[124776] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What is "The Internet" TCP/IP or UNIX-to-UNIX ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Burwell)
Sun Apr 4 22:23:06 2010
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:22:36 -0700
From: Jim Burwell <jimb@jsbc.cc>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <19385.11469.542125.882532@world.std.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On 4/4/2010 17:20, Barry Shein wrote:
> I still believe that had as much to do with the collapse of the Soviet
> Union as the million other politicians who wish to take credit.
>
> It's arguable that UUCP (and Usenet, email, etc that it carried) was
> one of the most powerful forces for change in modern history. All you
> needed was some freely available software, a very modest computer, a
> modem, a phone line, and like so many things in life, a friend.
>
> And then once you "got it", you looked towards connecting to the
> "real" internet, you knew just what you were after.
>
>
I agree. I remember back in the 80s when I first got access to UseNet
and UUCP based email thinking and saying things like "the net will
change the world", because for the first time people from all over the
globe were communicating fairly openly and inexpensively, and somehow
the internet and UUCP seemed to come in "under the radar" back then. I
had more than a few people scoff at me for thinking that way though. :-)
