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 Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use

 From THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, February 1993.
 F&SF, Box 56, Cornwall CT 06753 $26/yr USA $31/yr other

 By Bruce Sterling

 [e-mail]

 F&SF Science Column #5
 "Internet"

     Some thirty  years ago, the RAND Corporation,  America's
 foremost Cold War think-tank, faced a strange strategic problem.  How
 could the US authorities successfully communicate  after a nuclear
 war?
     Postnuclear America would need a command-and-control
 network, linked from city to city, state to state,  base to base.  But  no
 matter how thoroughly that network was armored or protected, its
 switches and wiring would always be vulnerable to the impact of
 atomic bombs.  A nuclear attack would reduce any
 conceivable network to tatters.
     And how would the network itself be commanded and
 controlled?   Any central authority, any network central citadel, would
 be an obvious and immediate target for  an enemy missile.   The
 center of the network would be the very first place to go.
     RAND mulled over this grim puzzle  in deep military secrecy,
 and arrived at a daring solution.   The RAND proposal  (the brainchild
 of RAND staffer Paul Baran)  was made public in 1964.   In the first
 place, the network would *have no central authority.*    Furthermore,
 it would be *designed from the beginning to operate while
 in tatters.*
     The principles were simple.  The network itself would be
 assumed to be unreliable at all times.  It would be designed from the
 get-go to transcend its own unreliability.  All the nodes in the network
 would be equal in status to all other nodes, each node with its own
 authority to originate, pass, and receive messages.  The
 messages themselves would be divided into packets, each packet
 separately addressed.  Each packet would begin at  some specified
 source node, and end at some other specified destination node.  Each
 packet would wind its way through the network on an individual
 basis.
     The particular route that the packet took would be unimportant.
 Only  final results would count.  Basically, the packet would be tossed
 like a hot potato from node to node to node, more or less in the
 direction of its destination, until it ended up in the proper place.  If
 big pieces of the network had been blown away, that simply
 wouldn't matter;  the packets  would still stay airborne, lateralled
 wildly across the field by  whatever nodes happened to survive.  This
 rather haphazard delivery system might be "inefficient" in the usual
 sense  (especially compared to, say, the telephone system)  -- but it
 would be extremely rugged.
     During the 60s, this intriguing concept of a decentralized,
 blastproof, packet-switching network was kicked around by RAND,
 MIT and UCLA.  The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain set
 up the first test network on these principles in 1968.     Shortly
 afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency decided
 to fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA.  The nodes of the
 network were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed for
 supercomputers at the time).   These were rare and valuable machines
 which were in real need of good solid networking, for the sake of
 national research-and-development projects.
     In fall 1969, the  first such node was installed in UCLA.  By
 December 1969, there were four nodes on the infant network, which
 was named ARPANET, after its Pentagon sponsor.
     The four computers could  transfer data  on dedicated high-
 speed transmission lines.   They could even be programmed remotely
 from the other nodes.  Thanks to ARPANET, scientists and researchers
 could share one another's computer facilities by long-distance.  This
 was a very handy service, for computer-time was precious in the
 early '70s.  In 1971 there were fifteen nodes in ARPANET; by 1972,
 thirty-seven nodes.  And it was good.
     By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became
 clear.   ARPANET's users had warped the computer-sharing network
 into a dedicated, high-speed,  federally subsidized  electronic post-
 office.  The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing.
 Instead, it was news and personal messages.   Researchers were using
 ARPANET  to collaborate on projects,  to trade notes on work,
 and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze.   People had their
 own personal user accounts on the ARPANET  computers, and their
 own personal addresses for electronic mail.   Not only were they using
 ARPANET for person-to-person communication, but they were very
 enthusiastic about this particular service -- far more enthusiastic than
 they were about long-distance computation.
     It wasn't long before the invention of the mailing-list, an
 ARPANET broadcasting technique in which an identical message could
 be sent automatically to large numbers of network subscribers.
 Interestingly, one of the first really big mailing-lists was  "SF-
 LOVERS," for science fiction fans.   Discussing science fiction on
 the network was not work-related and was frowned upon by many
 ARPANET computer administrators, but this didn't stop it from
 happening.
     Throughout the '70s, ARPA's network grew.  Its decentralized
 structure made expansion easy.   Unlike standard corporate computer
 networks, the ARPA network could accommodate many different
 kinds of machine.  As long as individual machines could speak the
 packet-switching lingua franca of the new, anarchic network, their
 brand-names, and their content, and even their ownership, were
 irrelevant.
     The ARPA's original standard for communication was known as
 NCP,  "Network Control Protocol," but as time passed and the technique
 advanced, NCP  was superceded by a higher-level, more sophisticated
 standard known as TCP/IP.  TCP,  or "Transmission Control Protocol,"
 converts messages into streams of packets at the source, then
 reassembles them back into messages at the destination.  IP, or
 "Internet Protocol," handles the addressing, seeing to it that packets
 are routed across multiple nodes and even across multiple networks
 with multiple standards -- not only ARPA's  pioneering NCP standard,
 but  others like Ethernet, FDDI, and X.25.
     As early as 1977, TCP/IP was being used by other networks to
 link to ARPANET.   ARPANET itself remained fairly tightly controlled,
 at least until 1983, when its military segment broke off and became
 MILNET.   But TCP/IP linked them all.  And ARPANET itself, though it
 was growing,  became a smaller and smaller neighborhood amid the
 vastly growing galaxy of other linked machines.
     As the '70s and '80s advanced, many very different social
 groups found themselves in possession of powerful computers.  It was
 fairly easy to link these computers to the growing  network-of-
 networks.   As the use of TCP/IP became more common, entire other
 networks fell into the digital embrace of the Internet, and
 messily adhered.  Since the software called TCP/IP was public-domain,
 and the basic technology was decentralized and rather anarchic by its
 very nature, it was  difficult to stop people from barging in and
 linking up somewhere-or-other.  In point of fact, nobody *wanted* to
 stop them from joining this branching complex of networks,  which
 came to be known as the "Internet."
     Connecting to the Internet cost the taxpayer little or nothing,
 since each node was independent, and had to handle its own financing
 and its own technical requirements.   The more, the merrier.  Like the
 phone network, the computer network became steadily more valuable
 as it embraced larger and larger territories of people and resources.
     A  fax machine is only valuable if *everybody else* has a fax
 machine.  Until they do, a fax machine is just a curiosity.  ARPANET,
 too, was a curiosity for a while.  Then computer-networking became
 an utter necessity.
     In 1984 the National Science Foundation got into the act,
 through its Office of Advanced Scientific Computing.   The new NSFNET
 set a blistering pace for technical advancement, linking newer, faster,
 shinier supercomputers, through thicker, faster links, upgraded and
 expanded, again and again, in 1986, 1988, 1990.  And other
 government agencies leapt in:  NASA, the National Institutes of Health,
 the Department of Energy, each of them maintaining a digital satrapy
 in the Internet confederation.
     The nodes in this growing network-of-networks were divvied
 up into basic varieties.   Foreign computers, and a few American ones,
 chose to be denoted by their geographical locations.  The others were
 grouped by the six basic Internet "domains":  gov, mil, edu, com, org
 and net.   (Graceless abbreviations such as this are a standard
 feature of the TCP/IP protocols.)  Gov, Mil, and Edu denoted
 governmental, military and educational institutions, which were, of
 course, the pioneers, since ARPANET had begun as a  high-tech
 research exercise in national security.  Com, however, stood
 for "commercial" institutions, which were  soon bursting into the
 network like  rodeo bulls, surrounded by a dust-cloud of eager
 nonprofit "orgs."  (The "net" computers served as gateways between
 networks.)
     ARPANET itself formally expired in 1989, a happy victim of its
 own overwhelming success.  Its users scarcely noticed, for ARPANET's
 functions not only continued but steadily improved.  The use of
 TCP/IP standards for computer networking is now global.  In 1971, a
 mere twenty-one years ago, there were only four nodes in the
 ARPANET  network.  Today there are tens of thousands of  nodes in
 the Internet,  scattered over forty-two countries, with more coming
 on-line every day.   Three million, possibly four million people use
 this gigantic mother-of-all-computer-networks.
     The Internet is especially popular among scientists, and is
 probably the most important scientific instrument of the late
 twentieth century.   The  powerful, sophisticated access that it
 provides to specialized data and personal communication
 has sped up the pace of scientific research enormously.
     The Internet's pace of growth in the early 1990s is  spectacular,
 almost ferocious.  It is spreading faster than cellular phones, faster
 than fax machines.  Last year the Internet was growing at a rate of
 twenty percent a *month.*  The number of "host" machines with direct
 connection to TCP/IP has been doubling every year since
 1988.   The Internet is moving out of  its original base in military and
 research institutions,  into elementary and high schools, as well as into
 public libraries and the commercial sector.
     Why do people want to be "on the Internet?"  One of the main
 reasons is  simple freedom.   The Internet is a rare example of a true,
 modern, functional  anarchy.   There is no "Internet Inc."   There are
 no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders.
 In principle, any node can speak as a peer to any other node, as long
 as it obeys the rules of the TCP/IP protocols, which are strictly
 technical, not social or political.  (There has been some struggle over
 commercial use of the Internet, but that situation is changing as
 businesses supply their own links).
     The Internet is also a bargain.  The Internet as a whole, unlike
 the phone 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.
     The Internet's "anarchy" may seem strange or even unnatural,
 but it makes a 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.
     People on the Internet feel much the same way about their own
 institution.   It's an institution that resists institutionalization.   The
 Internet belongs to everyone and no one.
     Still, its various interest groups all have a claim.   Business
 people want the 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.
     All these sources of conflict remain in a stumbling  balance
 today, and the 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.
     But what does one *do* with the Internet?  Four things,
 basically:  mail, discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file
 transfers.
     Internet mail is "e-mail," electronic mail, faster by several
 orders of magnitude 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.
     The discussion groups, or "newsgroups," are a world of their
 own.   This world 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.
     Both netnews and e-mail are very widely available, even
 outside the high-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.
     Long-distance computing was an original inspiration for
 ARPANET and is 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.
     File transfers allow Internet users to access remote machines
 and retrieve 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.
     The headless, anarchic, million-limbed Internet is spreading like
 bread-mold.   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 Internet in the 90s resembles the spread of personal
 computing in the 1970s, 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.
     The future of the Internet bids fair to be bigger and
 exponentially faster.  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!
     Or so it's hoped  -- and planned.   The real Internet of the
 future may bear very 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.
     How does one get access to the Internet?   Well -- if you don't
 have a computer 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.
     If you're on a campus, your university may have direct
 "dedicated access" to high-speed Internet TCP/IP lines.  Apply for an
 Internet account on a dedicated 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.
     As the Nineties proceed, finding a link to the Internet will
 become much 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.

 For Further Reading:

 The Whole Internet Catalog & User's Guide by Ed Krol.  (1992) O'Reilly
 and Associates, Inc.  A clear, non-jargonized introduction to the
 intimidating business of network literacy.   Many computer-
 documentation manuals attempt to be funny.  Mr. Krol's book is
 *actually* funny.

 The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide.
 by John Quarterman.  Digital Press: Bedford, MA. (1990)  Massive and
 highly technical compendium detailing the mind-boggling scope and
 complexity of our newly networked planet.

 The Internet Companion by Tracy LaQuey   with Jeanne C. Ryer (1992)
 Addison Wesley.  Evangelical etiquette guide to the Internet featuring
 anecdotal tales of life-changing Internet experiences.  Foreword by
 Senator Al Gore.

 Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide by Brendan P.
 Kehoe (1992)  Prentice Hall. Brief but useful Internet guide with
 plenty of good advice on useful machines to paw over for data.  Mr
 Kehoe's guide bears the singularly wonderful distinction of being
 available in electronic form free of charge.   I'm doing the same
 with all my F&SF Science articles, including, of course, this one.  My
 own Internet address is [e-mail].