Get Wired - SFU ENSC on the 'Net

The 'Net

By John Harvey, VP Geek Electronic Communications

There are about as many different interpretations to the 'net, as there are people trying to explain it. The American government calls it the superhighway, their opposition the super toll booth. The G7 summit called it the global interchange, the techies call it ARPA net. Most people think of the internet as the 'net, the highway, or cyberspace. The net started (more or less) in the later 60's with ARPA net, an American network for linking research institutions, universities, and other agencies.

ARPAnet had several goals. ARPA net was designed to survive a nuclear attack. The network could re-configure itself when it felt links were over used, or possibly destroyed. Each major site (generally universities) had several links to other sites so the failure of one site would not be critical. Because the network is redundant and self re-configuring , you can never be sure how long it will take to get your message through. This variable time delay wreaks havoc with live voice and video communications but graphics and text don't seem so strange when they arrive sporadically or even out of order.

The modern network is both very different and very similar to ARPAnet. ARPAnet was non-commercial, anyone trying to sell anything would often get "flamed", and finding product information was next to impossible. Starting more than ten years ago the ARPAnet started transforming itself from a military complex into a "peoples" network.

The WELL is seen as one of the first internet success stories. The WELL was essentially an on-line community formed in San Francisco. The WELL started many of the current news groups, and showed how humans could use a network to build relationships between people. The WELL made chat areas (now called MUD's, MOO's and IRC's) popular and easy to use.

And then someone figured out how they could make money. The late 80's saw the beginning of information service providers like MindLink and Wimsey. These companies provide accounts for anyone who has a personal computer. They offered e-mail, net-news, and Gopher. Gopher started a whole new community. Gopher allowed people to use a menu based text terminal to explore information on the internet.

But text is boring. Mosaic started in about 1993. (There were earlier versions, but not many sites were available) Mosaic boasted graphics, sound, different fonts and some (not much) formatting. By 1994 Mosaic was available for every major platform. (There isn't a version for HP calculators, but feel free to port it) Mosaic reached a critical user mass, and the World Wide Web as we know it exploded. The internet is growing at 160% to 320% a year. (Or so, no one really knows). Usage of M［osaic grew by 3600% last year. The popular Yahoo sites get 10 million users a week. By comparison, the Vancouver Sun newspaper prints 200,000 copies a day, 6 days a week.

So where is it all going? Like everything technical, bigger, faster, cheaper seems to be the trend. People are starting to use the internet as a telephone service. Video is becoming very popular. Among a group of my friends (generally geeky) we download a gigabyte a month. Internet commerce is becoming more developed, and more non-technical people are coming on-line. Again, no one really knows, but rumor has it the fastest growing user group is users 65 years old or older. It's going to be an interesting trip.

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