History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet

In the fall of 1992, an undergraduate college student’s project was to do research on the computer network which spans the globe, employing interviews, sending letters and gathering data. His question to Eastern Europe asked whether the disintegration of Eastern Europe was at least in part due to the lack of free speech because of impending computer development. He also asked for any evidence that the Berlin Wall had fallen because of new developments in computer communications. These questions were posted on the computer network news system called Usenet.

"Posting" is sending an article to be propagated around the world. Usenet is similar to an electronic newsmagazine or a world town meeting. Within a few hours, he received responses to his question that dealt with the fundamental change the Internet represents over previous communications media. A biologist in Russia noted that he was in the camp that could not use the computer-mediated communications. A second person from Russia said that the Internet "is the first and only connection to the rest of the world." This correspondent noted that it was easier to access the Internet for electronic mail than to get permission to use a photocopy device. Also, he continued, conventional mail and a FAX message had less than a 50% chance of getting through while e-mail would be received in hours. A German student described how the increased communications from computer networks aided in the fall of the Berlin Wall and also supplied accurate information of events at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The student next tried to determine how far the network reached to the four corners of the Net, especially to weird or abnormal locations. He received over fifty messages from France, India, Africa and Japan. In France, an Internet connection was discouraged by the government’s high charge for its use. The replies ranged from lack of Internet sites in Poland, to burgeoning growth in New Zealand due to free access. South Africa struggled with providing access to the interior. After the final draft, the student’s report was posted on Usenet to wide acclaim. Usenet has important educational possibilities on a worldwide scope. How was Usenet created and what future growth problems might be encountered?

To begin, the definition of Unix, "an operating system common to work stations on which most Internet protocols were developed" is helpful. A "protocol" is "an agreed upon method for two computers to communicate." Usenet was born in 1979 when Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, graduate students at Duke University, conceived of connecting a computer network to link together those in the Unix community. A third graduate student from the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Steve Bellovin, joined the project and wrote some simple scripts so that the computers at the two sites would automatically call each other and search for changes in the computer files, and then copy them. A third site was added as the Duke Medical School joined in. The program was too slow, so graduate student, Stephen Daniel, with help from Tom Truscott, rewrote the code in C programming language to speed it up. This became the first Usenet program and was named "A News."