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From: Nancy Ammerman <emoryu1!phoenix.Princeton.EDU!nancyamm>
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Welcome to the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, version 2.0.
The genesis of the Big Dummy's Guide was a few informal
conversations, which included Mitch Kapor of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) and Steve Cisler of Apple Computer, Inc., in June of
1991. With the support of Apple Computer, EFF hired a writer (Adam
Gaffin) and actually took on the project in September of 1991.
The idea was to write a guide to the Internet for folks who had
little or no experience with network communications. We intended to post
this Guide to "the Net" in ASCII and HyperCard formats and to give it
away on disk, as well as have a print edition available for a nominal
charge. With the consolidation of our offices to Washington, DC, we were
able to put the Guide on a fast track. You're looking at the realization
of our dreams --version one of the Guide. At the time I'm writing this,
we're still fishing around for a book publisher, so the hard-copy version
has not yet been printed. We're hoping to update this Guide on a regular
basis, so please feel free to send us your comments and corrections.
EFF would like to thanks the folks at Apple, especially Steve Cisler
of the Apple Library, for their support of our efforts to bring this
Guide to you. We hope it helps you open up a whole new world, where new
friends and experiences are sure to be yours. Enjoy!
Shari Steele
ssteele@eff.org
Director of Legal Services and Community Outreach
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jan. 15, 1994
Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet
copyright Electronic Frontier Foundation 1993, 1994
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Mitchell Kapor, co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Preface by Adam Gaffin, senior writer, Network World.
Chapter 1: Setting up and jacking in
1.1 Ready, set...
1.2 Go!
1.3 Public-access Internet providers
1.4 If your town doesn't have direct access
1.5 Net origins
1.6 How it works
1.7 When things go wrong
1.8 FYI
Chapter 2: E-mail
2.1. The basics
2.2 Elm -- a better way
2.3 Pine -- even better than Elm
2.4 Smileys
2.5 Sending e-mail to other networks
2.6 Seven Unix commands you can't live without
Chapter 3: Usenet I
3.1 The global watering hole
3.2 Navigating Usenet with nn
3.3 nn commands
3.4 Using rn
3.5 rn commands
3.6 Essential newsgroups
3.7 Speaking up
3.8 Cross-posting
Chapter 4: Usenet II
4.1 Flame, blather and spew
4.2 Killfiles, the cure for what ails you
4.3 Some Usenet hints
4.4 The Brain-Tumor Boy, the modem tax and the chain letter
4.5 Big Sig
4.6 The First Amendment as local ordinance
4.7 Usenet history
4.8 When things go wrong
4.9 FYI
Chapter 5: Mailing lists and Bitnet
5.1 Internet mailing lists
5.2 Bitnet
Chapter 6: Telnet
6.1 Mining the Net
6.2 Library catalogs
6.3 Some interesting telnet sites
6.4 Telnet bulletin-board systems
6.5 Putting the finger on someone
6.6 Finding someone on the Net
6.7 When things go wrong
6.8 FYI
Chapter 7: FTP
7.1 Tons of files
7.2 Your friend archie
7.3 Getting the files
7.4 Odd letters -- decoding file endings
7.5 The keyboard cabal
7.6 Some interesting ftp sites
7.7 ncftp -- now you tell me!
7.8 Project Gutenberg -- electronic books
7.9 When things go wrong
7.10 FYI
Chapter 8: Gophers, WAISs and the World-Wide Web
8.1 Gophers
8.2 Burrowing deeper
8.3 Gopher commands
8.4 Some interesting gophers
8.5 Wide-Area Information Servers
8.6 The World-Wide Web
8.7 Clients, or how to snare more on the Web
8.8 When things go wrong
8.9 FYI
Chapter 9: Advanced E-mail
9.1 The file's in the mail
9.2 Receiving files
9.3 Sending files to non-Internet sites
9.4 Getting ftp files via e-mail
9.5 The all knowing Oracle
Chapter 10: News of the world
10.1 Clarinet: UPI, Dave Barry and Dilbert
10.2 Reuters
10.3 USA Today
10.4 The World Today: From Belarus to Brazil
10.5 E-mailing news organizations
10.6 FYI
Chapter 11: IRC, MUDs and other things that are more fun than they sound
11.1 Talk
11.2 Internet Relay Chat
11.3 IRC commands
11.4 IRC in times of crisis
11.5 MUDs
11.6 Go, go, go (and chess, too)!
11.7 The other side of the coin
11.8 FYI
Chapter 12: Education and the Net
12.1 The Net in the Classroom
12.2 Some specific resources for students and teachers
12.3 Usenet and Bitnet in the classroom
Chapter 13: Business on the Net
13.1 Setting up shop
13.2 FYI
Conclusion: The end?
Appendix A: Lingo
Appendix B: Electronic Frontier Foundation Information
Foreword
By Mitchell Kapor,
Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in
this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks
that the mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is
mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series
of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and
responsibility in relation to other meshes."
-- Buddha
New communities are being built today. You cannot see them, except
on a computer screen. You cannot visit them, except through your
keyboard. Their highways are wires and optical fibers; their language a
series of ones and zeroes.
Yet these communities of cyberspace are as real and vibrant as any
you could find on a globe or in an atlas. Those are real people on the
other sides of those monitors. And freed from physical limitations,
these people are developing new types of cohesive and effective
communities - ones which are defined more by common interest and purpose
than by an accident of geography, ones on which what really counts is
what you say and think and feel, not how you look or talk or how old
you are.
The oldest of these communities is that of the scientists, which
actually predates computers. Scientists have long seen themselves
as an international community, where ideas were more important than
national origin. It is not surprising that the scientists were the
first to adopt the new electronic media as their principal means of day-
to-day communication.
I look forward to a day in which everybody, not just scientists,
can enjoy similar benefits of a global community.
But how exactly does community grow out of a computer network? It
does so because the network enables new forms of communication.
The most obvious example of these new digital communications media
is electronic mail, but there are many others. We should begin to think
of mailing lists, newsgroups, file and document archives, etc. as just
the first generation of new forms of information and communications
media. The digital media of computer networks, by virtue of their
design and the enabling technology upon which they ride, are
fundamentally different from the now dominant mass media of television,
radio, newspapers and magazines. Digital communications media are
inherently capable of being more interactive, more participatory, more
egalitarian, more decentralized, and less hierarchical.
As such, the types of social relations and communities which can be
built on these media share these characteristics. Computer networks
encourage the active participation of individuals rather than the
passive non-participation induced by television narcosis.
In mass media, the vast majority of participants are passive
recipients of information. In digital communications media, the vast
majority of participants are active creators of information as well as
recipients. This type of symmetry has previously only been found in
media like the telephone. But while the telephone is almost entirely a
medium for private one-to-one communication, computer network
applications such as electronic mailing lists, conferences, and bulletin
boards, serve as a medium of group or "many-to-many" communication.
The new forums atop computer networks are the great levelers and
reducers of organizational hierarchy. Each user has, at least in
theory, access to every other user, and an equal chance to be heard.
Some U.S. high-tech companies, such as Microsoft and Borland, already
use this to good advantage: their CEO's -- Bill Gates and Philippe Kahn
-- are directly accessible to all employees via electronic mail. This
creates a sense that the voice of the individual employee really
matters. More generally, when corporate communication is facilitated by
electronic mail, decision-making processes can be far more inclusive and
participatory.
Computer networks do not require tightly centralized administrative
control. In fact, decentralization is necessary to enable rapid growth
of the network itself. Tight controls strangle growth. This
decentralization promotes inclusiveness, for it lowers barriers to entry
for new parties wishing to join the network.
Given these characteristics, networks hold tremendous potential to
enrich our collective cultural, political, and social lives and enhance
democratic values everywhere.
And the Internet, and the UUCP and related networks connected to
it, represents an outstanding example of a computer network with these
qualities. It is an open network of networks, not a single unitary
network, but an ensemble of interconnected systems which operate on the
basis of multiple implementations of accepted, non-proprietary
protocols, standards and interfaces.
One of its important characteristics is that new networks, host
systems, and users may readily join the network -- the network is open
to all.
The openness (in all senses) of the Internet reflects, I believe,
the sensibilities and values of its architects. Had the Internet
somehow been developed outside the world of research and education, it's
less likely to have had such an open architecture. Future generations
will be indebted to this community for the wisdom of building these
types of open systems.
Still, the fundamental qualities of the Net, such as its
decentralization, also pose problems. How can full connectivity be
maintained in the face of an ever-expanding number of connected
networks, for example? What of software bugs that bring down computers,
or human crackers who try to do the same? But these problems can and
will be solved.
Digital media can be the basis of new forms of political discourse,
in which citizens form and express their views on the important public
issues of the day. There is more than one possible vision of such
electronic democracy, however. Let's look at some examples of the
potential power, and problems, of the new digital media.
The idea of something called an "electronic town meeting" received
considerable attention in 1992 with Ross Perot's presidential campaign
(or, at least, its first incarnation).
Perot's original vision, from 20 or so years ago, was that viewers
would watch a debate on television and fill out punch cards which would
be mailed in and collated. Now we could do it with 800 telephone
numbers.
In the current atmosphere of disaffection, alienation and cynicism,
anything that promotes greater citizen involvement seems a good idea.
People are turned off by politicians in general -- witness the original
surge of support for Perot as outsider who would go in and clean up the
mess -- and the idea of going right to the people is appealing,
What's wrong with this picture? The individual viewer is a passive
recipient of the views of experts. The only action taken by the citizen
is in expressing a preference for one of three pre-constructed
alternatives. While this might be occasionally useful, it's
unsophisticated and falls far short of the real potential of electronic
democracy. We've been reduced to forming our judgments on the basis of
mass media's portrayal of the personality and character of the
candidates.
All this is in contrast to robust political debates already found
on various on-line computer systems, from CompuServe to Usenet.
Through these new media, the issues of the day, ranging from national
security in the post-Cold War era to comparative national health care
systems, are fiercely discussed in a wide variety of bulletin boards,
conferences, and newsgroups.
What I see in online debate are multiple active participants, not
just experts, representing every point of view, in discussions that
unfold over extended periods of time. What this shows is that, far from
being alienated and disaffected from the political process, people like
to talk and discuss -- and take action -- if they have the opportunity
to do so. Mass media don't permit that. But these new media are more
akin to a gathering around the cracker barrel at the general store --
only extended over hundreds, thousands of miles, in cyberspace, rather
than in one physical location.
Recent years have shown the potential power of these new media.
We have also seen several examples of where talk translated into
action.
In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission proposed changing
the way certain online providers paid for access to local phone service.
Online, this quickly became known as the "modem tax" and generated a
storm of protest. The FCC withdrew the idea, but not quickly enough:
the "modem tax" has penetrated so deeply into the crevices of the Net
that it has taken up a permanent and ghostly residence as a kind of
virtual or cognitive virus, which periodically causes a re-infection of
the systems and its users. FCC commissioners continue to receive
substantial mail on this even though the original issue is long dead; in
fact, it has generated more mail than any other issue in the history of
the FCC.
More recently, Jim Manzi, chairman of Lotus Development Corp.,
received more than 30,000 e-mail messages when the company was getting
ready to sell a database containing records on tens of millions of
Americans. The flood of electronic complaints about the threat to
privacy helped force the company to abandon the project.
Issues of narrow but vital interest to the online community give a hint
of the organizing power of the Net.
In August, 1991, the managers of a Soviet computer network known as
Relcom stayed online during an abortive coup, relaying eyewitness
accounts and news of actions against the coup to the West and to the
rest of Russia.
And many public interest non-profit organizations and special
interest groups already use bulletin boards heavily as a means of
communicating among their members and organizing political activity.
But all is not perfect online. The quality of discourse is often
very low. Discussion is often trivial and boring and bereft of
persuasive reason. Discourse often sinks to the level of "flaming," of
personal attacks, instead of substantive discussion. Flaming. Those
with the most time to spend often wind up dominating the debate - a
triumph of quantity of time available over quality of content.
It seems like no place for serious discussion. Information overload
is also a problem. There is simply far too much to read to keep up
with. It is all without organization. How can this be addressed?
Recent innovations in the design of software used to connect
people to the Net and the process of online discussion itself reveal
some hope.
Flaming is universal, but different systems handle it in different
ways. Both the technology and cultural norms matter.
On Usenet, for instance, most news reader applications support a
feature known as a "killfile," which allows an individual to screen
out postings by a particular user or on a particular subject. It is
also sometimes referred to as "the bozo filter." This spares the user
who is sufficiently sophisticated from further flamage, but it does
nothing to stop the problem at its source.
Censorship would be one solution. But what else can be done without
resorting to unacceptably heavy-handed tactics of censorship? There is a
great tradition of respect for free speech on these systems, and to
censor public postings or even ban a poster for annoying or offensive
content is properly seen as unacceptable, in my opinion.
Some systems use cultural norms, rather than software, to deal with
flame wars. These online communities have developed practices which
rely more on a shared, internalized sense of appropriate behavior than
on censorship, for instance. The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) is a
relatively small online conferencing system based in the San Francisco
Bay area. On the WELL, individuals who get into a fight are encouraged
to move the discussion out of the public conference and into e-mail.
The encouragement is provided not only by the host of the conference,
but also by the users. It is part of the culture, not part of the
technology.
WELL hosts are volunteers who facilitate the discussion of a
particular subject. While they have the power to censor individual
postings, the power is very rarely used and only as a last resort, as it
has been found that dispute resolution by talking it out among the
parties is a superior method of problem solving in the long run.
It is not an accident that the WELL has a uniquely high quality
of conversation. Nor is it coincidental that it developed as a small
and originally isolated community (now on the Net) which gave it a
chance to develop its own norms or that key management of the system
came from "The Farm," a large, successful commune of the 1960's and
1970's led by Stephen Gaskin.
We still know very little about the facilitation of online
conversations. It is a subject well worth further formal study and
experimentation.
Some problems have to do with the unrefined and immature format and
structure of the discussion medium itself. The undifferentiated stream
of new messages marching along in 80 columns of ASCII text creates a
kind of hypnotic trance. Compare this with the typical multiplicity of
type fonts, varied layouts, images, and pictures of the printed page.
New media take time to develop and to be shaped. Reading text on a
terminal reminds me of looking at the Gutenberg Bible. The modern book
took a century to develop after the invention of printing with movable
type and the first Western printed books. Aldus Manutius and the
inventions of modern typefaces, pagination, the table of contents, the
index, all of which gave the book its modern form, came later, were done
by different people, and were of a different order than the invention of
printing with movable type itself. The new electronic media are
undergoing a similar evolution.
Key inventions are occurring slowly, for example, development of
software tools that will allow the dissemination of audio and video
across the Net. This type of software has usually been done so far by
volunteers who have given away the results. It's a great thing, but
it's not sufficient, given how hard it is to develop robust software.
Innovation in the application space will also be driven by entrepreneurs
and independent software vendors at such point as they perceive a
business opportunity to create such products (it would be nice if
creators did it for art's sake but this seems unlikely).
There are some requirements to provide incentives to attract
additional software development. This requires a competitive free
market in network services at all levels to serve the expanding user
demand for network services. It requires a technologically mature
network able to support these services.
And there must be a user population, current or prospective,
interested in paying for better applications -- and not just the current
base of technically sophisticated users and students, though they will
absolutely benefit.
There are multiple classes of new application opportunities. E-mail
is overloaded because there aren't readily available alternatives yet.
New and different kinds of tools are needed for collaborative work.
Computer conferencing, as it evolves, may be sufficient for discussion
and debate. But by itself, it cannot really support collaborative work,
in the sense of readily enabling a group to make decisions efficiently,
represent and track the status of its work process. Trying to run an
organization via e-mail mailing list is very different than trying to
have a discussion.
Computer networks can only fully realize their potential as
innovative communications media in an environment which encourages free
and open expression.
In some countries, legal principles of free speech protect freedom
of expression in traditional media such as the printed word. But once
communication moves to new digital media and across crosses
international borders, such legal protections fall away. As John Perry
Barlow, the co-founder of EFF puts it: "In Cyberspace, the First
Amendment is a local ordinance." There is no international legal
authority which protects free expression on trans-national networks.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for the
protection of free expression in all media, but the declaration falls
far short of being binding.
And if we're to take seriously the idea of the electronic online
forum, we have to deal with the access issue. If the only people with
access to the medium are well-educated, affluent, techno-literate elite,
it won't be sufficiently inclusive to represent all points of view.
We also need, fundamentally, a better infrastructure (the highway
system for information). As we move from the high-speed Internet to the
even more powerful National Research and Education Network, we need to
look at how to bring the power of these new media into the homes of
everybody who might want it. Addressing this "last mile" problem (phone
networks are now largely digitized, fiber-optic systems, except for the
mile between your home and the nearest switching station) should be a
priority.
Computer networks will eventually become ubiquitous around the
world. We should therefore be concerned with the impact on society that
they have, the opportunities to improve society, and the dangers that
they pose. Fundamentally, we are optimists who believe in the
potential of networks to enhance democratic values of openness,
diversity, and innovation.
Because the medium is so new, it is important now to develop
policies at the national and international level that help achieve the
potential of computer networks for society as a whole. By the time
television was recognized as a vast wasteland it was already too late to
change. There is a rare opportunity to develop policies in advance of a
technologically and economically mature system which would be hard to
change.
Preface
By Adam Gaffin,
Senior Writer, Network World, Framingham, Mass.
Welcome to the Internet! You're about to start a journey through a
unique land without frontiers, a place that is everywhere at once -- even
though it exists physically only as a series of electrical impulses.
You'll be joining a growing community of millions of people around the
world who use this global resource on a daily basis.
With this book, you will be able to use the Internet to:
= Stay in touch with friends, relatives and colleagues around the
world, at a fraction of the cost of phone calls or even air
mail.
= Discuss everything from archaeology to zoology with people in
several different languages.
= Tap into thousands of information databases and libraries
worldwide.
= Retrieve any of thousands of documents, journals, books and
computer programs.
= Stay up to date with wire-service news and sports and
with official weather reports.
= Play live, "real time" games with dozens of other people at once.
Connecting to "the Net" today, takes something of a sense of
adventure, a willingness to learn and an ability to take a deep breath
every once in awhile. Visiting the Net today is a lot like journeying to
a foreign country. There are so many things to see and do, but
everything at first will seem so, well, foreign.
When you first arrive, you won't be able to read the street signs.
You'll get lost. If you're unlucky, you may even run into some locals
who'd just as soon you went back to where you came from. If this
weren't enough, the entire country is constantly under construction;
every day, it seems like there's something new for you to figure out.
Fortunately, most of the locals are actually friendly. In fact, the
Net actually has a rich tradition of helping out visitors and newcomers.
Until very recently, there were few written guides for ordinary people,
and the Net grew largely through an "oral" tradition in which the old-
timers helped the newcomers.
So when you connect, don't be afraid to ask for help. You'll be
surprised at how many people will lend a hand!
Without such folks, in fact, this guide would not be possible. My
thanks to all the people who have written with suggestion, additions and
corrections since the Big Dummy's Guide first appeared on the Internet in
1993.
Special thanks go to the following people, who, whether they know it
or not, provided particular help -- and to my loving wife Nancy:
Rhonda Chapman, Jim Cocks, Tom Czarnik, Christopher Davis, David
DeSimone, Jeanne deVoto, Phil Eschallier, Nico Garcia, Joe Granrose,
Joerg Heitkoetter, Joe Ilacqua, Jonathan Kamens, Peter Kaminski, Thomas
A. Kreeger, Stanton McCandlish, Leanne Phillips, Nancy Reynolds, Helen
Trillian Rose, Barry Shein, Jennifer "Moira" Smith, Gerard van der Leun
and Scott Yanoff.
If you have any suggestions or comments on how to make this guide
better, I'd love to hear them. You can reach me via e-mail at
adamg@world.std.com.
Boston, Mass., January, 1994.
And that leads to another fundamental thing to remember:
You can't break the Net!
As you travel the Net, your computer may freeze, your screen may
erupt into a mass of gibberish. You may think you've just disabled a
million-dollar computer somewhere -- or even your own personal
computer. Sooner or later, this feeling happens to everyone -- and
likely more than once. But the Net and your computer are hardier than
you think, so relax. You can no more break the Net than you can the
phone system. If something goes wrong, try again. If nothing at all
happens, you can always disconnect. If worse comes to worse, you can
turn off your computer. Then take a deep breath. And dial right back
in. Leave a note for the person who runs the computer to which you've
connected to ask for advice. Try it again. Persistence pays.
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