[909] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: FYI Apple/IBM
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Cisler)
Thu Jul 4 08:26:48 1991
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 91 05:25:25 -0700
From: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
To: ghb@concert.net
Cc: Cc.@apple.com, Steven.Grimm@Eng.Sun.COM, com-priv@uu.psi.com
I forget if you are on com-priv but I want you to see this exchange:
1. message from Barry Shein to com-priv
2. my general reply
3. my private reply
please don't send this comment on until Ihear from him.
Steve
---
>From com-priv8-forw@psi.com Wed Jul 3 19:30:22 1991
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 91 22:18:40 -0400
>From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: jsq@tic.com
Cc: Steven.Grimm@Eng.Sun.COM, com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: John S. Quarterman's message of Wed, 03 Jul 91 18:59:55 -0500
<9107
040000.AA04078@longway.tic.com>
Subject: internet consumer reports on state-wide IP networks
>From: jsq@tic.com (John S. Quarterman)
>As others have been asking lately, why haven't we seen a map of the
>whole net yet? I don't mean just the Internet, even though that's
>an increasingly large part of it. I mean the Matrix.
[PART 1]
One problem is that the net doesn't exist in a geographic space, at
least that's not a useful view to end-users (I assume we're not
talking about wire junkies here.)
It might well be that no one has really come up with a useful
abstraction that conveys interesting information. Just because we can
all say "maps, yeah, I want maps" doesn't mean we actually know what
we want.
Telephone systems have area codes, exchanges and country codes,
they've been designed geographically in many ways. Some of that
information is useful graphically, some is just as useful in textual
lists (country codes.) Nets seem to tend to lose their geographicity
as they grow and mature.
One could tessellate the globe with a representation of regionals and
international subdivisions, but it's a minor piece of information.
We need to generate better questions before we start trying to
generate answers. What question are we answering?
[PART 2]
As to better "maps" of resources (someone mentioned the difficulty of
finding a particular piece of software "out there" as a typical
problem) there is nothing interesting in the problem, there just isn't
much motivation to do this kind of thing because no one seems willing
to pay for any of it (either directly or via grant etc.) So we get
these little voluntary efforts that tend to die out as quickly as they
arise, often useful while they're active.
I suppose the govt might suddenly get interested in a "network census"
and decide to measure what's out there just because it's there, but
it's a moving target (at least now) in much more fundamental ways than
a demographical or industrial census might be. We can tolerate lots of
quantitative error, but the net lends itself to lots of qualitative
error.
[PART 3]
Several weeks ago I spoke in front of a group of librarians, along
with two other speakers, about the Internet. One of the other speakers
was a librarian who was fairly knowledgeable about the net (mostly
Internet proper, tho BITNET is a big thing in their world, as well as
all the big pay-for services like Dialog, Lexis and BRS.)
After a brief introduction she pulled out a sheet of pre-printed
paper, a form she had designed, which looked something like:
RESOURCE:______________________
HOST:__________________________
DATE:__________________________
DESCRIPTION OF RESOURCE:
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
USAGE NOTES:
LOGIN:___________________________________________
EXIT:____________________________________________
COMMANDS:
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
CONTACT PERSON:__________________________________
And so on, I may have botched it a bit but you get the idea. It was
three-hole punched.
She waved it in front of the audience and told them in an
authoritative voice that what they must do is develop a form like this
immediately, xerox a couple of hundred copies, and give out piles of
blanks to all their fellow librarians who use the net at their
organization.
They should then get a sturdy 3-inch binder to put these in and
develop an indexing scheme (yeah, those yellow sheets with the colored
plastic tabs) and begin developing a shared reference index of network
resources IMMEDIATELY, or else they were all wasting their time.
What can I say? The audience was rapt.
I thought it was a bit quixotic myself, but then again so is the idea
that you're going to catalog every piece of printed matter...
The most amusing comment by her, and perhaps I shouldn't repeat it but
what the heck we're adults, was a Q&A that went like this:
Audience member: But a lot of these resources you find out
there seem to want passwords, or at least passwords to get
into the, you know, interesting areas...
Speaker: Absolutely correct, and that's a problem, but I find
I can usually guess the passwords, they're usually pretty
obvious, you just have to play around...next question?
[needless to say the audience must have wondered why I was sitting at
the dais barely concealing hysterical laughter.]
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
To: jsq@tic.com bzs@world.std.com
Subject: Re: internet consumer reports on state-wide IP networks
Cc: Steven.Grimm@Eng.Sun.COM com-priv@uu.psi.com
Barry Shein describes the librarian who recommended using
paper files for mapping the resources on the net. I can see
why you were amused, but keep in mind that there is a tradition
of doing this with DIALOG's Blue Sheets which detail all the
peculiarities of hundreds of commercial databases marketed by
Dialog Information Services. Also, some people don't operate in
a windowed environment and can't call up online help at
the same time they are trying to connect to a remote system, so
having a binder full of tips and pointers is useful.
Meckler Pubishing in Westport, CT is going to publish such a
book with the kind of information that was on Barry's sample
form.
Many of us do not fit the image of a profession wedded only to
paper directories and cards. Other librarians are using Wide Area
Information Servers or are writing electronic guides to the net.
If you want to see a draft of the latest one here is more info.
libcat-guide
ftp dla.ucop.edu and look in pub/internet for the
92k file called libcat-guide which is a draft done by
members of the Reference division of the American Library
Association whose focus in on 'direct patron access', i.e.
end-users searching from home, office, or without assistance
from a librarian.
This is from the draft dated 6/24/91:
Introduction: Scope and Purpose of the Guide
Section 1: Getting There From Here
. The Internet: Some Background Information
. How to Get Started
. References
Section 2: Why Search Library Catalogs Via the Internet?
Section 3: Road Maps and Travel Guides
. The Road Maps: Sources for Identifying Library Catalogs on the Internet
. The Travel Guides: Sources for Selecting Library Catalogs
Section 4: Using Systems Successfully--Survival Tips
. Making and Breaking the Connection -- Technical Tips
. Search Strategies -- Understanding System Basics
. Beyond the Basics -- Discovering the Real Power of an Online Catalog
Section 5: What Else is Out There--Other Online Resources
. Companion Databases to Online Catalogs
. Campus-Wide Information Systems
. Specialized Databases
Appendix A: Libraries and Network Resources Bibliography
Appendix B: System Models
Appendix C: Glossary
---
Steve Cisler
Apple Library
sac@apple.com
p.s. I do think the librarians' comments on passwords were
wrong and wrong-headed.
