PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOP 2: Social, Technical, and Democratic Origins of the Internet

Presenters: Jay Hauben, Columbia University, USA, and Ronda Hauben, New York, USA

Time: 14:00 – 18:00

Place: Mecc Congress Center , Room 2.7 - Maastricht (NL)

Maximum number of participants: 30

Abstract

This workshop is designed to help Internet researchers know in some detail the actual history, social context and technical principles upon which the Internet is based. It will examine as background the need for high speed data processing to break military codes and to coordinate air defense during WWII. Special attention will be given to the ferment after the war in the intellectual and technical community around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. We will show how the international collaboration in the early 1970s among Europeans and Americans made the Internet a reality. The role of Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, Yngvar Lundt, Peter Kirstein, Louis Pouzin and others will be mentioned. The Internet will be differentiated from the ARPANET. The original social context and purpose of the Internet will be illustrated with reference to the work of JCR Licklider, Harold Sachman, CP Snow among others. Detailed but simple explanations will be given of such technologies as batch processing, time sharing, packet switching, the ALOHA net, ethernet, TCP/IP, the Domain Name System (DNS), IP numbering and routing. Throughout, the relation between the social objectives and the technical principles will be examined. The role of government support and protection and of openness and collaboration will be traced. Questions, opinions and comments will be encouraged from the participants.

Presenters

Jay Hauben has compiled this workshop from similar presentations he has given at Columbia University in New York City where he holds a technical position in the Library Systems Office. He has been studying the origin and technologies of the Internet since 1992. Some of his work has appeared in The Encyclopedia of Computing and Computer History edited by Raul Rojas and in Computer Pioneers edited by J.A.N. Lee. Mr. Hauben is an editor of and reporter for the Amateur Computerist and maintainer of the netizens mailing list.

Ronda Hauben will contribute the section of the workshop on the vision and international collaboration that launched the Internet. She is co-author of Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. She is working on a book about the Information Processing Techniques Office within ARPA which gave leadership and support to the development of the ARPANET and the Internet. She is an editor of the Amateur Computerist and has written for TELEPOLIS.