The Usenet System


v. 3.0.1
May 18, 1993

Henry Edward Hardy
School of Communications
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401 USA
Internet: seraphim@umcc.umich.edu



Abstract

Usenet (User Network) is a large worldwide teleconferencing system
which has some of the characteristics of electronic mail (Email), a
distributed conferencing environment, and a computer bulletin board
(bbs) system. Usenet is of interest to the scholar of computer
teleconferencing, or "Computer Mediated Communication" (CMC) because
of its unique structure and implications for the architecture of
future communications and political systems.

The structure of Usenet is best described as a "cooperative anarchy."
Usenet is administered if at all, by volunteers, non-profit
organizations and corporate research groups. Despite this apparent
lack of organization, or perhaps because of it, Usenet offers exciting
possibilities for electronic publishing, information sharing, and
rapid communication over large and diverse computer communication
networks.

The best theoretical framework existing at the time of this writing is
that of Cathcart & Gumpert [1983, 1986]: mediated interpersonal
communication. Although commercialization may threaten to alter the
balances inherent in the Usenet system, it is likely to continue to
grow exponentially for at least the next 5-8 years. Although a wealth
of data both objective and anecdotal is available on Usenet, little
scholarly research of substance has been done to date. The Usenet
system is a promising and exciting field offering vast opportunities
for both further research and application.


A Portrait of the Usenet as a Young Network

Usenet is a large communications system with unique properties. Some
authors have claimed it to be the largest, or part of the largest,
computer network in the world. [Nickerson, 1992; Hauben M. 1992a]
Certainly, it is very large by any standard. It has been recently
estimated that Usenet reaches as many as 12 million people worldwide
each month with publications in more than 1800 subject areas, or
"newsgroups." [Buckler, 1990; Weinstein 1992]

Usenet has continued to grow exponentially since its creation in 1979
by two graduate students at Duke University, with traffic volume
increasing recently by as much as 10-15% per month. A full newsfeed at
a typical site might average more than 30 megabytes per day (about 10
times the size of the King James Bible, or 100 paperback novels, or
600 times the length of this paper). 

In order to explore the systemic attributes of Usenet, we may begin by
briefly making some comparisons with existing communications systems.

Clearly, in terms of its physical structure, Usenet is a computer
network. Both files and messages are transmitted, distributed, stored,
and received. However, Usenet differs from many computer networks in
that it is not tied to any one particular computer system,
architecture, operating system, or physical transmission layer. For
instance, during the "breaking of the backbone cabal" and when AT&T
shut down two of the major news gateways, Usenet found alternate
distribution routes and continued to grow unabated. [Buerger, 1988]

Usenet is unusual among computer networks or communications systems in
that it has no formal rules, no formal enforcement mechanism, and
little dedicated physical plant (except for Uunet). [Fiedler, 1990;
Horvitz, 1989; Smith, 1992]

As a communications system, Usenet might be described as a common
carrier, publisher, teletext system, broadcast medium, or cable
communications system. [Office of Technology Assessment, 1981]  Usenet
messages are transmitted over shortwave radio, dedicated microwave
relay, satellite link, telephone networks and fiber trunks such as the
NSFnet backbone. The quality of Usenet is not strained by such diverse
transmission media. It is its ubiquity in part which makes it such an
interesting field for study.

Usenet may considered to be an instance of CMC--Computer Mediated
(or Moderated) Communication. [December, J., 1992] One premise of this
paper is that Usenet fits well within the theoretical structure of
mediated interpersonal communication proposed by Cathcart & Gumpert
(1988).

Usenet is an abbreviation for 'Unix User Network,' often abbreviated
as simply 'News' or 'NetNews.' The history of the development of the
UNIX operating system is closely tied with particularly the early
history of Usenet. At least one commercial news service provider
(clarinet.com) now uses the Usenet mechanism to provide UPI and other
news information to paying subscribers. [Weinstein, 1992]

Usenet may profitably be viewed as an emergent cult, or culture, or
society. Usenet has many of the characteristics of an independent
subculture, such as a particular grapholect, a special net etiquette,
or 'Netiquette,' and customs and traditions different from the many
external cultures in which it is embedded.

Several possible explanations for this may be expounded. Usenet is
international in scope, reaching one way or another almost all areas
of the developed world and much of the rest. Usenet as a medium has
unique characteristics of immediacy, distributiveness, anonymity, and
ideography. And it is a complicated and secretive fraternity
(sorority) with its own ritual, customs, and acceptable norms of
behavior. It may be described as an emergent, rather than a planned or
teleological system. [Monge, 1977]

A full description of the technical characteristics of Usenet lies far
beyond the scope of this or any paper of reasonable length. A brief
description of some of the elements of the Usenet system is provided
for the benefit of the reader who is unfamiliar with Usenet.
Experience net.users may wish to skip this section.

Sydney Weinstein (1992) has provided a useful summary of the current
state of Usenet's organization. He notes that Usenet has seven main or
official hierarchies, as well as a number of unofficial or commercial
catagories. He estimates that there are at least 1800 diffrerent
newsgroups comprising  Usenet at this time.

Usenet users come from all walks of life. The minimum conditions for
obtaining access to Usenet are, literacy, typing skills, basic
familiarity with computers and computer networks, access to a computer
terminal, an account on a machine (client) connected to a Usenet host,
and the time to participate.

Most users simply read Usenet and seldom if ever post anything. This
is the typical posture for a new user, as well as for anyone afraid to
place their ideas into the hurly-burly world of the net, where
degrees, accepted dogma, and traditional ideas of politeness and
propriety seldom apply. Such people are called in the parlance of the
net, 'silent lurkers' or 'net.lurkers.' This is often abbreviated as
simply 'lurkers,' 'lurking' etc.

Usenet is an example of client-server (client-host) architecture. A
user connects to a machine which in turn connects to another machine
which has stored the Usenet postings for the past few days, weeks, or
hours. The user typically looks at the headings of postings in the
newsgroups of interest to them. The user may issue a command
requesting to see the full text of a particular posting (article). The
client machine in turn requests the particular article to be forwarded
from the host machine. If the article is unavailable (expired, no
longer spooled, or cancelled by poster) then a message, 'article
unavailable' is transmitted back to the user.  Otherwise, the full
text of the requested posting should appear on the user's terminal.
The user may then read, store, reply through electronic mail, post a
follow-up article or start a new subject heading with a new posting.

There are a large number of programs which facilitate the organization
and interaction between the user and the Usenet. Such programs are
often called 'client programs,' because they are run on the user's
client machine to which their terminal is connected. Some common UNIX
based Usenet client programs include rn, nn, tin and trn. In order to
save resources, or as a matter of convenience or personal preference,
many users use 'offline newsreaders' which allow the text of a posting
to be downloaded from the system in order to be printed or stored for
later reference. [Reingold, 1992; Ford, 1992; Livingston, 1988c]

Graphics and digitized pictures are transmitted over Usenet via the
use of the Unix uuencode facility, which allows binary data to be
encoded in text files which can then be transported via Usenet.

One essential element in the Usenet system is the system operator
(sysop). In the traditional culture of the Net, the sysop has wide
latitude to determine what activities he/she will permit on the
machines over which they have authority. Since there is no central
mechanism and no universally recognized standard for determining what
is and is not a 'real' Usenet newsgroup, the system operator acts as a
gatekeeper, determining which groups will be stored and forwarded from
their host to other elements of the net to which they are connected.

It is this gatekeeping role which has been a particular source of
controversy and conflict since the beginning of Usenet. There is no
firm consensus over what is legitimate gatekeeping in order to protect
scarce resources or to protect against legal or political liability
and what constitutes immoral censorship.

Currently, there are two major routes used for distribution of Usenet:
the NSF (National Science Foundation) backbone and the alternet, used
to (theoretically) carry controversial material from the alt groups
such as alt.conspiracy, alt.sex and the like separately from the
NSFnet and Internet. The Internet connects to at least 32 major
regional networks in the US and to national and international networks
throughout the world. Uunet, a nonprofit organization founded by the
Usenix Association and formerly associated with the Institute for
Seismic Studies, based in Falls Church, Va., provides a major link
between Usenet users in Europe and the US. [Smith, 1989; Fiedler,
1990; Frey & Adams, 1990; anon, 1992 May]


Administration without Administrators

The major work of 'administration' is carried out in a number of
Usenet newsgroups, particularly news.admin.misc, news.groups, and
news.announce.newgroups.

Extensive (and often conflicting) statistics on use are collected,
collated, and published, proposals for new groups or group
reorganizations are vetted, and issues of structure, propriety, and
precedent are endlessly debated. [Kamens, 1992, November 19].

The combination of public, nonprofit, and commercial networks over
which Usenet is transmitted makes for a complex and controversial
situation with regards to liability, free speech, obscenity,
'appropriate use,' commercial use and other issues. The lack of a
central regulatory or governing body makes the Usenet a study in
functional anarchy. [Fiedler, 1990; Smith, 1992]


Six Million Strong...and growing

64,348 sites are known to have posted or forwarded Usenet postings in
the 14 months ending November 1992. [Reid, 1992b] This probably
represents a reasonable minimum estimate for the number of sites
participating in Usenet as server installations. Since there are
estimated to be more than 6 million readers, the total number of
computers used as client machines or terminals must number in the
millions.

It is up to the individual system administrator to decide which groups
his site will receive and pass along, based on the information
provided by disparate sources. The sysop must weigh the desires of
readers, the established customs and practices of the net
('netiquette') and the possible consequences of conflicts due to
controversial postings or allegations of censorship if a group is
removed from the local feed.

Another substantial, if hidden, consideration, is the cost of
providing Usenet news to readers.  Newsgroups involving large amounts
of postings and data, such as those popular groups carrying sounds and
pictures, may cost $1 -$1.50 per reader per month. All but the top 40
most expensive groups are estimated to cost $.16 or less per
reader/month.  More than 1/3 of the newsgroups listed were estimated
to cost one cent per reader or less per month.

In practical terms this cost is mostly reflected in the cost of buying
and maintaining the large amounts of disk space necessary to store the
very large volumes of data involved in running a full Usenet feed.

There is a cost involved as well in the creation and maintenance of
the high-speed networks used to transmit Usenet data. The actual cost
of this cannot be accurately estimated at this time since Usenet makes
extensive use of telephone and fiber optic links which are heavily
subsidized by civilian government as well as educational, commercial
and military installations. 

The programs which make the Usenet possible have their roots in the
Unix to Unix Copy Program, 'uucp.' Usenet proper is generally
considered to have begun in 1979 as a series of shell scripts written
by University of North Carolina (UNC) graduate student Steve Bellovin
in order to automate and facilitate uucp communication between UNC and
Duke University. Since this time the software has gone through several
major revisions and extensions.

Comprehensive discussion of the early development of the UNIX
operating system, the C programming language and the networks which
became the Internet and Bitnet, with which Usenet has become so
complexly intertwined, lies beyond the scope of the present work.


Formal models and Usenet structure

Traditional communications theories, such as the
source-channel-receiver model of Shannon are of limited use in
analyzing Usenet. [Shannon & Weaver, 1949, 1963] Shannon's model is of
great importance in the history of computers and communications,
introducing as it does concepts such as bits and providing a useful
theoretical model for point-to-point transmissions as in a telephone
network. However, in the opinion of this author, the *assumption* [p.
48] by Shannon that human's are ergodic and discreet stochasic sources
because human communications are *similar* to the output of such a
source puts the rest of the author's proof into considerable question.

Further, Usenet is a very complex system. Merely to view such a system
as a conglomeration of point-to point transmissions would ignore the
systemic, non-summative attributes of Usenet. 

More interesting for the study of Usenet as a system is the work of
Norburt Wiener in cybernetics. Usenet may well act as a
self-organizing system as described in the second edition of
Cybernetics. Wiener was interested in the parallels between electronic
and biological self-organizing systems. Usenet has many of the
characteristics of both, having both a substantial electronic
component as well as more than 6 million biological units. [Wiener,
1948, 1961]

It would be fascinating for future scholars to apply Wiener's methods
of analyzing harmonic oscillations to the message traffic on Usenet.
Usenet interactions such as "flame wars" (described below) may display
the harmonic oscillations characteristic of the complex systems
analyzed by Wiener.

Monge has identified nine major elements of systems as defined by
systems theory, namely, that they are isomorphic, hierarchical,
interdependent, teleological, nonsummative, self-regulative,
equifinite, adaptable, and (in the case of open systems) interactive
with the environment. [Monge, 1977]

Usenet is hierarchical only in the sense that the newsgroups
themselves are arranged in hierarchies such as alt, comp, news, rec,
talk and the like. Among the human interactants on Usenet there is
remarkably little hierarchy, at least explicitly; it is a relatively
"flat" social structure. It is the newsgroups themselves which fall
into the hierarchy rather than the humans.

We have argued above that Usenet is non-summative; and certainly it
is self-regulative to the extent that it is regulated at all. It is
probably equifinite; that is, given that the system is at a certain
state today, there are many ways it could have reached that state.
Evidence for this may be found in the fact that when major channels of
transmission of Usenet such as the ARPAnet backbone and the AT&T
servers have become limited or made inaccessible to users of the net,
Usenet has sought other channels and continued more or less unabated.
[Woodbury, 1992; Lewis, 1992; Buerger, 1988; Livingstone, 1988]

Elements of the system are clearly interdependent; the system need
humans, clients, and servers to function, as well as communication
channels connecting the above.

Usenet affects and is affected by its environment; for instance, it
has been argued that Usenet affected, and was affected by, the
development of the ARPAnet (a government-sponsored computer network)
during 1980-1981. [Hauben M., 1992a] 

The one area in which this typology fails to satisfy this author is
teleology, or "the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by
mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of
self-realization." [Stein, 1966]

While the vitalist philosophy of thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin
has a certain appeal to this author, it is strange to think of Usenet
as an organism in its own right, evolving toward the "Omega Point" on
its own, unbeknownst to its human participants. If Usenet does have a
goal, it is more or less implicit. Without an administration or
written rules, no stated over-arching purpose can definitely be
adduced to exist unless it is merely to provided a vast medium of
communication and a free marketplace of ideas. [Office of Technology
Assessment, 1981; Teilhard de Chardin, 1969, 1975]

There are other forms of scholarly investigation, such as content
analysis and cultural anthropology, which scholars may wish to apply
to Usenet in the future.


Mediated Interpersonal Communication

Likely the best theoretical framework from which to approach Usenet as
a communications system is that of Cathcart & Gumpert. [cf. Metz,
1992] In their important paper, "Mediated Interpersonal Communication:
Toward a New Typology," they suggest a shift in focus to the medium
rather than exclusively on the message. [Cathcart & Gumpert, 1983;
McLuhan, 1967, 1989]

Examples of mediated interpersonal communication cited by Cathcart &
Gumpert include letter writing (and reading), telephone, CB and ham
radio, and computer mediated communication (hereafter referred to as
CMC).

Usenet may be said to be the example of computer mediated
communication par excellence.

Little theoretical work has been done on CMC. In fact, where the term
is frequently used on Usenet and other networks (often collectively
referred to as 'the Net'), the term is seldom defined by those who
employ it. One researcher whose investigations seem to have led him in
a similar direction to that of this author is Metz (1992):

Computer-mediated communication (CMC), for purposes here, can be
defined as any communication patterns mediated through the computer.
These include, but are not limited to, computer conferencing,
electronic mail (e-mail), relay chat lines, and Multiple User Dungeons
(MUDs). CMC has been in existence since the early 1970s, and research
concerning it has scrambled along behind with no theoretical base to
guide it. Much of what has been studied, therefore, looks like a
trailer park after a tornado strikes: very disorganized. CMC
researchers have failed in their duty to organize and define their
field of study. 

Metz [1992] has stated that since presenting the above-mentioned paper
he has come to favor the theory of Cathcart and Gumpert as a basis for
further research into CMC. 

We shall conclude the current work with a brief discussion of some of
the aspects of Usenet as a system viewed from the perspective of
systems theory; some hypotheses about the possible future growth and
direction of Usenet; and suggested areas for further research.


Anarchist Organization

The current decision making structure of Usenet might best be
described as a "cooperative anarchy". [Woodbury, 1992; Wagner, 1991,
March 04] Although this may seem oxymoronic, it does have parallels in
the writings of many of the 19th Century libertarian communists and
communal anarchists, particularly the great Russian scientist and
philosopher Peter Kropotkin. In his book, "Mutual Aid," Kropotkin put
forth the proposition that it was cooperation rather than conflict
which was the determining factor in the "survival of the fittest." 
Usenet provides numerous examples of cooperation as well as vicious
death struggles over trivial points to warm the heart of the most
hardened Social Darwinist. [Kropotkin, ND, 1989]

Usenet operates more like a culture (or cult, some might say) than a
formal system; the rules of conduct, such as they are implicit and
only stated explicitly in the news hierarchy groups and in the
numerous FAQ (frequently asked questions) postings. The FAQ's and the
memories of the "ancient ones" represent the collective wisdom of the
net. Usenet is still in a tribal state of society where affinity
groups and informal power cliques are as numerous and ephemeral as
snowflakes on a bleak winter's day.


Constraints on the Usenet System

There are several constraints on the Usenet system. The first
constraint on a given site is the capacity of the channel feeding it.
As has been mentioned, a Usenet feed can be as much as 50 megabytes
per day.

About the fastest a typical 2400 baud (bits per second) channel can
carry information with error checking is 240 bytes per second (= 1920
baud).  With compression, this rate can be effectively doubled,
perhaps even tripled. Taking the maximum values, we find that the
channel capacity is about 2.5 megabytes per hour, or 60 megabytes per
day. So a Usenet site requires a relatively high speed connection to
the net faster than 2400 baud. A 9600 baud connection is probably the
minimum for a Usenet server.

Another constraint on an individual server is disk space. To carry a
practically full news feed for 2 weeks before aging it requires as
much as 14 * 50 = 700 megabytes of disk space. This is more than the
capacity of most personal computers today.

Third, the server should in most cases be running some version of the
UNIX operating system.  Many versions of Unix are somewhat costly (c.
$1000) and also require a good deal of memory (8+ megabytes ram) and
disk space (at least 80 megabytes just for the Unix operating system).

The increasing use of Usenet to send binary data such as pictures and
sounds, and in the future, animations and video, will push these
requirements significantly higher in the near future. The continuing
explosion of new newsgroups will also continue to push the
requirements of servers for the foreseeable future.

The elements of control in the Usenet system are inobvious, given as
we have mentioned that there are no formal rules or rulers. However,
such mechanisms certainly exist. The first constraint, already
mentioned above, is the decision of the individual system operator
(sysop) as to whether to carry Usenet, and if so, which groups to
carry. The sysop also decides how long to carry the articles and what
the terms or conditions for participating in Usenet will be for users
of his/her particular system.  Further, the sysop must find a site
willing and able to serve his/her site with the desired newsgroups.
The sysop is also responsible for enforcing or deciding what the terms
and conditions for participating in the system will be for system
users.

Once a user has access to Usenet, the first and gentlest measure of
social control is feedback through personal E-Mail. If a new user
("clueless newbie") gets out of line, someone might be nice enough to
cue them in privately.

People who post massive amounts of data to Usenet may (or may not) be
shamed by having their names and the groups they posted to posted in
the biweekly posting of top 25 news submitters by kilobytes posted to
news.lists by Rick Adams of Uunet. In most cases, except for a few
large institutional users, these "hogs" are posting to the
alt.binaries.pictures hierarchy. [Adams, 1992] 


"Flame Wars"--A Means of Social Constraint

A common, and sanguinary, method of social constraint is the "flame
war." A "flame" is a posting harshly criticizing a posting or the
poster. A "flame war" is a continuing argument in which the noise-to-
signal (in the sense getting more and more emotional and less and less
informative) ratio gets progressively higher and higher before dying
out. In the opinion of this author, flame wars are the most important
means of social constraint on the Usenet system. Even minor shifts in
policy or procedure are likely to produce a flame war (as is just one
person who had a bad day).

When a flame was begins, lurkers and newbies run for cover. Personal
aspersions, outrageous exaggerations, and overheated rhetoric are the
order of the day (or week, or month). A person's past transgressions
(real or imagined), personal habits and proclivities (real or
imagined) and unsupported claims of personal privilege or authority
seem to rule the day, for a time. Eventually the source of irritation
is removed, removes themselves, cooler heads prevail, or everyone just
gets sick of it and moves on to another subject.


"The Great Renaming" and "The Breaking of the Backbone Cabal"

There have been several major realignments and shifts in the structure
of Usenet. Among these have been the "Great Renaming" and the
"Breaking of the Backbone Cabal." Each of these restructurings appears
to have been heralded by a massive mega-flamewar.

The most significant flame war of Usenet history was over the "Great
Renaming" when the seven main hierarchies
{comp,misc,news,rec,sci,soc,talk} were created and the old groups
{net,fa,mod} were all moved around. There was great gnashing of teeth
as groups were sorted and tossed around and relegated to their
polities.

[Woodbury, 1992]

It is interesting to note that the Great Renaming was directly
traceable to a change in the News software underlying Usenet. The
change in structure which followed was accompanied by a massive
flamewar involving all of the then-existing groups which lasted for
months. This is an example of this author's thesis that flame wars are
the agents of structural change on Usenet as well as being means of
socialization for the users.

The "Breaking of the Backbone Cabal" occurred when administrators of
the APRAnet (now Internet--NSF, soon to be NREN) backbone declined to
carry newsgroups dealing with recreational sex and drugs. Usenet
participants devised communications paths which avoided the ARPAnet
(ARPAnet = Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, a precursor of
the Internet and NREN) and the alt hierarchy was born.

But the most profound change to the net occurred when Richard Sexton
proposed "rec.sex" (followed closely by rec.drugs) and the group
"passed" its "vote" but the Backbone Cabal decreed that they would NOT
carry the group or create the group on the "backbone" machines. Almost
immediately, the "alt" distribution was set up, using alternative
routes that were "seperate" from the backbone (and theoretically
avoided traversing the ARPAnet). 

Following the abdication of the Backbone Cabal oligarchy, Usenet was
proclaimed to be the worlds foremost example of a working cooperative
"anarchy" and it has remained so ever since.

[Woodbury, 1992]


The Undiscovered Country--the Future

There is a considerable variance of opinion regarding the most likely
future course of the development of Usenet. Some, like Michael Hauben
[1992a,b] consider Usenet to be in its infancy. Others have
periodically, and so far, innacurately, predicted the immenent death
of Usenet due to commercialization or the withdrawal of support by
major contributors. [cf. Livingston, 1988]

It is certain however, that whatever its future, Usenet will not
remain static.

Increasing computing power should put workstations capable of acting
as server machines in the hands of many personal computer users within
the next two to three years. The software that runs Usenet will
continue to be ported to more and more platforms. And more and more
computers will run Unix, or whatever multi-tasking operating systems
succeed it.

The number of Usenet users and newsgroups groups will probably
continue to grow exponentially for at least the next few years. In the
opinion of this author, saturation will be achieved when Usenet is
available to about 10% of the world's population.  This would
represent about a 100-fold increase. At the current rate of growth,
this could be as soon as the year 2000. Usenet is currently growing at
the estimated rate of 5-15% per month. This means that Usenet is
doubling in size every year to year-and-a-half. This rate of growth
has been fairly constant since 1979.

   1979 3 sites, ~2 articles a day
   1980 15 sites, ~10 articles a day
   1981 150 sites, ~20 articles a day
   1982 400 sites, ~50 (this was after the gateways to ARPANET were
          established.)
   1983 600 sites, ~120
   1984 900 sites, ~225
   1985 1,300 sites, ~375 articles per day. 1+Megabyte per/day
   1986 2,500 sites, ~500, 2MB+
   1987 5,000 sites, ~1000, 2.5MB+
   1988 11,000 sites, ~1800, 4MB+ 
   (Gene Spafford, Usenet History Archives from the Mailing List)
   [from Gene Spafford, Oct. 11, 1990, based on presentation on Oct 1,
          1988 for the IETF meeting.) 
   [Hauben M., 1992 a,b]

Currently, it may be estimated that there are more than 62,000 sites,
13,000 articles per day, and 25-50 MB/day in Usenet traffic. [rough
calculation by author; cf. Reid, 1992, Dec 4]

There is no foreseeable technological constraint that would prevent
Usenet from continuing to grow at this rate. For instance, the
changeover from T1 to T3 lines on the Internet NSF backbone, recently
completed, means that the backbone has increased its capacity at least
144-fold between 1988 and 1992. [NSF, 1992]


The Backbone Cabal Strikes Back

However, the "backbone cabal" of MERIT Inc., IBM, MCI, ANS, and the
National Science Foundation is alive and kicking still. ANS is a
commercial service provider owned by MERIT, MCI and IBM. ANS has
recently taken over providing transport services for the Internet via
the NSF backbone. ANS is also a for-profit commercial service provider
operating in direct competition with the Internet.

ANS: A deal no one can refuse? Advanced Network and Services Inc. of
Elmsford, N.Y., runs maintenance services for the NSFnet backbone; it
runs the only network connected to all the major midlevel and regional
networks paid for by the NSF.

ANS, a partnership of IBM Corp., MCI Communications Corp., and the
nonprofit Merit Inc., runs a similar backbone service for commercial
users. this gives it a unique position among commercial Internet
providers, the rest of which must design their networks so they avoid
NSF-supported networks.

"This is like 18th century France, where the monarchy was going bank-
rupt and rich nobles would build roads at no charge to the throne if
the king gave them letters of patent, which they could use to recoup
their investment by charging the commoners a heavy toll," Cook said.

[Ubois, 1992]

The Usenet system presents many opportunities for enterpreneurs to
profit. However, there is reason for concern that mindless
commercialization may as it were kill the goose which laid the golden
egg by depriving it of its freedom of expression and unique culture. 

The vast expansion of "the Net" which is now occuring presents both
tremendous opportunities as well as dangers:

Expansion from the Internet to a universal infrastructure will
inevitably bring regulatory attention, which could constrict the
Internet's informality and spontaneity. One of the most appealing,
creative--and fragile--aspects of networking could be destroyed or
degraded in an effort to bring new users inside the networking tent.

[N. Smith, 1993, cf. Botz, 1992, Hauben Jay Robert, 1992; Farrow,
1992a-d]

All commentators seem to agree, however, that the Net, including
Usenet, will be subject to more government intereference and
commercial manipulation the larger and more successful it becomes.

Regardless of the outcome of such a struggle, Usenet or something much
like it will continue to exist into the foreseeable future. The
question is, who will profit from Usenet--society as a whole or a
few greedy individuals?

As Wiener so prophetically put it,

Where knaves assemble, there will always be fools; and where fools are
present in sufficient numbers, they offer a more profitable object of
exploitation for the knaves. The psychology of the fool has become a
subject well worth the serious attention of the knaves... 

Thus on all sides we have a triple constriction of the means of
communication: the elimination of the less profitable means in favor
of the more profitable; the fact that these means are in the hands of
the very limited class of wealthy men, and thus naturally express the
opinions of that class; and the further fact that, as one of the chief
avenues to political and personal power, they attract above all those
ambitious for such power. That system which more than all others
should contribute to social homeostasis is thrown directly into the
hands of those most concerned in the game of power and money, which we
have already seen to be one of the chief anti-homeostatic elements in
the community. It is no wonder then that the larger communities,
subject to this disruptive influence, contain far less communally
available information than the smaller communities, to say nothing of
the human elements of which all communities are built up.

[Wiener, 1948, 1961; pp. 159-162]

It should be noted that in the above passage that Wiener denotes as
homeostatic those systems which are in a state of dynamic balance, as
in a biological or cybernetic system; rather than an unchanging or
static system.


Conclusion--The Free Marketplace of Ideas

Usenet faces many challenges, technological, moral, and above all
political in the near future. However with a highly literate and
computer literate constituency of millions of people this author
believes the Usenet will continue to grow and prosper as a free
marketplace of ideas.

As Metz and M. Hauben have noted, there is much work to be done by
communications scholars, anthropologists, sociologists,
cyberneticists, political scientists, and others in the field of
Computer Mediated Communication in general and Usenet in particular.
[Metz, 1992; M. Hauben, 1992a]

Usenet provides a wonderful field of study for exploring and testing
various assumptions about social organization, content analysis,
emergent networks, interpersonal mediated communications, linguistics,
the development of culture, and critical theories of media.

It is the sincere hope of this author that this paper will serve to
introduce some aspects of the Usenet system to those who are not as
yet familiar with it; and that net.users will find much good
theoretical material to chew on and digest as well. The author looks
forward with eager anticipation to the flame war on the Net which he
suspects may greet the dissemination of this paper.

For flame wars are the harbingers and the agents of structural change
in the wondrous and strange system called "Usenet".

Copyright (C) 1992, 1993 Henry Edward Hardy. 

The author gratefully acknowledges the School of Communications,
English Department Computer Assisted Writing Lab and the Department of
Math and Computer Science of Grand Valley State University as well as
the University of Michigan Computer Club for the use of their
facilities in preparing this paper.


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