• UseNet: the Internet’s first open “democratized” public forum

    • Fundamentals

      • Networks as communication graphs

      • Broadcast

      • Gossip protocols

    • Operation

      • Message format

      • Modems, UUCP, NNTP

    • Evolution timeline

      • 1979: Created by Truscott and Ellis, based on gossip over  UUCP.

      • 1981: an early UseNet map in hand-drawn ASCII

      • 1986: As ARPANET/Internet provided widespread always-on connectivity, UseNet began shifting to NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) to propagate news over TCP connections.

      • 1987: The Great Renaming - "Big Seven" naming scheme to name newsgroups by subject: comp.*, sci.*, soc.*, rec.*, talk.*, news.*, misc.*. Renegade alt.* hierarchy developed for newsgroups created with no central approval.

      • 1994: First UseNet spam: Canter and Siegel “green card lottery”.

      • 1995: “Peak UseNet” according to number of UseNet books published per year, then rapid decline thereafter. 

  • Discussion and Analysis of Readings

    • In what ways did Licklider successfully, or unsuccessfully, predict UseNet and the Internet’s subsequent evolution?

      • For pure communication?

      • For collaboration and modeling?

      • For distribution of intellectual resources?

      • Access costs, ubiquity or lack thereof?

      • For online interactive communities?

      • For electronic agents?  (AI assistants aka “OLIVER”)

      • For shifting employment?  (“software eating the world”)

    • How might Robert Dahl analyze whether and how UseNet is or isn’t “democratic” according to his criteria?

      • Effective Participation

        • “Throughout the process of making binding decisions, citizens out to have an adequate opportunity, and an equal opportunity, for expressing their preferences as to the final outcome.  They must have adequate and equal opportunities for placing questions on the agenda and for expressing reasons for endorsing one outcome rather than another.”

      • Voting Equality at the Decisive Stage

        • “At the decisive stage of collective decisions, each citizen must be ensured an equal opportunity to express a choice that will be counted as equal in weight to the choice expressed by any other citizen.  In determining outcomes at the decisive stage, these choices, and only these choices, must be taken into account.”

      • Enlightened Understanding

        • “Each citizen ought to have adequate and equal opportunities for discovering and validating (within the time permitted by the need for a decision) the choice on the matter to be decided that would best serve the citizen’s interests.”

      • Control of the Agenda

        • “The demos must have the exclusive opportunity to decide how matters are to be placed on the agenda of matters that are to be decided by means of the democratic process.”

      • Inclusiveness (from the following chapter)

    • Basic premises of democracy:

      • No one is perfect or trustworthy enough to be guardian of all the rest

      • Knowledge and perceptions are imperfect and noisy

      • Aggregation of opinions is essential to get “good” collective intelligence

      • It’s hard to tell - and dangerous to tell - who is most trustworthy


Post-lecture blackboard snapshot 2019:


Last modified: Monday, 5 October 2020, 13:29