WEB PHILOSOPHY
An ongoing, action, look at the Net, developed here week by week.
A Jessica Alba chat-room floats in solitude somewhere in space, an early sighting I had of the Internet's realms. I have gone back to look at it a number of times, and have only discovered two people other than myself there, at different times, and neither remained for long; only one of the two said anything. The sighting may be had via the Jessica Alba link on my web-page, if anyone else wants to see it. I suppose a chat-room on my page would look the same way; the Welcome Mat isn't really a site for a chat-room. It was a Parachat room (beware the Adults Only room, is my impression of it); Parachat seemed to be offering free site chat-rooms, but I decided not to try one out, for the reasons just mentioned--if I did I think I'd request a Bravenet room, though.
Read on for more sophisticated philosophy.
Apparitions in space
Similarly farfetched and set apart from the general web is Dominion Chat, a SciFi.Com chat-room wherein war-games are transpiring and fantasy role-playing is in process. The central room, called Dominion, is occupied by Alien Hunter, his minions, prisoners and bots. They don't exactly have a warm welcome awaiting the visitor. Other rooms include the Bot Labs (if you wonder where bots are apt to come from), various dungeons containing spirits, and places where actions are meditated. The whole thing is like a labyrinthine space station, with the starry background of SciFi.Com itself. The chat also has an auditorium in which author chats sponsored by ANALOG and ASIMOV'S take place. One chat host is Gardner Dozois. Often the interviews are routs, but they have their successes as well.
Note: This item is somewhat outdated---the bot labs are gone.
Charting the Unknown
SciFi.Com also has MSTiegate, which has its own chats and posting boards, but is so unbelievably complex and codified that one might as well not go there unless puzzling things out is one's interest. Much simpler is MST3K's posting boards and captioning gallery; however, the tendency there is to argue, at least. It's based on TV's MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER, described as a camp phenomenon.
The ANALOG, GALAXY and ASIMOV forums are much more logical and in place; ANALOG tends to have been an Internet innovator. Visitors from these sites doubtless appear in Yahoo's science chat-rooms, Extraterrestrial Life, Beyond Planet Earth, and Physics.
A Television Origin
These SciFi sites are related to the SciFi Channel on television, whose appearance on TV was rather miraculous considering that a literary form with so little public significance had commandeered an entire station for all-day and all-night broadcasting of science fiction. However, their broadcasting is not usually of the finest quality; they are there more than they are doing things. Audiences are actually threatened with how bad the science fiction will be. It has not been made clear to me whether SciFi TV maintains SciFi.com, or SciFi.com reflects its presence. There are frequent snafus on the Internet SciFi sites. Much of the posting is questions being asked about exactly what kind of deal they've got going.
1984 and the Internet
Science fiction is highly relevant on the Internet. Many science fiction stories predicted that kind of equipment, leading computer possessors to the feeling that "the Future is Now." Among the predictors of this electronics system was George Orwell's book 1984! and there is now a lot of discussion of Big Brother on SciFi and in SF magazine forums and postings. Internet was more or less the background of the social setup which existed in 1984! In fact, the term "Internet" is Newspeak. I suppose it could be said that the Internet is 1984 if you make it that, not if you don't, something else (for example, some other sf story that had such equipment) if you make it that. It seems to me it may be too scientific a metaphysicality, somewhat like the scientific delving into the afterlife in Robert Sheckley's IMMORTALITY, INC.
666
If the web is like 1984!, the chat-rooms certainly have enough free-think in them, although it's often of the overdone, hysterical kind that appears in that novel. At least one chat-room sounds like the Apocalypse, featuring such visitors as The Beast With Four Mouths, Tiny 666, Satan's Apostate and Little Lost Angel. That site is listed on my Links page. The visitor here will have to find other such sites by himself, although a few of the Yahoo Rooms are like it, in content if not in intention. Personally, I think the War-games and Role-Playing Games are rather apocalyptic. Very possibly the actual Apocalypse is not appearing on Internet machinery, but on the other hand, people are not always acting that way and giving themselves such names. The appearance of being an apocalypse has something apocalyptic about it, just as we see revolution in revolutionary literature. And Litkicks (listed on my links page) is a Beat Generation site, so we have that on our net also. When you come down to it, the Internet is a revolutionary medium.
The only problem here, for those who like there to be revolutionary things happening and revolutionary happenings, is that most of what is put forth is so dire that one might regard that as being a problem, if not the only one. One might wish a more optimistic view or a pleasanter one to be taken in what is put on the internet.
I am myself getting together an Internet magazine which I think will have an optimistic outlook and more respect for the future. When I get it on I will give its location here. The viewing of it will, of course, be free.
Not a Perfect Machine
Considering all the things going on on the Internet, one would not expect perfection of it. If it were perfect, it would be a perfect housing for banditos, raiders, investigators, warmongers, exhibitionists, fanatics, conmen, perverts and saboteurs, to name a few. That's not apt to be so, and if it were so it would not remain so, due to sabotage and subversion. However, the net is a fantastic setup and it's very impressive; its speed of operation is virtually miraculous. This leads to the impression that, taken as a machine, it's the sum of perfection and can make no errors. We all know that it can and does make errors, however; we've all watched overloads, websites ceasing to function properly, failures to connect due to our computers and other failures due to network problems which internet poster cards confess to. It does not even call itself perfect or claim to be error-free. At times my own computer is completely haywire. You can see one complaint I've made about this on my Welcome Page. I don't like announcements appearing without appropriateness or explanation and I council my visitors to realize that such things as these are web problems and that if they find a link that does not work, it will doubtless be corrected in the due course of time. I don't like it when alternate programs take over, either, and leave things not working the way they used to. But there's going to be fallibilities in computer functioning, that's all there is to it; the perfect operation does not exist.
So the best suggestion is not to let computer problems make the potential arguments and warfare even rougher. Realize that a computer contact might be experiencing standard or non-standard problems; he may not be putting on you what he seems to be putting on you. He may be expressing himself ineptly in computer code, or his message may have come from somebody with whom he shares a name, or anything like that.
But don't get the idea that a computer is going to be any sum of perfection. It wouldn't even be a good thing if it were. It'd be too unreal.
I expect anybody who is offended by me to realize that I might have made a computer error or have had one made for me, and to check it out. That's the way we'll all get along on computers, by dogies.
Hello, There!
By now, I think that you know what you're seeing. The best dang web-speaker there is! Nobody else has a philosophy that ring-a like mine. Of course, there's a matter of what I think I remember is called a participle in that first sentence. Not the best opening form, classifying in the range of run-on sentences and sentence fragments in the English grammatical perspective. I wouldn't change it, though. I want the fact that you must have been reading my web philosophy if you've reached that point in it emphasized.
Anyway, the writings on this page looked kind of disembodied and so I thought I'd break into my own thoughts with a few thoughts about who I am. If you want a better introduction to me, my fictional writings appear in BEWILDERING STORIES, which is found on my links page, and I'm often posted in the ANALOG discussion forum and the ASIMOV'S forum, both of which are also on my links page. I do more direct talking in a lot of the Yahoo Chats, initial access to the whole of which is to be found on my links page. You'd have to come over to my house, though, to look at my home page, called "My Yahoo!" The Internet being what it is, that's something very few of you could do, so you'll just have to wonder what's on that page.
I'm a believer in Web Action and like to help keep things happening on the Internet. That's why I have so many links, and of course my e-mail can be accessed via my website if you want to write to me. (Don't send any v**uses! I had to have Norton help me get rid of some of those.) We want to be making full use of the possibilities of the Internet for the sake of progress into the future, rather than all being wiped out in some war, which according to the news is the present condition of mankind. Web Interchange is just like some kind of peace movement, a constructive matter and one which can have developments. It has more of the creative to it, and less of the destructive. And we could all use some more of that. So get in on web action! Take advantage of my site and view the other pleasant such sites as there are.
How's that for some talking?
Web-Surfing Log Book
I had a computer in my basement for a few years before I got around to using it. I didn't really want to use it, but there it was; and in February 2002 somebody was offering a two-week course in computer operation, and I took the course. It was a rapid-fire course of picking things up by watching them, and I managed to pick up enough to make a minimal use of my machine, adding to what I could do as much as possible by reading from some manuals. I had search-engines accessible, and I tried out Google and Altavista from explorer, making my first web-surfing experiences the entertainment sites and the arts. One of the first things I ran into was pornographic and obscene photos and movies come-ons. People showing interest in actors and actresses were assumed to be interested also in indecent pictures, which asked for credit-cards to prove adult status to look at. Seems to me an opportunity for blackmail. (Hm, the machine's critic didn't notice ending a sentence on a preposition. Probably talks in sentence fragments itself.) (It does notice a single spacing after a period, which is a printer's consideration.) I'd unpress these pretty quickly, getting popups and flak, as well as computer lore such as "this page cannot be displayed," which sometime appeared when I was trying to get away from a page. I'd assumed it could not be displayed. (Nothing wrong with the word "flak," critic? Then what's wrong with "unpress" and "popups?" How about "pop-ups?" I see that's a whole lot better. Un-press. Just right, eh?)
At least the spell-right can be accounted for, technically speaking. A lot of the internet doesn't seem like it would work, based on technical possibilities, or if so, not very fast, but the spell-right could function instantaneously. I used to read about how computers worked in ASTOUNDING. Anyway, I kept trying to scan out what I had originally been trying to find at the entertainment sites, and got tuned into the web pages of a few celebrities, which made me feel like I had successfully operated my computer, except that these pages still clicked into porn. A site manager assured me by e-mail that the sites had no contact with the actors and actresses named, which of course is having the sites without consent, but on Christina Aguilera's I found a person purporting to be her mother, which would be a contact with the name involved, and when I e-mailed her she said she was indeed her mother, and she showed a mother's concern when I told her about the obscene material the site was clicking into, and asked for further information, so I told her the names and locations of all the outfits involved, and I suppose they are still investigating.
This is not only logged, but I have printed-out copies of the exchange in my internet files; it gave me a good opportunity to use my copier and learn just how it was used in the process of using it.
So that's how I got started; the next thing I got into was research, using Altavista's search and doing my research chiefly in science fiction, and I collected about a ream of printed-out material. All set there, I knew how to get information. Then I did a little "visiting," going to various town sites in this country and in other countries. Finally I got into some chat rooms, and had about completed what I was going to do with the internet, except for setting up my own web-site, that you are on if you are reading this. As a final project, my web-magazine, SURPRISING STORIES, is coming up.
I keep a log book, as well as those files I mentioned, and it's interesting at this time to read back over it. I don't need it so much any more, as all the material that came out to being interesting is right on my screen, or in my files if interesting to retain it from a practical viewpoint. But, putting it to some use, perhaps the reader of my web philosophy will be interested in what some of my early loggings-in were. On March 25, 2002, I logged in e-mail from Mr. Atkinson, manager of the SF Women website which is now on my links page, and another piece of e-mail from a celebrity website, which is the communication I mentioned that says the celebs have no connection with their sites. These are the first two e-mails I got that were not experimental ones from local people. I also logged in an Elizabeth Hurley fan-mail address and a notation about A. Stuart Cox, a deceased employee of an Illinois power company, whose obit I had run across while researching. On April 8 I had managed to get into SciFi.Com's author chat to hear Scott Edelman and Ellen Datlow, whose first names are no error but whose last names are, according to my critic; somebody has mass-processed names there. Nixon. That one isn't an error. Don't need it. Also I logged my finding that Alan McDairmant was the FARSCAPE game producer. It's logged when DARK ANGEL was on TV; I caught one episode of it, but the series ended. April 25: "Guest-booked Wales, Dublin, Edinburgh, Kyoto, Belfast, London, Venice California." There's also a notation about the code that sometimes gets a smiley.
April 27, I noted information I had acquired about Scopie Chat. May 2, another Author Chat. "Posted website message at Lafayette Online." Back then I figured it was worth a boast when I managed to post something.
May 7, "Posted story in ANALOG, "The Year the Mars Mission Failed to Land," having characters Donavan, Rodriguez and Zincofandel. They found the Face on Mars and the Man in the Moon were duplicated on Earth." I'm glad I kept notation on that, because the story disappeared in a revision of the board. Since then I've been copying-out my postings when they seem worth copying. You can see a big advancement has been made here.
May 8, Yahoo Chats crackdown. May 14, another Dominion Chat (not a Dominance Chat, though those seem like they might be available at Yahoo). Collection of names of users (of Internet) who seem of interest and have been recurring on the screen is recorded here also. July 3, "Source of the Nile informs me Uganda is that source (it's right next to Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo)." Worth knowing, worth recording. Follows a listing of sites on SF Connection's Web-ring.
October 4, located the National Fantasy Fan Federation Home Page. 24, "Very successful day at computer. Got the JA wallpaper I'd wanted, relocated the JA fan-site and sent an e-mail to its moderator, heard from ANALOG that they'd reviewed and passed on my site, in the matter of advertising it, posted notification of mss at ANALOG forum, rendered my website guest-book more readable, got info on adding links, heard from Varda, found a new guest-book entry, printed out poems from computer for poetry reading, advertised poetry reading at LitKicks, and got an e-mail from Leilah."
That's about on the verge of webbing success, and so I won't print any more of my logbook, which I was doing to show a person making progress at learning to use the computer. I now have stories in BEWILDERING STORIES, so that's about as computer-successful as an ordinary computer operator can get, and I'm often in chat-rooms, and post on numerous boards. I might go on to describe some of my computer adventures and misadventures, but this is the story of how I learned to operate and use my computer.
The Age of Aquarius
I regard webs as the beginning of the Aquarian Age, some of the early activities of this new era. It has the characteristics of this new outlook---a discursive view of the world, a dilettante approach, a certain amount of servility in approaching life, omnivorous interests and concerns, cooperative approaches, broader perspectives, consideration of the future, progressiveness, and a give-and-take toward the possibilities of life. At present this attitude is exterior to life and is being experimented with, but I think that after the computer, the computer outlook and approach will become a part of life and of people's conception of the world. "We're at a dead end unless we change" is often said; somewhat predestined, if we are to follow astrological thought (and Karl Jung has set an illustrious precedent for this), is the new Aquarian thinking, otherwise by its nature spontaneous. The change in perspective is one to which mankind may become accustomed.
At any rate, the future has changes of some kind in store, and I think in using the internet we are to some extent looking into the future.
Too bad I don't have a discussion board, but would anyone make use of it. So far, there's only my e-mail address and guest-book comments section if anyone is interested in discussing this. (I can recollect acquaintances who WERE interested in discussing it.)
What Kind of Computer Do I Have?
The computer is custom made by Dave's Computer World running a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition program. The system reads American Megatrends Ambios, the main processor being Intel Celeron. Attached is a HP copier/scanner/printer, MLi soundboxes, MTRP tower, Tripp Lite Super 7 floor panel, Fujitsu Speedport DSL from Verizon, a Cull Call-Box, and it runs a Norton Antivirus and Ad Review.
That, of course, is giving out information about my computer; what am I going to do next, say what my password is? No, I'm not, but I just feel like letting everyone know what I have here, or at least the people who read my so-called "web philosophy." I assume everybody's read the raft of warnings that appear on the computer screen itself saying what dangers one can run into. Well, I just cool it and try to avoid all such dangers, but if I don't manage to, there they are.
I'm not certain everybody is getting the same screen on my web page that I'm sending out, which is the failing or inferiority of an internet system that is part of the dues, I suppose, for owning one, but one does not need an absolutely fixed reality if one can guess out from responses what other computer users are reading. Frequently I get a kickback on actions I never performed or statements I never posted, which makes me wonder whether I am being read correctly in chat rooms and on posting boards, but it may be a" bot " trying to make it look that way to me. Or some hacker wanting to have a little fun with me. I am, at any rate, getting satisfactory responses in terms of getting any responses at all, which means that some of what I'm putting out is getting across in its original form. As a matter of fact, a check from other computers shows my website looking pretty much the way I have it set up, so that, at least, is coming across, though where the computers are dissimilar they may be getting an image somewhat different on their windows, which is not pleasing from a designer's point of view. I suppose we cannot have any artistic perfection in the computer world. Not without some further outlay, anyway, where one could get an image guarantee. Even with one of those, one may be coming across poorly to anyone whose computer is not similarly guaranteed.
So the communications level is rather elementary, but who said it would be otherwise? Lovers of chance and happenstance, adventurers and gamblers with fortune will prefer this means of communication, especially in that one is not being very intimate when the messaging is not guaranteed, a fact which holds true even if the messaging is coming across right, because computer communication is pretty uncertain, lacking many of the factors of true communication; and, too, it is difficult to know what to put across on a machine (though cyber-sex is not inhibited by this) (what prostitute cares if a relationship is meaningful?) and how to express it, especially at the rate of speed most conversation travels. One must, in the long run, view computer communication as fun, or experimental interchange, more than anything else.
Of course, experimenting with different outlooks and approaches to anything, including communicative contact, has its benefits, as I pointed out in the previous section. Perhaps the outcome will be greater communicative perspectives, and a new outlook on existence.
Internet Law
Various news items appearing recently on Yahoo's news roundup board show government agencies and others tracing down abusers of internet, as they are called, violators of federal laws via internet means.
Something like that gets a little confusing, as Internet is itself violating some federal laws merely through its existence. (I take pleasure in making a controversial statement like that, as chat-room and forum experience has proven it to be, here where no one can answer me unless they choose the option of e-mailing me or signing a message into my guest-book.) (My computer corrects both "chat-room" and "guest-book," while both terms are used everywhere on the Internet almost like net trademarks, with a wavy red line under them. I checked "source" at the site of a computer magazine attached to a magazine's forum, and their source page had all sorts of red and green wavy corrective marks on it, because they were using standard computer usages.) The Federal laws the Internet violates relate to laws against anarchy, mayhem, international data exchange, trade and commerce regulations, tariffs, treaty regulations, and certain items relevant to the precepts of the Federal Communications Control Council. Thereby they are left practically reporting on themselves when an established Internet organization is reporting about investigations of violations.
The relationship of Internet and the Government is not that tight and solid by any means. It is obvious that there would be Government objections to Internet procedures, and watching Government proceedings on TV's C-SPAN corroborates this impression----sometimes the government is talking about vices occurring on the Internet, and sometimes it is talking about the Internet itself, whose existence and practices are still controversial there. Numerous Internet constituent setups and organizations are found to be doing what the Government doesn't like, and are taken to court and sometimes crash. Not registering properly is among the charges, kind of like eluding the US Patents Dept. They also don't like that form of autonomy existing where things should be in better and more known order, namely communications; and the Internet is sometimes often competitive with the government, having established their own system and ways of doing things, which the Government, historically and notably, has objected to and continues to object to.
So legal violations are an acute matter on the Internet. Clearly there is unregulated pornography; Yahoo itself, one of the more established service organizations, has "slut rooms" among its chat-rooms, and these are defamatory in nature, pornographic and otherwise of an illegal nature. Yet it was Yahoo which has been presenting cool and objective news items about the governmental investigations of Internet illegalities. Yahoo also maintains a "Hacker's Lounge," while pointing out via its news items that "hacking" is an illegal area of computer behavior.
When in Rome do as the Romans do, until Rome is judged? It doesn't sound like the perfect way to live. Laws are difficult to adhere to in a self-admitted anarchy. Face it, the computer way of life is at odds with the social system of this country as it has existed, whether there is some governmental approval of it or not.
I have an internet systems interest because it is the way things are going in the world around me. But I hate violating the law, and I sure wouldn't like it if the legal agencies moved in on my set. There are some laws against having the apparatus in the house, too, which make illegal searches and seizures possible, although then, too, the agencies involved are doing things their own way, in violation of the laws. That doesn't do the person whose house has been declassified as a residence much good, though. He'll be thinking that while standing against his bathroom wall. I can only state that there are people far more in violations of laws than myself and my simple circumstantial violations, but when circumstantial violations investigations are someone or other's specialty, that statement doesn't buy very much, and one can only hope that the courts will be too crowded by more serious offenses for any such case to come up, which is a sort of limbo; and also, there are expert legal circumventors of this position---one just hopes that none of these will become involved. Some people just prefer going after the peripheries, though; looking for Gog and Magog is not to their taste.
Will the original founders and builders of the Internet please stand up, and include in their midst the present ultimate overseers of the system?
Internet Code
Here's a message from "Mailer-Daemon," a presence in my mail room that I'm not certain is always beneficial, though he does function well as a porn- and spam-guard, and is apparently anti-viral. (What, my correction device doesn't regard "spam" as a word? It allows some of the other computer lingo.) But still, Daemon has a way of talking that's present in this excerpt that doesn't help me out any in understanding where he is at:
"Message from yahoo.co.uk. Unable to deliver message to the following address(es). Bob --- at yahoo.co.uk: This user doesn't have a yahoo.co.uk account (bob@yahoo.co.uk) [-5]
"sush i uk@yahoo.co.uk: Sorry your message to sush i uk@yahoo.co.uk cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued [#102]."
Well, I seem to be looking at an interfered message from one person to another. Why should my mail room become involved? I know neither bob nor sush, and haven't written to either of them. I rather suspect bob of being "the real bob dylan," whom I met at LitKicks, but that doesn't account for its being in my mail room in this form even if it is Bob Dylan, for I didn't ask him for a private contact, but just chatted with him on the bulletin board at LitKicks. Nor does Mailer-Daemon account for it with his record of a snafu and a failed mail delivery; again, why should he tell me about it? Was I supposed to be the third recipient in a mail chain? Daemon has always talked in code, and it's difficult to figure out what he's saying. Here's what he goes on to say:
"---Original message follows.
"X-Track: 0: 100
"mailto:Return-Path:%20bonomo15@yahoo.com"
What's a return path? Maybe I should know, if it tells me about one at my mail room, and puts me on the return path. After more of the same, it says:
"Received...
"From: "Margie Snider"mailto:%20<bonomo15@yahoo.com>"
Well, who's Margie Snyder? Now there's another one in it that I don't know. I haven't written to her and don't know the name. Is it Sush's real name? If so, why is it being revealed in a communique to me? Then, after an incomprehensible line labeled "Message-ID:" it goes on to say,
To: sally...sush...bob...skatekitten...sizzily...mysticdragonbooks...diannewoodward...kanu..." I've left out the data about these names, but my own is not among the ones on this list, so the only thing I can figure out is that some LitKicks people not using their LitKicks name decided to include me in a chain and were unsuccessful at it. Mailer-Daemon is not very communicatable-with. I've tried on other matters and though he has answered, it has been in the same sort of code and I didn't understand his answers any more than I did the originals about which I contacted him. He did seem to understand what I said, though, and gave me less problems than he had. Heck, I've communicated somewhat with Sentroid over at MST3K.
But how is one supposed to figure out and deal with these codes? Unless a Fortran or Cobol expert could help me out, I don't know what one is to do. Translative material does not come along with a computer purchase and I know of nowhere to apply. But the way the codes end up right in one's mail room and are established proceedings and seem to be phrased in imperative tones makes it seem like there's some sort of necessity of being able to translate what's going on. Is computer codification one of the dangers of the Internet about which we are partially warned when we purchase one?
Look Elsewhere for Solipsism
People tell me no one is reading my web philosophy. I can believe it; I wouldn't read someone's web philosophy. It's getting too long, anyway. Very well, if nobody is reading it, here's what I have to say now:
Milo, milo, flen, dl'tek, pe pi po pisarro, klenny, moduluk, f'tay f'tay, migro com busi b'taan, stanley, the ruggers down in the flatbush region, muth ask mojo where you been, the flying dukes of ambergris county, my foos won't moos, hello, America, what you knowing?
It occurs to me that if anybody read this web philosophy at all, they wouldn't read it this far, so this is a good place to start a private journal. I can jot down some things I wouldn't normally say, talk about some things I wouldn't want to have known, and interpret them for myself. Writing them down here ought to provide me with a good catharsis. No need to define what one of those is.
I had been visualizing keeping up an ongoing and developing outlook, with interested readers seeing where it is going to go. That is, of course, unrealistic; some people have pointed out that I would have exactly no interested readers, unless I wanted to count myself. So be it! I'll count myself, have one interested reader, and keep a private journal henceforth about what I consider to be my vices, with a view toward amending them, which I can do better if I think them over. Commencing henceforth, THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF JOHN THIEL.
Profit in Internet
Probably there are not many people reading my Internet Philosophy. That means if you are reading it, you are one of the few reader it has. To you I apologize profusely for all the wavy red lines you see under the words where my wizard has found errors. Those are not errors and I am not changing them. I mean to go over the text and remove those red lines when I find any way to do so.
Nobody's missing anything that doesn't read it. But I do like to talk about my computer.
There must be a reason for the existence of the present-day Internet. It couldn't exist without a creator, just like the world in general---it didn't come into being by itself without there being a profit motive involved. But to all intents and purposes the Internet gives more than it takes. So much of it seems to be bestowed---free services of all kinds. What do the net people hope to gain from such royalties and endowments?
My website cost me nothing, yet it even has security. Apparently the computer world likes to have a lot of sites showing, for reasons they don't explain. Maybe it has the same principles as scholarships and grants, but I doubt it. It isn't the same sort of thing. So as Omar Khayyam said of the winemakers, "I often wonder what the wine-makers buy, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?" (My Wizard doesn't think much of Omar's last name.) Wherein do the masterminds of the computer world find profits enough to justify their outlay? Not only do they stand to gain a monetary loss, but the computer shows little signs of having anything that anyone would consider profitable, only a lot of problems and, as the newspapers report, lawsuits. What's in it for them?
I haven't seen any answers to this anywhere yet.
Is Heaven Behind the Internet?
In spite of initial expenses, and some token charges, the Internet is outstandingly free in many of its aspects and would apparently be operating at a loss if those behind these services were not pretty well-heeled. Is philanthropy involved? One wonders when one sees the lack of philanthropic worthiness of so many of the receivers of these services. Philanthropy like that would come from heaven, not simple good will toward the enterprising.
A lot of people view the places where money is printed as a simulacrum of heaven. It doesn't cost anything to print money originally, and how much of it is printed is decreed; thereafter its allocation is decreed by the government. Some people visualize a sort of moebius effect where the printers of money are part of the system rather than being above it or outside it, but if this were so, then whoever devised this system would be above the system and independent of it.
One reason for accumulating wealth is to gain a position which is above that of people dependent on various things in the in the accumulation of money. Those who have risen to this position are either stern or philanthropic. Philanthropists support worthwhile projects, the charitable support people just because they need support; but those who support people because they need support for the kind of internet work they intend to do would be celestial, and exercising a form of heavenly philanthropy. Their aim would be absolute liberalism.
Case in point, "Classmates.com." These people would obviously be operating at a loss, considering the expenses that must be involved. What they have managed to do is a sociological miracle. They have actually located a goodly percentage of the students of any school you could name, and gotten them re-congregated from all over the country after as much as a fifty-year lapse of time. It is a major effort and a major enterprise; the charge for their service is minimal, and the aim of it is reunification, with much talk about the spirit of the times and the spirit involved in the project. That has the earmarks of the heavenly mentality. Some of the response to this is crass and material, but all or most reactions appear to be permitted. The service continues, in spite of all setbacks, some of them fairly obvious.
Heavenly enterprises tend to disappear, on the principle of "the good die young," perhaps, which makes this Internet approval a rather shaky one, but I would prefer, personally, to see this Internet aspect recognized and to continue, and to flourish, which last it could probably do in fairly good style.
What do they have in mind? Reunification is probably an end in itself. Peace and harmony seem to be what they are working toward. They deserve more attention. Otherwise they might turn into a chimera. And they are a better manifestation of Internet possibility than most of it.
A Straight History of the Internet
The above practically concludes my web philosophy, which should not go on and on forever. As the reader can see, I worked up my computer philosophy from scratch, from my first perception of computers as a viable medium. I had been trying to figure them out, but at last got some research assistance (at the ANALOG forum) and have been able to arrange a history of the setup. That follows, and then I've finished up here, except for any comments I think up to add over the course of time---these would be small comments, perhaps epigrams. By the way, the wavy red lines I objected to in some of the foregoing matter don't appear on the screen, but it's that way on the page composer; I mention it for all readers who might hit "source." There are accidentally some live e-mails above, too, which are apparently uncorrectable, but they didn't work for me and presumably won't for anyone else.
The 1959 full-set edition of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA has no listing for computers, only "Computing Machines," and that has no notations, only refers one to "Mathematical Instruments," which item of four pages shows little knowledge of the computer as it was going to evolve from the 1960s on, giving only a description of some calculating machines that would be considered virtually primitive today.
The actual history of the present-day system dates back to 1941, when a German named Konrad Zusa, living in Berlin, invented the world's first working automatic programmable computer, and with it the first high-level programming language. He had this ready for presentation, and it became public just a few months before the UNIVAC was unveiled in 1950-51.
Computer history officially goes back to the Abacus, used in the 4th Century BC by the former inhabitants of what is now Iraq. A mechanism used in Greece in the 1st Century BC for predicting the motion of stars and planets is also considered to possess the computer concept. There was not a whole lot comparable to it in recorded mechanical history until the 1600s in Europe when Wilhelm Schickard and Blaise Pascal came up with mechanical calculators at about the same time. In 1820, Charles Babbage of England came up with an analytical engine using punch-cards.
With only military uses, the Colossus, a code-breaking computer, was developed and built in England in 1944, and ENIAC, used for artillery firing tables, was developed in Maryland in 1945. Bell Telephone developed the transistor in 1947. Fairchild came up with the integrated circuit in 1959 and in 1964 the IBM 360 became the standard mainframe computer.
Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in 1969. (My computer's Systems lists Intel.) Xerox founded the Palo Alto Research Center in 1969 and began exploring "the architecture of information." Fairchild came up with some handy chips in 1970 and in 1971 Bill Gates, a real Internet pusher, along with Paul Allen, was doing traffic analysis systems called "Traf-O-Data." Gary Kildall wrote PL/M, a programming language, for Intel. In April 1972 an 8-bit microprocessor called Intel 8008 was the tidings, and in 1974 Jonathan Titus came up with "Your Personal Minicomputer." The next year the first "personal computer," MIT's Altair-8800, was ordered by thousands of people. Allen and Gates developed BASIC for the Altair. Apple had captured the as-yet relatively small personal computer market by 1980; I remember seeing advertising for it in some men's magazines and a few newsmagazines. In 1984, perhaps the beginning of the modern computer era, the prototype of the modern personal computer, the Apple-Macintosh, was introduced. Microsoft Windows originated in 1985. Their sales soared to a billion in 1989.
As to the Internet, it has to some extent an additional history. Linking users to a single computer via remote terminals was developed at MIT in the early 60s. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed the basic ideas of the Internet in 1973. The first public network, Telenet, was established, after its fashion, in 1974. In 1991 Tim Lee developed the World Wide Web. The main US Internet traffic began routing through commercial providers in 1994.
Technically, this goes back to 1958, when Bell researchers invented the modem, which enables communication between computers. In 1962, Rand Corporation, a government agency, developed a military computing system to deal with nuclear attacks. It was devised by Paul Baran. In 1965, ARPA studied a "cooperative network of time-sharing computers," and in 1968 ARPANET was established, with Senator Edward Kennedy backing it. In 1969 UCLA tried the first systems check, with Charley Kline handling the key position, over a small computers system hookup. The first cross-country link was installed by AT&T in 1970 and in 1972 Ray Tomlinson invented the e-mail program. A first computer-to-computer chat took place at UCLA. In 1973 Bob Metcalfe of Harvard outlined the idea for Ethernet in his PhD thesis. 1974 was the first use of the term Internet, by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.
Other names to look for in computing are Howard Aiken of IBM, inventor of a sequence-controlled calculator in 1943, John Atanasoff, the inventor of the electronic digital computer, Seymour Cray, a pioneer in supercomputing, Bob Engelbart, inventor of the crucial "mouse," and Alan Turing, a pioneer in developing computer logic.