system, doesn't charge for long-distance service. And unlike most commercial
computer networks, it doesn't charge for access time, either. In fact the
Internet itself, which doesn't even officially exist as an entity, never charges
for anything. Each group of people accessing the Internet is responsible for
their own machine and their own section of line.
certain deep and basic sense. It's rather like the anarchy of the English
language. Nobody rents English, and nobody owns English. As an English-
speaking person, it's up to you to learn how to speak English properly and
make whatever use you please of it (though the government provides certain
subsidies to help you learn to read and write a bit). Otherwise, everybody just
sort of pitches in, and somehow the thing evolves on its own, and somehow
turns out workable. And interesting. Fascinating, even. Though a lot of people
earn their living from using and exploiting and teaching English, English as an
institution is public property, a public good. Much the same goes for the
Internet. Would English be improved if the
“The English Language, Inc. had a board of directors and a chief executive
officer, or a President and a Congress? There'd probably be a lot fewer new
words in English, and a lot fewer new ideas.
It's an institution that resists institutionalization. The Internet belongs to
everyone and no one.
Internet put on a sounder financial footing. Government people want the
Internet more fully regulated. Academics want it dedicated exclusively to
scholarly research. Military people want it spy-proof and secure. And so on
and so on.
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
Internet, so far, remains in a thrivingly anarchical condition. Once upon a
time, the NSFnet's high-speed, high-capacity lines were known as the Internet
Backbone, and their owners could rather lord it over the rest of the Internet;
but today there are backbones in Canada, Japan, and Europe, and even
privately owned commercial Internet backbones specially created for carrying
business traffic. Today, even privately owned desktop computers can become
Internet nodes. You can carry one under your arm. Soon, perhaps, on your
wrist.
discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file transfers.
than the US Mail, which is scornfully known by Internet regulars as snailmail.
Internet mail is somewhat like fax. It's electronic text. But you don't have to
pay for it (at least not directly), and it's global in scope. E-mail can also send
software and certain forms of compressed digital imagery. New forms of mail
are in the works.
of news, debate and argument is generally known as USENET. USENET is, in
point of fact, quite different from the Internet. USENET is rather like an
enormous billowing crowd of gossipy, news-hungry people, wandering in and
through the Internet on their way to various private backyard barbecues.
USENET is not so much a physical network as a set of social conventions. In
any case, at the moment there are some 2,500 separate newsgroups on
USENET, and their discussions generate about 7 million words of typed
commentary every single day. Naturally there is a vast amount of talk about
computers on USENET, but the variety of subjects discussed is enormous, and
it's growing larger all the time. USENET also distributes various free
electronic journals and publications.
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
speed core of the Internet itself. News and e-mail are easily available over
common phone-lines, from Internet fringe- realms like BITnet, UUCP and
Fidonet. The last two Internet services, long-distance computing and file
transfer, require what is known as direct Internet access – using TCP/IP.
still a very useful service, at least for some. Programmers can maintain
accounts on distant, powerful computers, run programs there or write their
own. Scientists can make use of powerful supercomputers a continent away.
Libraries offer their electronic card catalogs for free search. Enormous CD-
ROM catalogs are increasingly available through this service. And there are
fantastic amounts of free software available.
programs or text. Many Internet computers – some two thousand of them, so
far – allow any person to access them anonymously, and to simply copy their
public files, free of charge. This is no small deal, since entire books can be
transferred through direct Internet access in a matter of minutes. Today, in
1992, there are over a million such public files available to anyone who asks
for them (and many more millions of files are available to people with
accounts). Internet file-transfers are becoming a new form of publishing, in
which the reader simply electronically copies the work on demand, in any
quantity he or she wants, for free. New Internet programs, such as archie,
gopher, and WAIS, have been developed to catalog and explore these
enormous archives of material.
Any computer of sufficient power is a potential spore for the Internet, and
today such computers sell for less than $2,000 and are in the hands of people
all over the world. ARPA's network, designed to assure control of a ravaged
society after a nuclear holocaust, has been superceded by its mutant child the
Internet, which is thoroughly out of control, and spreading exponentially
through the post-Cold War electronic global village. The spread of the
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
though it is even faster and perhaps more important. More important,
perhaps, because it may give those personal computers a means of cheap, easy
storage and access that is truly planetary in scale.
Commercialization of the Internet is a very hot topic today, with every
manner of wild new commercial information- service promised. The federal
government, pleased with an unsought success, is also still very much in the
act. NREN, the National Research and Education Network, was approved by
the US Congress in fall 1991, as a five-year, $2 billion project to upgrade the
Internet backbone. NREN will be some fifty times faster than the fastest
network available today, allowing the electronic transfer of the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica in one hot second. Computer networks worldwide
will feature 3-D animated graphics, radio and cellular phone-links to portable
computers, as well as fax, voice, and high- definition television. A multimedia
global circus!
little resemblance to today's plans. Planning has never seemed to have much to
do with the seething, fungal development of the Internet. After all, today's
Internet bears little resemblance to those original grim plans for RAND's
post- holocaust command grid. It's a fine and happy irony.
and a modem, get one. Your computer can act as a terminal, and you can use
an ordinary telephone line to connect to an Internet-linked machine. These
slower and simpler adjuncts to the Internet can provide you with the netnews
discussion groups and your own e-mail address. These are services worth
having – though if you only have mail and news, you're not actually on the
Internet proper.
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
campus machine, and you may be able to get those hot-dog long-distance
computing and file-transfer functions. Some cities, such as Cleveland, supply
freenet community access. Businesses increasingly have Internet access, and
are willing to sell it to subscribers. The standard fee is about $40 a month –
about the same as TV cable service.
cheaper and easier. Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for
the savage UNIX interface of TCP/IP leaves plenty of room for advancements
in user-friendliness. Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it, is
wise. By the turn of the century, network literacy, like computer literacy
before it, will be forcing itself into the very texture of your life.”1
contractors.
were believed to have some sort of access to the Internet.
57,037,000, and that there were 320 million web pages.
holiday season was $8.2 billion.
Internet. The growth rate of the internet is in excess of 10 percent per month.
, Published in numerous sites on the Internet,
February 1993
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
shows that growth as estimated world wide web hosts from
January 1993 to January 1999.
–
requirements necessary to establish a 'Knowing' Utility.
these revolutions– agricultural, industrial, communication, and
computer–occured? What is going on here? Where is our species headed?
Without any explicit plan to do so we have mastered agriculture, industry,
communication, and computation. Why?
systems. Our behavior is restricted by the principles of nature. Self-
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
is an active phenomena, it is powerfully organizing always seeking efficiency
through complexity.
organizing themselves into evermore complex and interrelated systems. We
have a world travel system, world industrial system, world communication
system, and clearly a world economic system.
precedes the evolution of more complex life forms. We humans appear to be
following the same path that was taken many times by 'LIFE' in the past. This
was the path taken when molecular life organized itself into cellular life; when
cells became multi-cellular; when tissues became organs; and when organs
became organisms.
system? My body is a 'unified culture' of 40,000,000,000,000 cells operating
in harmony to produce the phenomena that I call 'me'. Is it our turn to
become cells in a new life form–the 'Unified Cultures of Earth'?
Gaia hypothesis– that the Earth is itself a living organism.
connectedness as to resemble an enormous embryo still in the
process of developing.”
Cultures of Earth' will operate more like a living organism then a political state. I
believe that the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the communication
revolution, and the computation revolution represent the organizing nests of cells
that will form the organs for the new life form.
TrustMark 2001 by Timothy Wilken
