wpg@mendel.acc.Virginia.EDU (William P. Gardner) (07/04/90)
A while ago I posted a request for references to histories of communications networks. I received some very useful pointers as well as several requests to share them. Here are the ones I have found and read and I strongly recommend them all. - Chandler, A. (1977), "The visible hand. The managerial revolution in American business", Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. A fascinating account of how the need to organize the railroad system, among other causes, led to the formation of a managerial class. - Eisenstein, E. (1968), Some conjectures about the impact of printing on Western society and thought: a preliminary report, "Journal of Modern History, 40", 3-56. - Eisenstein, E. (1979), "The printing press as an agent of change. Com- munications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe" (Vols. 1-2). New York: Cambridge University Press. A frustrating writer who spends too much time lecturing her colleagues for ignoring her issues. But she synthesizes a lot of information and poses deep questions about how printing changed intellectual life. - Pool, I. de Sola (1983), "Technologies of freedom", Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The legal and political background and consequences of the evolution of the American nets. Now -- another question. To my knowledge, none of the academic nets allow commerce in documents (or anything else). Does anyone know of an official statement of policy from the BITNET people or from USENET (who runs USENET, anyway?) that states and justifies this policy? William Gardner
reggie@dinsdale.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (07/07/90)
Adding to what William P. Gardner recently wrote on histories of
communications networks:
Have you read:
Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff,
The Network Nation,
Addison-Wesley, 1978.
William also asked:
> Now -- another question. To my knowledge, none of the academic nets
> allow commerce in documents (or anything else). Does anyone know of an
> official statement of policy from the BITNET people or from USENET (who
> runs USENET, anyway?) that states and justifies this policy?
Got me, but if you are interested in the potentials of commercial
endeavors and communications, you might want to try and track down
the following:
Murray Turoff,
Information, Value and the Internal Marketplace,
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, (27), 1985, pp. 357-373.
Murray Turoff and Sanjit Chinai,
An Electronic Information Marketplace,
Computer Networks and ISDN Systems,
(9), 1985, pp. 79-90.
George W. Leacheugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) (07/10/90)
William P. Gardner asks: > To my knowledge, none of the academic nets allow commerce in documents > (or anything else). Does anyone know of an official statement of policy > from the BITNET people or from USENET (who runs USENET, anyway?) that > states and justifies this policy? The original statement of non-commercial use came from ARPA, the Department of Defense, Advanced Project Research Admin., you might be able to find the precise wording from the Network Information Center, the NIC at SRI. Basically public money (but military) can't be used for commercial purposes. Every now and again a General might log in an send a message out to that effect. The BITNET "policy" was stated in 1981, I think, in Ira Fuchs' original article on the BITNET (Because It's Time Net). They very quickly shot themselves in the foot because they discovered they left out Government agencies, and useful commercial entities. SPAN and HEPnet had these problems, too. CSnet was somewhat aware of the need for commercial entities (members), but the problem was that only big companies could afford it. WHO runs USENET?? I feel like a Mexican bandito when you say that, you don't happened to be named Fred C. Dobbs by chance? "Badges? We got no stinkin' badges..." No one runs USENET (a loose confederation of people. It's chaos. It's mostly honor system. Hacker ethics. Personal advancement info gets groups like comp.newprod, biz.*, the *wanted* groups, certain soc.singles types groups. Not every site gets these. A few sites refuse the soc/talk/rec/misc/alt groups. The line is somewhat fuzzy and few want to push it. Some look the other way, a few fundamentalists see things differently. So it's kind of a scale: pyramid schemes will get thrown out fast, paid seminars on computer literacy might be tolerated, and free seminars more so. e. nobuo miya