to BRUCE STERLING, who also "gave away" an article for free. Again, BERND RAICHLE courtesy of the University of Stuttgart, provided TeXpertize, when TeXpertize was badly needed (see file `specials.texi' for your enlightment). BTW: Over the past 2 years, we've been doing some such projects, although we haven't met F2F, yet. This is one of the effects of the Net. (It thus should be termed "Net.effect".) Additional thanks to BRENDAN KEHOE for the *Texinfo* release of "Zen", from which I borrowed this and that. FYI: Brendan works on the 3rd editition of his book, and might be able to release the 2nd to the Net, depending on Prentice-Hall's legal attorneys. September 22, 1993 *G'day, folks! II* Some more nights have passed, and "GNU Info" format is fully supported, now. You can use either Emacs in INFO mode, or just GNU's `info' browser (also available as `xinfo' for the X window system): type `info -f bdgtti-1.02.info' and read "Dummy's" online in hypertextual fashion. But since edition 1.01, "Dummy's" not only features an "Info" version. It also comes with HTML support, i.e. the HyperText Markup Language format, that is used by the World-Wide Web project (*note World-Wide Web: Gophers. for some more ideas on this). The `bdgtti-1.02*.html' files can thus be browsed using the WWW tools: from within `xmosaic', e.g. load `bdgtti-1.02_toc.html', and there you go! Finally, some more folks have helped along the way. Many, thanks to LIONEL CONS courtesy of CERN, who immediately updated his `texi2html' to make it work for this project. (Note that you need `perl' to run this program.) INGO DRESSLER courtesy of EUnet Deutschland, reserved a place on `ftp.germany.eu.net' to distribute the European A4 paper edition of this guide. See under `/pub/books/big-dummys-guide' using traditional FTP, or use The Web at: `ftp://ftp. germany.eu.net/pub/books/big-dummys-guide'. This will be the default server for the European editions. "The BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET is now available in a variety of easily convertible formats, *and* at your local laser printer..." Enjoy the trip! Joerg Heitkoetter Systems Analysis Research Group, LSXI Department of Computer Science University of Dortmund, Germany 27 September 1993 *"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."* -- Walt Disney *"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."* -- Sir Isaac Newton *"A work of art is never finished, only abandoned."* -- Anonymous Forward ******* By *Mitchell Kapor* Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation. New communities are being built today. You cannot see them, except on a computer screen. You cannot visit them, except through your keyboard. Their highways are wires and optical fibers; their language a series of ones and zeroes. Yet these communities of cyberspace are as real and vibrant as any you could find on a globe or in an atlas. Those are real people on the other sides of those monitors. And freed from physical limitations, these people are developing new types of cohesive and effective communities - ones which are defined more by common interest and purpose than by an accident of geography, ones on which what really counts is what you say and think and feel, not how you look or talk or how old you are. The oldest of these communities is that of the scientists, which actually predates computers. Scientists have long seen themselves as an international community, where ideas were more important than national origin. It is not surprising that the scientists were the first to adopt the new electronic media as their principal means of day-to-day communication. I look forward to a day in which everybody, not just scientists, can enjoy similar benefits of a global community. But how exactly does community grow out of a computer network? It does so because the network enables new forms of communication. The most obvious example of these new digital communications media is electronic mail, but there are many others. We should begin to think of mailing lists, newsgroups, file and document archives, etc. as just the first generation of new forms of information and communications media. The digital media of computer networks, by virtue of their design and the enabling technology upon which they ride, are fundamentally different from the now dominant mass media of television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Digital communications media are inherently capable of being more interactive, more participatory, more egalitarian, more decentralized, and less hierarchical. As such, the types of social relations and communities which can be built on these media share these characteristics. Computer networks encourage the active participation of individuals rather than the passive non-participation induced by television narcosis. In mass media, the vast majority of participants are passive recipients of information. In digital communications media, the vast majority of participants are active creators of information as well as recipients. This type of symmetry has previously only been found in media like the telephone. But while the telephone is almost entirely a medium for private one-to-one communication, computer network applications such as electronic mailing lists, conferences, and bulletin boards, serve as a medium of group or "many-to-many" communication. The new forums atop computer networks are the great levelers and reducers of organizational hierarchy. Each user has, at least in theory, access to every other user, and an equal chance to be heard. Some U.S. high-tech companies, such as Microsoft and Borland, already use this to good advantage: their CEO's - BILL GATES and PHILIPPE KAHN - are directly accessible to all employees via electronic mail. This creates a sense that the voice of the individual employee really matters. More generally, when corporate communication is facilitated by electronic mail, decision-making processes can be far more inclusive and participatory. Computer networks do not require tightly centralized administrative control. In fact, decentralization is necessary to enable rapid growth of the network itself. Tight controls strangle growth. This decentralization promotes inclusiveness, for it lowers barriers to entry for new parties wishing to join the network. Given these characteristics, networks hold tremendous potential to enrich our collective cultural, political, and social lives and enhance democratic values everywhere. And the Internet, and the UUCP and related networks connected to it, represents an outstanding example of a computer network with these qualities. It is an open network of networks, not a single unitary network, but an ensemble of interconnected systems which operate on the basis of multiple implementations of accepted, non-proprietary protocols, standards and interfaces. One of its important characteristics is that new networks, host systems, and users may readily join the network - the network is open to all. The openness (in all senses) of the Internet reflects, I believe, the sensibilities and values of its architects. Had the Internet somehow been developed outside the world of research and education, it's less likely to have had such an open architecture. Future generations will be indebted to this community for the wisdom of building these types of open systems. Still, the fundamental qualities of the Net, such as its decentralization, also pose problems. How can full connectivity be maintained in the face of an ever-expanding number of connected networks, for example? What of software bugs that bring down computers, or human crackers who try to do the same? But these problems can and will be solved. Digital media can be the basis of new forms of political discourse, in which citizens form and express their views on the important public issues of the day. There is more than one possible vision of such electronic democracy, however. Let's look at some examples of the potential power, and problems, of the new digital media. The idea of something called an "electronic town meeting" received considerable attention in 1992 with ROSS PEROT's presidential campaign (or, at least, its first incarnation). Perot's original vision, from 20 or so years ago, was that viewers would watch a debate on television and fill out punch cards which would be mailed in and collated. Now we could do it with 800 telephone numbers. In the current atmosphere of disaffection, alienation and cynicism, anything that promotes greater citizen involvement seems a good idea. People are turned off by politicians in general - witness the original surge of support for Perot as outsider who would go in and clean up the mess - and the idea of going right to the people is appealing, What's wrong with this picture? The individual viewer is a passive recipient of the views of experts. The only action taken by the citizen is in expressing a preference for one of three pre-constructed alternatives. While this might be occasionally useful, it's unsophisticated and falls far short of the real potential of electronic democracy. We've been reduced to forming our judgments on the basis of mass media's portrayal of the personality and character of the candidates. All this is in contrast to robust political debates already found on various on-line computer systems, from CompuServe to Usenet. Through these new media, the issues of the day, ranging from national security in the post-Cold War era to comparative national health care systems, are fiercely discussed in a wide variety of bulletin boards, conferences, and newsgroups. What I see in online debate are multiple active participants, not just experts, representing every point of view, in discussions that unfold over extended periods of time. What this shows is that, far from being alienated and disaffected from the political process, people like to talk and discuss - and take action - if they have the opportunity to do so. Mass media don't permit that. But these new media are more akin to a gathering around the cracker barrel at the general store - only extended over hundreds, thousands of miles, in cyberspace, rather than in one physical location. Recent years have shown the potential power of these new media. We have also seen several examples of where talk translated into action. In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission proposed changing the way certain online providers paid for access to local phone service. Online, this quickly became known as the "modem tax" and generated a storm of protest. The FCC withdrew the idea, but not quickly enough: the "modem tax" has penetrated so deeply into the crevices of the Net that it has taken up a permanent and ghostly residence as a kind of virtual or cognitive virus, which periodically causes a re-infection of the systems and its users. FCC commissioners continue to receive substantial mail on this even though the original issue is long dead; in fact, it has generated more mail than any other issue in the history of the FCC. More recently, JIM MANZI, chairman of Lotus Development Corp., received more than 30,000 e-mail messages when the company was getting ready to sell a database containing records on tens of millions of Americans. The flood of electronic complaints about the threat to privacy helped force the company to abandon the project. Issues of narrow but vital interest to the online community give a hint of the organizing power of the Net. In August, 1991, the managers of a Soviet computer network known as Relcom stayed online during an abortive coup, relaying eyewitness accounts and news of actions against the coup to the West and to the rest of Russia. And many public interest non-profit organizations and special interest groups already use bulletin boards heavily as a means of communicating among their members and organizing political activity. But all is not perfect online. The quality of discourse is often very low. Discussion is often trivial and boring and bereft of persuasive reason. Discourse often sinks to the level of "flaming," of personal attacks, instead of substantive discussion. Flaming. Those with the most time to spend often wind up dominating the debate - a triumph of quantity of time available over quality of content. It seems like no place for serious discussion. Information overload is also a problem. There is simply far too much to read to keep up with. It is all without organization. How can this be addressed? Recent innovations in the design of software used to connect people to the Net and the process of online discussion itself reveal some hope. Flaming is universal, but different systems handle it in different ways. Both the technology and cultural norms matter. On Usenet, for instance, most news reader applications support a feature known as a "killfile," which allows an individual to screen out postings by a particular user or on a particular subject. It is also sometimes referred to as "the bozo filter." This spares the user who is sufficiently sophisticated from further flamage, but it does nothing to stop the problem at its source. Censorship would be one solution. But what else can be done without resorting to unacceptably heavy-handed tactics of censorship? There is a great tradition of respect for free speech on these systems, and to censor public postings or even ban a poster for annoying or offensive content is properly seen as unacceptable, in my opinion. Some systems use cultural norms, rather than software, to deal with flame wars. These online communities have developed practices which rely more on a shared, internalized sense of appropriate behavior than on censorship, for instance. The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) is a relatively small online conferencing system based in the San Francisco Bay area. On the WELL, individuals who get into a fight are encouraged to move the discussion out of the public conference and into e-mail. The encouragement is provided not only by the host of the conference, but also by the users. It is part of the culture, not par