Giovanni A Cignoni
email: g.cignoni@eidolon.it

Giovanni A Cossu
email: g.cossu@eidolon.it

The Global Virtual Museum of Information Science & Technology, a Project Idea

Keywords: Virtual Museums, Cultural Heritage Management, Knowledge Base

Information Science & Technology (IST) has pervasively affected our everyday life, thus becoming a proper cultural heritage of humanity. The growing curiosity about IST history has determined the creation of important collections devoted to the conservation of IST relics. Physical relics are naturally located close to their origins, but they are only one aspect of preservation and dissemination of IST history. The whole knowledge about IST history has to go beyond the local boundaries and become a globally shared and worldwide accessible heritage. Our proposal is to establish a Global Virtual Museum of IST based on a knowledge base able to manage all the information of the domain, created and updated by museum keepers and other experts, and capable of offering new enjoyment opportunities to a wider public audience. It is a radical change in the idea itself of cultural heritage information management, up to now bound to the traditional cataloguing approaches.

Introduction

IST (for Information Science & Technology, we like to add science in the more usual IT acronym), intended as a scientific discipline with a wide neighbourhood of technologies and applications, can be rightfully considered as an international cultural heritage. The development of IST has always been capable of overcoming geographical boundaries, both as scientific discussion and dissemination of technologies.

Nevertheless, if we look at how the IST history is maintained and presented to the audience, a strong localization can be observed. The museums are the places where the relics are preserved: many of early days IST relics are preserved where they were created. It is in the order of things and it is even correct to give the right importance to the local relics in their presentation to the public: it is natural that the Pascaline are in France, that the Zuse Machines are in Germany and that the Manchester Baby replica is in Manchester, etc.

Getting excited in front of the pieces of history is the reason that drives us to visit museums appreciating the uniqueness and the differences among various collections. Nevertheless, there is a dissonance between the international nature of the discipline and the localization of its preservation.

There is a further aspect. IST underlies many radical changes in the world and in the current way of life of each of us. In addition, almost always the IST revolution goes in the direction of the so-called "globalization": cancelled distances, availability of information for everyone, everywhere.

However, there are still cases where the application of IST has produced only an evolutionary innovation. One of these is the management and enjoyment of cultural heritage. IST are used and applied, but the catalogues of the collections are still built up with criteria inspired by inventories and not by knowledge management. The idea of "virtual museum", in most cases, is intended as the virtualization of a real museum. The technologies reproduce a surrogate of a physical visit deprived of the emotion of being in front of the original pieces. Of course, it has the great advantage of eliminating distances and enhancing accessibility, but at the state of the art not much more.

The article proposes a radical change in the way we treat the cultural heritage of humanity through the comprehensive and mature use of IST. The history of IST is also the proposed first application domain: it is an acknowledgement of the revolutionary nature of IST and its contribution to the management of knowledge.

The historical information preserved, mainly but not exclusively, by museums are collected in a single Knowledge Base (KB). In addition to the data of the pieces in the collections, the KB maintains and makes explicit the relations between pieces, hardware and software products, companies, scientists and inventors, documentation, events, and more. The KB is shared: it facilitates the work of museum keepers and provides the historians with a powerful research tool. The KB is public and, for researchers and enthusiasts, is an authoritative source of references.

The KB is the "virtual warehouse" of the Global Virtual Museum of Information Science & Technology. Using the KB as a source, new virtual exhibitions can be built: they do not surrogate the visits to museums, instead they offer new discovery pathways across the whole heritage of IST history. The intrigued visitor can navigate the KB, exploring all details and going beyond the physical location of collections. In traditional exhibitions the KB enhances the visitor experience by making accessible all the information that surrounds the physical relics.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we discuss how the physical approach to conservation of relics naturally leads to localized collections. In Section 3 we introduce the new proposed approach, which fully exploits IST to radically change the way the knowledge of cultural heritage should be globally managed. Section 4, using IST history as a case study, outlines how our proposal relies on a KB. In Section 5 a practical example is given to show how navigating a KB can lead to discover all the complexity of IST history. Section 6 shows how basic technologies are already in place, thus giving evidence of the technical feasibility of the project. Conclusions also address the viability of the idea as a sustainable project.

Localization vs Internationalization: IST as a Case Study

The preservation of cultural heritage is traditionally local: the monuments rarely move and museums tend to keep relics related to their territory. Consequently, the way we enjoy cultural heritage is likewise localized: we must go to Siena to see, let's say, the "Majesty" by Simone Martini. Yet, even in the Middle Ages, Simone Martini's work was part of an international movementthe Gothic paintingoriginated in England and France, passed through Germany and finally arrived in Italy in the time frame of less than a century.

Despite culture bring international, the traces it leaves, being physical, are subject to the law of Newton and tend to stay where they are; indeed, we perceive as unnatural their displacementwith subsequent instances for restitution.

The same applies to the IST history. The places where the relics are preserved often coincide with the places of origin, but their stories have a broader extent.

Consider for example the very first mechanical calculators. Blaise Pascal (French) left us several Pascalines, most of which are now in Paris [1]. Gottfried Leibniz (German) was well acquainted of Pascal's work when he built his Rechenmaschine. The very first prototype was presented in Great Britain at the Royal Society of London; two others machines were made, but only the second has survived and it is preserved in Hannover [START_REF] Wilhelm | Leibniz Bibliothek -Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek[END_REF]. From Pascal's Pascaline also derive the machines made by Tito Burattini (Italian) and those by Samuel Morland (English). The first had probably studied Pascal's calculator while attending the court of King Władysław IV of Poland, the latter when he was on a diplomatic mission to the court of Queen Christina of Sweden -Pascal promoted his work by giving samples of his machine to royal families interested in things of science. Wanting to see a specimen of Burattini's or a Morland's, suggested sites are Florence [START_REF] Galileo | [END_REF] and London [4].

Coming to more recent times, the first electronic computers were bulky and unique or produced in small numbers. When the original machines still survive, they remain in their home areas. Reconstructions are also made locally: it is natural and correct that replicas like the Manchester Baby [5] or the Colossus [6] are in their respective places of origin.

With personal computers IST has definitely become an international consumer market. Collections of PCs show usually a high grade of internationalization. Yet, when focusing on less known machines, it is still much likely meeting strong localization: there is a wealth of Acorn PCs at Bletchley Park [6] and at Cambridge [7] as well as there are many Olivetti PCs in Ivrea [START_REF]Laboratorio Museo Tecnologic@mente[END_REF]. There is even an innate interest in preserving the relics where the producing firms are located.

There are, of course, exceptions where the geographical position of the collection does not coincide with the origin of the pieces: an example is the relevant collection of Apple machines and memorabilia in Savona [9].

However, the collection is still confined: it is in a given place. A virtual version of the museum can cancel distances, like in the case of the Savona collection where a nice app allows visiting the exhibition from everywhere. However, it is still a confined experience: it tells the story of a great set of Apple's pieces, but with few links to the rest of the IST history.

Such localization is not representative of the universal nature of IST. Collecting the whole IST history in a KB which makes explicit all the relations among facts will help in highlighting the circulation of ideas, the spreading of technologies, the evolution of industrial partnerships and changes in the global market.

IST, Revolutions and Evolutions

Today it is quite difficult to think of a world without IST. Within a few years our habits have dramatically changed. Could you imagine how you could deal without a search engine? Would you like to renounce to mobile devices through which we are always reachable, which provide apps that help us in a thousand of things, from finding directions to keeping in touch with friends? And, besides personal aspects, how could we manage financial data, control industrial processes, ensure safety of flights and so on without IST? Things have changed so much and are so hard to reverse that talking of "revolution" makes sense -IST is identified as one of the factors of the third industrial revolution next to come [START_REF] Rifkin | The Third Industrial Revolution[END_REF].

Tracing the whole history of IST, we can find many revolutionary changes, and not only in recent times. The Victorian Internet, i.e. the telegraph network, has brought distances to nought: knowing what was going on the other side of the Earth changed from a matter of months to a matter of seconds [START_REF] Standage | The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers[END_REF]. Or the aforementioned mechanical calculators, operated by skilled human computers, have revolutionized the accounting, making possible to raise the size of companies by a couple of orders of magnitude. Again, the tabulating machines made it possible to overcome the impasse of too much information [START_REF] Beniger | The Control Revolution[END_REF] and gave off a completely different way of understanding the control and management of informationnot without introducing also disquieting consequences [START_REF] Luebke | Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking, Tabulation Technology, and Persecution in Nazi Germany[END_REF].

However, there are cases in which IST are applied but, while constituting a useful development, the extent of their contribution is not revolutionary. An example that closely concerns us is the management of cultural heritage. In this context, we only partially take advantage of the wealth of tools provided by IST: they are mainly used for managing the assets and for making them accessible on different channels [START_REF]Knowledge Management and Museums[END_REF]. The mighty power of IST is not yet exploited to manage, make explicit and convey the complex web of knowledge that is the essence of cultural heritage.

Certainly, the computerization of museum catalogues is a major achievement, but in almost all cases it is simple data management. For example, in Italy, there is a long tradition of cultural heritage management which, on many occasions, has been the forerunner of innovative concepts like protection [15] as well as inclusion of all that is of cultural interest [16]. Cataloguing, as the way of knowing and managing cultural heritage, has always been a primary goal. The Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (Central Institute of Cataloguing and Documentation) continuously studies and promotes standards for cataloguing the whole Italian cultural heritage [17]. Such standards have, however, a flat structure "one piece -one cataloguing record": while implemented using IST they just replicate the structure of the old archives based on paper files. It is an evolution, but it has nothing revolutionary. And, as an information system, it is insufficient for a contextcultural heritagewhich is not a simple list of things, but a complex and extensive web of knowledge.

In addition, each museum is responsible for his own collection, and although computerized, the collection tends to remain localized without allowing the sharing of the knowledge among all the stakeholdersmuseums, research institutions, interested people, everyone.

The absence of a radical change is also noticeable in the presentation of the collections. Improvements have certainly been introduced by "virtual museums", e.g. the chance of visiting (or revisiting) the museum from home, the access to more documentation than what can be presented in the spaces of traditional panels and labels, the amazing ability to get very close to the works, virtually freed from safety distances thanks to high-definition digital reproductions or stunning 3D models.

However, the possibility of accessing all the knowledge that surrounds a piece still does not exist. The curator of an exhibition decides the information which are presented; as original, correct and useful they can be, such information remain bounded to that particular exhibition. There is no way to access the similar pieces, the pieces of the same author or the pieces inspired by or otherwise related to the piece on display but belonging to other collections. Neither is allowed accessing any other relevant information. Even if IST is used, cultural heritage is managed in a traditional and in a strongly localized way. No revolution happened in this field.

The question concerns all kinds of cultural heritage. In some cases relations about pieces and other linked information are crucial to allow visitors to fully enjoy a piece of culture. For instance, in modern art, the movements, the membership of an artist to a circle, the mutual influences given by affinity or contrast, are all keys to understand the work of art.

The importance of the surrounding knowledge is even more important when we focus on technical and scientific collections, such as those related to the history of IST. First of all, the cultural purpose of an exhibition in this field concerns also the public understanding of science and technology [START_REF] Bauer | The evolution of public understanding of science -discourse and comparative evidence[END_REF], so there is another level of information to be conveyed to the visitor. Moreover, the collections are about serially manufactured pieces, designed by project teams, produced by companies, often sharing technologies and components. The knowledge to be managed and made accessible is even more extensive, complex and crucial for understanding the context.

The IST revolution for cultural heritage is making available all this knowledge, going beyond the local management currently adopted by museums. Noteworthy, it is a possible revolution, as it mostly relies on IST technical solutions already available.

A Knowledge Base for the History of IST

A radical change in the way of managing the cultural heritage is to abandon the current local data management and focus instead on global knowledge management. It is certainly an ambitious goal, but there are no true technological limits, and there are many precedents in which the application of IST was, since the beginning, thought in the largesearch engines, for example, have always dealt with the indexing of the whole Internet.

To be prudent, however, we could start from a specific cultural domain. Our case study is the IST history, now preserved in collections dedicated to science and technology (such as, among the best known, the Science Museum of London Our proposal does not simply concern the union of the catalogues, but their reorganization into a single KB able to preserve and explain all the complexity of the domain. The typical museum catalogues are focused on the pieces in the collection, like the exemplars of the Apple ][. In the KB there are, of course, objects that hold information about pieces, but they are different from the KB objects which hold information about the products. The KB object of type piece maintains information on a particular Apple ][ exemplar, such as the serial number, the state of preservation and the provenance. The KB object of type product maintains information common to all Apple ][: technical specifications, dimensions, historical notes. There will be as many Apple ][ in the KB as there are in the museum collections, each one with its piece object, but all of them will refer to the unique Apple ][ product object. Objects in the KB are typified so it is possible to grasp the distinctions among versions, variants, special series, production batches, as well as among different categories of products like workstations, personal computers, home computers, and so on. IST provides many theoretical and practical solutions to deal with type hierarchies [START_REF] Angles | Survey of Graph Database Models[END_REF].

Besides pieces and products, other kinds of objects managed by the KB are the used hardware components (like processors), the technological solutions adopted (from architectures to standard communication protocols and interfaces). Software (from operating systems to applications) is another huge branch in the type hierarchy of the KB as well as documentation (blueprints, manuals, but also brochures and promotional videos), people (researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, designers, programmers) and companies.

KB objects of type piece correspond to pieces in the collections: machines of course but also components, photos, original documents, software on the original media. Other KB objects are pure elements of information, like product or person and all their subtypes. In addition, objects may link to virtual instances of the real pieces, like digital copies of documents, photos and other contents, as well as 3D models or software simulators of hardware systems.

The KB maintains much more information than would be possible using the traditional organization of catalogue records, no matter how much detailed you can conceive the record schemain this sense a quite anachronistic example is made by the Italian ICCD standards [23] which are continuously updated by adding fields and fields in the vain attempt to catalogue every piece belonging to the scientific and technological heritage by using the same record schema.

The information in the KB is structured and factorized: there is no replication. The KB itself is a useful tool for museum keepers to facilitate the identification of pieces and to carry out their cataloguing duties. On the other hand, curators and other experts from the scientific community of IST historians contribute to the growth of KB by adding objects and by creating relations among the existing ones. Sharing and constant peer reviewing of the contents grant the KB authority. In this perspective, the KB can be seen as the virtual warehouse of a Global Museum of IST which, virtually, assemble all the collections in the World.

The KB is navigable. The search features are tools for researchers and enthusiasts. Picking from the warehouse, curators may set up virtual exhibitions useful to guide the wide public to the discovery of the IST history. The KB can be used to virtually rebuild a visit to a real collection or exhibition, but it is also possible and maybe more interesting to build thematic paths through the contents of the KB, these will include pieces from different collections and suggest visiting the real museums to experience the thrill of being in front of the originals.

Enhanced Storytelling: from the Apple-1 to the KIM-1

Fig. 1 shows a view of a possible portion of the KB. Each icon or image in the figure corresponds to a KB object. Most of the objects are elements of pure information, two of them do refer to actual pieces: an Apple-1 and a KIM-1, respectively belonging to the Bolaffi [START_REF] Doerr | The CIDOC CRM -An Ontological Approach to Semantic Interoperability of Metadata[END_REF] and the Old-Computers.Com [START_REF]Information and documentation -A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information[END_REF] collections.

The KB object of type piece corresponding to the Apple-1 in the Bolaffi collection is linked to the KB object of type product. The first maintains information of the specific piece: the serial number, the state of conservation, special notes like the signature of Steve Wozniak. The second one contains information common to all Apple-1: the dimensions, the release and withdrawal dates, the technical characteristics, historical notes and so on. The keepers of the collections are in charge of editing the KB objects of type piece. A scientific community (i.e. keepers, curators and other invited experts) man-age the editing of all other types of objects in the KB. Thus, the content of the KB is authoritative and the KB is a tool that helps in the cataloguing of new acquisitionsthe Apple-1 is a simple case, but other IST artefacts have versions, variants, production batches and are quite difficult to be properly identified. The Apple-1 product object is linked to objects of other types. In this example we have a company (Apple), a designer (Steve Wozniak), a document (the user manual). The links maintain and make explicit the relations among the information objects. For example, the different roles of the protagonists in the company foundation and in the birth of its first product: besides the aforementioned Wozniak, there are also person objects for Steve Jobs and Ronald Waynethe third, often forgotten, partner which also wrote the Apple I user manual.

Information technology is modular: different pieces of its history share technologies and components. It is a characteristic of the domain that cannot be overlooked because of an antiquated cataloguing scheme. In our example the adoption by the Apple-1 of the MOS 6502 microprocessor is made explicit by the link to the corresponding component object.

Following the relations linked to the 6502, the KB leads to the discovery of another product object, the KIM-1 (an exemplar of which is preserved in the Old-Computers.Com collection). Like the Apple-1 the KIM-1 was a motherboard which hobbyists completed with power supply, keyboard and various peripherals. The KB also maintains the information that the KIM-1 was the work of the same designer of the 6502namely Chuck Peddle.

The document objects can correspond to actual pieces, like copies of manuals in the museums or libraries. They naturally are a way to access digital copies of the documents, preserved forever, accessible to all and capable of bringing new levels of reading to the IST history.

For example, the cover of the Apple-1 manual (fig. 2) reveals a company logo very different from the elegant and minimalist one known to everyone. The first Apple logo was definitely baroque and full of references from the Newton's apple to the citation of William Wordsworthand, in the KB, the quote of the English poet may become a link with a famous Infocom video game of the Eighties. The KIM-1 links also to the cover of Byte (fig. 3, the December 1976 issue), which is an even richer contribution for understanding a chapter of IST history. The cover shows Santa Claus and his helpers checking a "toy" list that testifies the desires of the computer hobbyists of the time. In addition to KIM-1, there are the Altair 8800 and its clone IMSAI 8080, the Sphere 500, the Poly-88 by Polymorphic Systems, the 8001 Compucolor by Intelligent System Corporation. The list also includes some basic components (CRT monitors, keyboards, processors, memory chips), peripherals (floppy drives, printers, teletypes like the popular Teletype ASR 33), software (like the assemblers for Fortran and Basic), calculators (the legendary HP 65). Of course, there is also a subscription to Byte itself. In such a long and rich list the absence of the Apple-1 is blatantly evident. It was released in April 1976 but, according to Byte, it had no place in the wishes of the IST enthusiasts of its times. It helps to assess the historical importance of the Apple-1: it is not in terms of absolute technological or market value, but its merit lies in being the starting product of a company that, later, has got to leave many signs in the history of IST.

A KB that makes available all the information and the relations among them, allows telling the history of IST in all its complexity. It also helps to overcome the habit of telling simplified storiesan indeed rooted use because it is easier, because following the trend is rewarding, sometimes because it is instrumental to the promotion of the brands that dominate the present.

The example is partial, many links are omitted. For example, via the person Jobs will be possible to reach other companies of which he was one of the founders, such as Next and Pixar and better understand his role as an entrepreneur and visionary. Via the company objects will be possible to reach all their products and, of course, each product object is connected to all the piece objects describing the pieces preserved in the collections. The Byte cover will be linked to the Byte issue, the Byte magazine and to all the products cited in the Santa list.

The graphic in two dimensions shown in fig. 1 helps to convey the idea, but cannot grasp the wealth of information, especially in terms of links, that the KB maintains and makes available (moreover the example does not touch software...). The amount of information maintained by the KB requires new presentation ways, which must overcome the panels and labels on which the traditional exhibitions still rely. "In place" presentations in physical exhibitions use the KB to enhance the visiting experience, for instance customizing the information shown on digital labels according to visitor interests. By "in cyberspace" presentations, the visitor of a virtual exhibition explores the KB either freely or following suggested discovering paths. In both cases, the KB provides access to an organized and authoritative quantity of information that radically changes the approach to IST storytelling.

Technical Feasibility

The proposed approach relies on a KB as a viable and effective way to collect, manage and make usable all the information about IST History, thus it goes beyond the traditional vision of catalogues as inventories of pieces. The KB should be managed by an international consortium, founded and supported by some leading players of the sector, and with the involvement of a number as large as possible of stakeholders in the IST Historyincluding private collectors and enthusiasts.

The description of the KB's idea given in the discussion in Section 4 and in the example in Section 5 is intentionally informal. There is already considerable work done in the field of ontologies for cultural heritage. Just to give some examples, there are well known proposals for the integration of information related to heterogeneous domains of the cultural heritage, such as the Conceptual Reference Model [START_REF] Doerr | The CIDOC CRM -An Ontological Approach to Semantic Interoperability of Metadata[END_REF] developed within the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museum, later acknowledged as a standard by ISO [START_REF]Information and documentation -A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information[END_REF]. For a complete dissertation on the state-of-the-art about ontologies for the cultural heritage, see [START_REF] Doerr | Ontologies for Cultural Heritage[END_REF].

There are also works about ontologies focused on the specific domain of IST; e.g. [START_REF] Cassel | The computing ontology: application in education[END_REF], born as a framework for curricula of informatics studies, which anyway is a reference and a possible starting point.

Defining the KB structure is obviously not in the scope of this paper: some research and a considerable effort are needed. Yet, the project is affordable if undertaken by a consortium of competent and authoritative partners, committed on the task of building the KB and also able to bring a great contribution to populate it.

Furthermore, while the model could be applied to many domains of cultural heritage, we are going to focus on a single one. Compared with other attempts that tried to catalogue every possible typology of cultural heritage (such as Europeana [START_REF]Europeana Collections[END_REF]), addressing the defined domain of IST History greatly helps the feasibility of the venture.

Finally, it is not necessary, or better is not required for a full exploitation of the result, to aim since the beginning to a complete and definitive ontology of the IST History. As a first target it is sufficient to define a reasonable categorisation of the main object's classes and the fundamental relations between products (hardware and software), people, companies, documents and so on. This suffices to be a decisive change in comparison with the current situation, stuck in flat and scattered archives.

Refining the structure of the KB is a research issue which the consortium will be involved in, thus giving to the community of experts a further element of scientific interest, in addition to the "mere" peer reviewing of contents.

Moreover, various technologies are available to provide content to the KB by browsing different sources. Text mining and knowledge discovery in text are research fields in rapid expansion [START_REF] Piskorski | Information Extraction: Past, Present and Future[END_REF]. Many approaches combine text analysis, natural language processing, and machine learning to integrate the results into an ontology framework [START_REF] Wimalasuriya | Ontology-based information extraction: An introduction and a survey of current approaches[END_REF]. Applications of these technologies are already in place to provide information services to enterprises [START_REF]Dandelion API -Semantic Text Analytics as a Service[END_REF].

Defining the KB schema and populating it to build the Global Virtual Museum is a challenge that can be won. The needed base technologies are available, it is mainly a matter of will, effort and coordination among all the stakeholders.

Conclusions: a Possible Mission

We propose to create a Global Virtual Museum of IST able to include, in a structured and consequently usable way, all the complex web of information that characterizes this particular field of cultural heritage.

There are already some experiences in this direction. The MINF project [START_REF]Musée de l'Informatique et du Numérique[END_REF] brings together French Museums and Institutions devoted to the preservation of the history of computing. Collections on line [33] gathers the collections of four British Museums and maintains some basic relations between pieces, people and digital contents. Our proposal overcomes the national boundaries aiming at a single project which highlights the nature of IST as a worldwide cultural heritage.

In order to guarantee full chances of success to such an international and ambitious project as the Global Virtual Museum of IST, there must be a group of prominent founders, able to give credibility to the project and attract the necessary funding to the initial research and to start-up the consortium.

Undertaking the creation of the Global Virtual Museum of IST also implies to address its sustainability over time. Part of the required effort is already included in the institutional activities of museums and in some cases the work of the keepers and curators is even facilitated. On the other hand, there are extensive management and support activities which need adequate economic support.

To assure the full sustainability of the Global Virtual Museum of IST in the future, part of the initial research will develop a business model based on the exploitation of the contents and the management of the intellectual property rightsfrom images to digitized material, software and so on. Other sources of support may come from the offer of services to the wider public and from the use of its attractiveness for direct sponsorship or as a medium for advertising. In this sense, being the Global Virtual Museum of IST able to become a well-organized and worldwide renowned institution, probably it will be even capable of bringing additional funding for the traditional activities of the participating museums.

We believe that a sound consortium of stakeholders which includes at least few of the most important Museums in the field might be able to collect funds to start the project. Sponsorship of Associations such as IFIP, IEEE, ACM could guarantee the scientific validity of the results. Funds could be collected either from Public Institutions (e.g. cultural heritage programs of the European Union) or from private companies strongly tied to IST.

Our proposal related to IST History can be seen as a first case study for a new approachbased on worldwide catalogues of cultural heritage managed as knowledge basesthat actually is general. From this point of view the Global Virtual Museum of IST can be seen as a portable pilot experiment.

Lastly, apart from the intriguing recursive closure of applying IST to the preservation of IST History, we actually feel that preservation and dissemination of IST History deserve a special attention: we need to exhibit to a wider audience its complexity and wealth of international contributions and to contrast the oversimplification operated by the mass media.

  [4], the Deutsches Museum in Munich [19], the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris [1], the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester [5]) or in museums specifically dedicated to IST (like the Computer History Museum in Mountain View [20], the Heinz Nixdorf Museumforum in Paderborn [21], or the already cited National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park [6] and the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge [7]).

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. A sketch of some of the knowledge surrounding the Apple-1 and the KIM-1

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. The cover of the Apple-1 user manual, and the detail of the logo

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. The cover of the December 1976 issue of Byte and the detail of the Santa's list

Acknowledgments

The idea of a KB to manage all the information related to IST History has been previously presented at the National Conference of the Italian Association for Digital Humanities [34] and originates from a local experience within the HMR Project [35]: we wish to thanks Giuseppe Lettieri for the many fruitful discussions as well as the students who worked on the CHKB prototype. Many thanks also to the Hyperborea staff, in particular Luca Piaraccini, Cecilia Poggetti, Sauro Salvadori and Norma Zanetti, for their contribution both on the project vision and on the technical issues.

The images of the Apple-1 and the Kim-1 used in fig. 1 are taken from the websites of the cited collections [36,37]. The image of the Apple-1 manual is taken from the Computer History Museum website [20]. The image of the Byte cover is taken from the Internet Archive [38].


Christopher Leslie
email: chris.leslie@nyu.edu

Flame Wars on Worldnet: Early Constructions of the International User

Keywords: ARPANet, Internet, Human-Nets, CSNET, e-mail 1

Some of the earliest users of the Internet described their activities as predicting a widespread communication medium that would cross national boundaries even before the technical capability was possible. An analysis of conversations on Human-Nets, an early ARPANet mailing list, shows how users were concerned about providing a forum for open discussion and hoped that the network would spread to provide communication throughout the world. Moving forward to CSNET, one can also see a strong insistence that the network provide connectivity beyond the United States. Contrary to those who might tell the history of the Internet as a story of a technology that was first perfected by the military, adapted by U.S. academics and then brought to the rest of the world in the 1990s, these users reveal a strong ideology of international communication.

Introduction

The story of the internationalization of the Internet is sometimes told as if the technology diffused on its own merit without anyone having to act: packet-switching and TCP/IP were developed for ARPANet, the story goes, and once routers were perfected for NSFNET, the Internet went worldwide in the 1990s. The rapid increase of Internet users after the development of the WorldWideWeb, in particular, makes it seem as if the Internet was just a good idea that attracted the attention of many users quickly, crossing national boundaries after it was perfected. Nevertheless, one can see from ARPANet mailing list discussions that even before there was the technical possibility to extend the network to other countries, there was the desire to do so. The high regard the ARPANet community placed on the power of online communication and the potential it saw to transcend national boundaries was on their minds before connections went international. From this, one suspects that the diffusion of Internet communication was a preliminary design consideration rather than something that occurred after the design was perfected.

An agentless diffusion of technology, certainly, contradicts the central place Science and Technology Studies (STS) accords to users. STS practitioners are averse to deterministic interpretations; technological advances do not, an STS scholar would argue, spread through the world of their own accord. An agentless dissemination of the printing press, for instance, would say that the rapid increase in European literacy shows how a device transforms society on its own; however, analysis reveals that a cultural substrate already existed in the form of book markets where hand-copied texts were sold (see [START_REF] Man | Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words[END_REF] for instance). If the pre-existing demand for books helps to explain the rapid diffusion of the printing press, what analogous substrate can be said to have paved the way for international demand for the Web-enabled Internet?

One pre-existing network that can be seen as an important preparation for the Web-based Internet was CSNET, which connected computer science departments without defence research contracts to the ARPANet in the 1980s. CSNET's ethic of international collaboration was an indicator of the kind of activity that shows how individual users, working with a common goal, would be important in distributing the knowledge and experience needed for the eventual success of the Worldwide Web. This is not to say that CSNET was the only mechanism that worked to this end; certainly other networks (USENET, BITNET, MERIT, Télétel and its relatives, and Telenet, to name a few) were important in this regard. CSNET, however, offers insight into the technical community's international ideals and aspirations. The motivation behind this cosmopolitan ideal can be seen in the early ARPANet discussion group Human-Nets. This list, one of the first networked discussion groups, was devoted to the future of computer networks and is a rich resource that one can use to gain insight into what ARPANet users thought about the tools they were using. In particular, in the so-called flame wars and the meta-discussions of how to deal with group communication by electronic mail, one can see how ARPANet users immediately embraced the ideals of free and open connections.

In the late 1970s, as the ARPANet was coming into its own and the first tests of what would become TCP/IP were being conducted, users communicated by what today we would call e-mail in interest groups that predicted USENET and other email groups. In RFC 541, these messages were conceived of as text messages sent by file transfer protocol (FTP) and were simply called mail and RFC 822 refers to them as Internet text messages, even though the protocols they utilized were behind what today we think of as e-mail. A fairly well-known anecdote about the careful attention to the quality of conversation on these channels relates to the claim of Quasar Industries that it was about to mass-produce service robots came to the attention of the ARPANet community. Concerned that what they were seeing was a fraudulent claim, a debate emerged on electronic discussion lists.

Quasar's claim is noted as a hoax by Hafner and Lyon's Where Wizards Stay Up Late [START_REF] Hafner | Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet[END_REF] and more recently in Finn Brunton's Spam [START_REF] Brunton | Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet[END_REF]. However, the hoax went unquestioned in the business press and even in one academic text [START_REF] Warrick | The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction[END_REF]. Alan Abelson reported in 1979 that at the Ninth Davos Symposium, which had the theme preparing for the changes of the 1980s, Quasar president Anthony Reichelt presented one of his "people-looking robots" that would be manufactured for security, sales, domestic help, and even psychotherapy. "Extremely good results have been achieved in communication with autistic children," Abelson wrote [START_REF] Abelson | Up & Down Wall Street[END_REF]. "A Robot in Every Home," Changing Times proclaimed in 1978. A domestic android would be offered for $4,000 and a $45 per month service contract. The android would answer the door, fix drinks, vacuum, and guard against fires and burglars [START_REF]The Months Ahead[END_REF]. "Quasar Industries, for example, has a domestic robot in production for 1980 which will perform many tasks around the house generally assumed to be the human" [START_REF] Mclean | Curriculum Implications of the Office of the Future: Or, Projected Implications -More (or Less) Accurate[END_REF]. Given the professional interests of the people on ARPANet, it is not surprising that these claims garnered attention and criticism. What is more interesting, though, was how events like these fostered debates about the debate. As detailed below, the meta-discussion about the role of online communication and the potential for its abuse offers an intriguing glimpse into the aspirations of the community that was developing TCP/IP.

Although user activity on the early network is not thoroughly studied, it is important in several respects. Given that CSNET was funded by the National Science Foundation, it can safely be said that the project helped the NSF internally for the more widespread development of NSFNET at the end of the decade. Additionally, there were significant technical developments made in the network, including the creation of software libraries and a patch that allowed TCP/IP packets to be sent over the alternative X.25 pipes, which would help provide a motivation to get onto the Net and facilitate the means to do so. Finally, however, it is notable that many international TCP/IP connections were fostered by CSNET, which is something of a paradox. CSNET was developed to help U.S. academic researchers in computer science join together as a community, not as a project for international diplomacy. What, then, was the motivation behind the diffusion of CSNET to other countries? As it turns out, in the years around the international spread of CSNET, one can find evidence of user sentiment about the online community that would seem to indicate that it was the users, and not the policy makers, who sponsored international connections, and official policy followed in their wake.

The present paper draws attention to the power of users that has been important to the study of the history of computing. Janet Abbate, in Chapter 3 of her seminal Inventing of the Internet [START_REF] Abbate | Inventing the Internet[END_REF], notes that users transformed the ARPANet to fit in with how they were accustomed to working, resulting in, among other things, mail protocols. The conversation about networking on Human-Nets takes a similar approach. In the same way that Robert Boyle and his contemporaries are described in Leviathan and the Air Pump [START_REF] Shapin | Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life[END_REF], we see these researchers debating about how debates should take place. In this way, users define the kind of community they expect to develop around computer networks and thus shape the way in which networks develop. This concept nicely supports the STS approach known as social construction of technological systems (SCOTS), especially as summarized in the anthology How Users Matter [START_REF] Oudshoorn | How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology[END_REF]. Per Lundin, however, has posed an interesting challenge in his Computers in Swedish Society: Documenting Early Use and Trends [START_REF] Lundin | Computers in Swedish Society: Documenting Early Use and Trends[END_REF]: the users who matter are only a subset of the people who use a system, the insider group that is actively involved in the development of a system. His work seeks to document the middle ground of what he calls elite users, the ones behind the public figures and the masses of end users who passively (or, as Lundin states, perhaps resentfully) are the users of a system.

Building on Lundin's insight, this paper tells the story of CSNET in the context of reports from users of computer networks. Where Lundin has attempted to "build a history from below" by creating archival documents through interviews, however, we have been interested in using a different sort of documentary evidence: the records left by elite users regarding their efforts and challenges to form discussion networks. Looking at the archives of the Human Nets mailing list from the 1980's and analysing the content to quantify how many posters initiated discussion about how debates on the list should operate is one aspect of the analysis; in addition, qualitatively investigating the attitudes and ideals of this community in another. The sentiment found was not fundamentally different from today's Internet users. This was an online community where any discussion was welcome, where people fought for freedom of speech and shared knowledge and information. In this way, this paper juxtaposes the story of the internationalization of Internet technology via CSNET with a contemporary dataset of insights from computer users. The international effort to spread connectivity is interesting because it demonstrates the power of the computing professionals to form a community defined on the profession, rather than state identity, in an era when computing projects were largely funded by national governments.

A Genealogy of CSNET

Hafner and Lyon [START_REF] Hafner | Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet[END_REF] suggest that CSNET was created to avoid a sort of digital divide. The ARPANet in 1979 had 61 nodes, 15 of which were at universities, even though there were around 120 computer science departments nationwide. A connection to ARPANet meant access to shared files, remote login to services, and by 1979 a growing number of electronic messaging groups where the latest ideas could be discussed. Departments such as that at Purdue University, where the vice president of the ACM, Peter Denning, worked, felt as if they were being left out of the loop. Top faculty and graduate students seemed drawn to universities with ARPANet connections, meaning that universities that did not have the political connections, finances (an ARPANet site cost $100,000 just to set up), and defense contracts were in danger of being left behindnot to mention that academics had a much better chance of gaining access to the network and advanced computer facilities by leaving the university altogether and moving to an industrial site.

In order to address this gap, Larry Landweber from the University of Wisconsin made a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a network of universities and corporations that did not have ARPANet access [START_REF] Landweber | CSNET, the Computer Science Research Network: Proposal to the National Science Foundation[END_REF]. Although he was not a networking expert, Landweber was no newcomer; he had previously worked with the NSF on a project called THEORYNET to provide researchers in theoretical computer science email access. His final proposal for CSNET in 1980 had a three-tier system funded by a $5 million grant. The lowest level of connectivity was offered by PhoneNet, a store-and-forward service that allowed email connections over periodic phone calls; unlike the growing Usenet service, however, PhoneNet email could be sent to ARPANet addresses. X25Net was a middle tier, allowing users to run TCP/IP packets over leased lines using X.25 so that they could access FTP and Telnet via a connection at Madison. For a few sites, such as Landweber's department as well as Purdue and the RAND Corporation, full ARPANET connectivity was offered. The rapid spread of CSNET speaks to the widespread use of computer networks at the time. CSNET was originally an acronym for "computer science research network," but once computer scientists had widespread connectivity, other science fields asked for access and were "urged to use the mechanisms already available." For this reason, the name of the network changed to the "computer and science network" [START_REF] Mckenzie | ARPANet, the Defense Data Network, and Internet[END_REF]. By 1982, there were 75 PhoneNet subscribers.

CSNET was an early proponent of international connections even in the troubled years of the Cold War. The first explicitly international connection of CSNET was to Israel in 1982, followed by France, West Germany, and Japan. In spite of a high-tech export ban, Korea and China managed to connect through the effort of academics, and CSNET became a model for the program of international connections sponsored by NSFNET from 1987 to 1994. Even though it was a significant force in the internationalization of the Internet, the initial proposal barely mentions other countries. In fact, CSNET was designed in response to a perceived national "crisis" in computer science, according to the proposal [START_REF] Landweber | CSNET, the Computer Science Research Network: Proposal to the National Science Foundation[END_REF]. A shortage of qualified personnel in experimental areas combined with the low availability of software tools due to low productivity and blocks to transporting completed tools had brought the United States to a crisis. According to the proposal, the personnel shortage resulted from competition from industry. The demand for computers had "exponentially" expanded the need for designers and programmers, leading industry to raise salaries to "record levels." Talent was also attracted to industry sites because of their "superior experimental facilities," meaning that students were discouraged from entering PhD programs and those who did complete a PhD were understandably attracted to industry positions.

Citing various studies around 1980, the proposal indicates that there were around 75% fewer candidates than postings for faculty positions. The software challenge was due to the different media used by disparate computer systems and the challenge of locating software that had already been developed, which forced researchers "to needlessly redevelop tools or forego promising lines of investigation altogether" [START_REF] Landweber | CSNET, the Computer Science Research Network: Proposal to the National Science Foundation[END_REF]. A research network, the proposal asserted, was an essential part of averting this crisis. CSNET's standard protocols for file transfer and its electronic messaging system would facilitate "new cooperative ventures" and thus help to increase software output. Similarly, it would address the personnel shortage by making academic departments more attractive sites for research and allowing "critical masses" of researchers, which would foster collaboration.

Given the funding from the National Science Foundation, the focus on the U.S. situation is perhaps not surprising; the use of tax dollars for cutting-edge research could be expected to advance the interests of the country. In spite of the nationalistic appeal to a crisis, there is no mention of containing CSNET to the United States; although someone familiar with TCP/IP protocols and X.25 networks would realize that international users could connect, someone with less technical savvy might not have realized the potential openness of the network. Other countries, nevertheless, do find their way into the proposal: in assessing the potential impact of the project, the authors cited SAMNET, a message service based at the University of Toronto. In the context of the dissemination of technical reports, the proposal notes that an effort by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) to create an online journal, which could be made available to users of CSNET.

The idea of international collaboration, however slight in the proposal, seems to have been on the mind of the project management committee. A report [START_REF]Project Status Report[END_REF] on CSNET's first year of operation, dated 22 July 1982, makes an overt mention of reaching outside of the United States. The Management Committee, headed by Landweber and comprised of Denning (Purdue), Edmiston (BBN), Farber (Delaware), Hearn (Rand), and Kern (NSF) had been in email communication daily and in person about every two months. The report mentions that, beyond day-to-day operations, the committee had been discussing "international collaboration" (CSNET 21).

The network became self-sufficient in five years, according to its goal, but in 1988 it was merged with another network, BITNET, and ceased operation as a separate entity. Because of its short life, it is tempting to skip over CSNET. Even in 1984, a writer on Human-Nets trying to add up the number of users of computer networks remarked:

I think that we can ignore CSNET here (they're all either on USENET or directly on Internet anyway...), so they count for zero.

Certainly, in looking over early mailing list archives, it seems as if many U.S. users display USENET, ARPANet, and CSNET addresses in their signature blocks in the mailing list discussions on HumanNets and SFLovers. For this reason, perhaps, the story of CSNET is sometimes omitted or abbreviated in the history of the Internet, but it is not necessarily in connectivity that CSNET played its important role. Janet Abbate, in Inventing the Internet, notes that after its experience with CSNET, the National Science Foundation began experimenting with networks of its own, leading to NSFNET. On the occasion of the Internet Society's awarding CSNET the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award in 2009, Stephen Wolff [START_REF]Trailblazing CSNET Network Receives[END_REF] remarked, CSNET was a critical link in the transition from the research-oriented ARPANET to today's global Internet. CSNET also helped lead the way by sharing technologies, fostering connections, and nurturing the worldwide community that provided a foundation for the global expansion of the Internet

Flaming on Worldnet

Today, an e-mail conversation among a group of people who share a common interest is commonplace, but this use of electronic messages is in fact a development of ARPANet. Ronda Hauben [START_REF] Hauben | ARPAnet[END_REF] provides a good description of this service:

Also in that year [1975] the MsgGroup mailing list was started to explore the use of the ARPANET for conferencing. Mailing lists were uses of email where each message sent to the list was distributed to all list members. They each could read it and comment by sending a new message which in turn would be sent to all the other list members. Very serious and high level results occur. Other mailing lists appeared such as Human-nets for the discussion of the future of ubiquitous networking and SF-Lovers for the discussion of a favorite hobby, science fiction. Participants in these lists were happily surprised how interesting and valuable such network use was.

Richard T. Griffiths [START_REF] Griffiths | Chapter 3: History of Electronic Mail[END_REF] notes that there were about 17 groups by the end of the 1970s and that there were 44 by 1982. Keith Lynch [START_REF] Lynch | Re: History of the Net is Important[END_REF] writes that the list was devoted to a discussion about what they called Worldnet: "a hypothetical future worldwide computer network." This is ironic, though, because as noted by Griffiths only users of the exclusive ARPANet could join the conversation. According to Wikibooks, Mark Horton provided a feed from the ARPANet group to USENET in 1980 [START_REF]The Computer Revolution/The Internet Revolution[END_REF], which allowed others to listen in on the conversation even if they could not send messages back. This shunt of messages helps to provide the first archive of this group and others because USENET messages are better preserved.

The third volume of Human-Nets [START_REF]Archives of Human-Nets are available online from various websites[END_REF] included issue 98 to issue 112, from May 1981 to June 1981. It had a total of 122 messages, of which 37 were lacking full or real names. Roughly categorizing the topics of discussion yields a profile of the discussion. About 50 messages concerned general information about technology and science, 30 were asking for help or providing assistance, 34 expressed concerns with emerging technologies, 38 explored and discussed interactions between humans and computers, 25 discussed the Human-Nets listserv itself, 22 were creative and artistic, and 8 were announcements of some sort. By examining the times in which a post was a reply to another user, one can see that there were over 20 discussions, but only a few had over 10 or more replies. However, some discussions went into great depth and did not seem to require multiple inputs, whereas some discussion had many replies with very little content in each. The two biggest discussions were about the effect of computer networks on the English language and synthetic chemicals.

The conversation on language was far-ranging and recalls conversations one might have today. For instance, the notion of 'flaming' a user or list appears in the first archived volume when a user apologizes if his 'flame burns anyone.' Several users expressed this word in their experience of using computer jargon in real life. One poster noted that "ITS-ey" jargon had caught on among the poster's parents and friends. A few were interested in the etymology of some words; the habit of marking ranting text as a "flame" came under scrutiny at one point, with posters questioning the etymology of the term. One of the ideas proposed was that flaming came from a homophobic origin: "'Flame' in hackerese and 'Flaming' in homophilese," one poster wrote. Another user suggests that the word was not coming from the gay community but the reluctance of some using it reflects their discomfort with the word's connotation. Soon, though, pseudocode turning flames on and off appear and users frequently refer to impassioned speech as flames. In a published article from 1980, Les Earnest [START_REF] Earnest | A Look Back at an Office Of The Future[END_REF] proposed an origin that was not related to a gay slur:

The quickness of communication carries with it a problem, however; we have discovered that it is much easier for people to lose their tempers in this new form of journalism than in slower systems. The problem clearly arises from perceiving mild disagreements as insults when they are quickly distributed to hundreds of people. This phenomenon has been observed enough times, even involving normally cool-headed people, that it has been given a label: 'flaming.' The Human-nets editor has learned to suppress material that seems to be 'flaming.'

In addition to this discussion there was also a small offshoot discussion about sexist language or terms in the computer lexicon. While these discussions do not gain momentum, their presence in the flow of the conversation about the future of computer-mediated conversation reveal that there was some sensitivity to how outsiders might react to their word choice and an effort to make a more inclusive environment.

The discussion on synthetic chemicals started as inquiry about left-handed (low calorie) sugar and drifted into sci-fi territory of dark matter. The discussion touched chemical structures along the way. Strangely, much of the discussion was low quality, similar to most discussions on the Internet today. However, they were lucky enough to have someone knowledgeable step in and explain away the whole mess. Another big discussion was on colour blindness and how to improve technology for those who are colour-blind. The discussion was not solely focused upon computer usage but as well as sharing personal experiences and discussing potential solutions.

Technology oriented discussion focused primarily on speed of modems and phone lines, as well as the Xerox Star computer. The discussion on the Xerox Star workstation centred mostly on pricing and the computer's specifications. There was also discussion about TV signals, mainly how to descramble them. Most of the discussion on speed was explaining how the lines work and about which lines to acquire. The major complaint was about not achieving the maximum speed. Help was offered with concrete step by step information. The discussion at the end of the volume was about the Human-Nets itself. The discussion about low-calorie sugar and anti-matter caused the moderator to suggest moving such discussion to other mailing lists. But most members replied that discussion and free speech should be encouraged.

These numbers paint a contrasting picture about the Human-Nets: there was a spectrum of dialogue or discussion. At one end, it was purely knowledge-based, and at another end, the content was personal. At this point in the mailing lists, the majority of the posts tended to fall on the former part of the spectrum. The most personal of messages were what today we would call flames, members calling each other out in an aggressive fashion. The most informative messages were about modems and computers. Discussions about the computer science community and the mailing lists were in the middle of that spectrum. This analysis indicates that people preferring computer interaction is not a novel a problem. It has been recognized since the 80s. There was also curiosity about the user base, of its demographic and social impacts. However, much of this was speculation on Human-Nets because it was difficult to conduct research on an emerging technology. There were questions as to how to poll/survey people, but the results were not listed on the digest. They were placed in files on the mainframe computers and thus were probably lost.

The discussion on colour-blindness signals the start of ergonomics and attempts to make computing more available to the public. It also demonstrates how mailing lists facilitated exchange of knowledge completely unrelated to computing. Getting off topic was the natural order of things. The exemplary of topic discussion was the low calorie sugar discussion. This discussion also demonstrated that the people who posted on the mailing lists did not know what they were talking about sometimes. When the discussion switched over to dark matter, there was a lot of hearsay. The discussions about modems and lines were extremely detailed. After all, this was their expertise. There were also a lot of people seeking technical help. Unlike the MsgGroup, there was not any moderator comment about criticism on computers and their specs. The people were allowed to bash on the products they did not like. The meta-discussions seem to be the most historically important. It seems that because of the user base, there was not much censorship or moderation. In fact, the moderators did not seem have much power except those given by the users. Overall, Volume 3 shows a basic picture of the early days of the ARPANet. By itself, it only provides a small window, but even during that small window, the amount of traffic was quite great. And even with a glance, it is clear that this was the place for exchanging ideas and for sharing important knowledge.

Even by June 1981, though, the size of the list and the volume on it had increased to an unexpected level. A message from "The Moderator" with the subject "Submissions to Human-Nets" notes that he has received complaints about the "randomness" of the topics, and he asks members to remember that messages will be read by 3,000 people. In particular, he apologizes for allowing the discussion on socalled left-handed sugar (meaning no-calorie sugar, left-handed being a description of its molecular structure). It has become clear how exuberant participants felt about the conversations they were having. He noted that he would be leaving the post of moderator because he had taken a job elsewhere. Jorge Phillips, nevertheless, disagreed that the conversation had become too far ranging:

Even if we have shifted away from discussing human networks, we are getting a first-hand EXPERIENCE of what they are through this mailing list. No amount of "a priori" theorizing of their nature has as much explanatory power as personal experience. By observing what happens when connectivity is provided to a large mass of people in which they can FREELY voice their ideas, doubts, and opinions, a lot of insight is obtained into very important issues of mass intercommunication. The fact that such dissimilar [sic] topics as antimatter, left-handed sugar, the telephone network, etc. have been discussed in our own instance of a human network says a lot about its nature and the interests and nature of its members and should not be considered as detracting from the quality of the discussion.

The discussion about what to discuss would continue as the list grew in size. As seen in Figure 1, Volume 3 had 122 email messages and Volume 5 had 176 emails. This was due to the fact that Volume 3 was only partially complete. However, what is interesting is the increased number of emails in the "Help" and "Human/Computer Interaction" categories. Meta discussions were the least numerous but a qualitative looks reveals that they were of historical significance.

The conversation later often ranged into a discussion about what was acceptable use for a computer network. For instance, in early 1985 a dilemma regarding STARGATE, a satellite transmission service for USENET, boiled over onto HUMAN-NETS. A message describing STARGATE was originally written by a user of USENET, describing the plan to save transmission costs by hiring a satellite to gather messages for USENET and rebroadcast them directly to local networks, replacing the current store-and-forward method. However, as the proposal evolved, network administrators suggested that the messages should be moderated before they were sent to the satellite for rebroadcast, eliminating the "garbage," causing a change in the free-wheeling conversation that USENET users had become accustomed to. Because he thought that it would spark a useful conversation on HUMAN-NETS, an ARPANet user forwarded the message. In a period of three months, fifteen messages were sent, in a period where the total volume of the list was about fifteen messages a month. The conversation, which of course was sent back to USENET in broadcastonly mode, reveals the depth of awareness that users had about the power of electronic messaging conversation and the reasons why this proposal would be unfavourable, while at the same time maintaining a thoughtful awareness of the issue of liability that were inherent to a broadcaster, like a television network, as opposed to a common carrier, such as a train or telephone service. discussing human and computer interaction can be accredited to growing interest in videogames as well as attempts to create more ergonomic designs. In fact, the number of emails discussing videogames increased significantly in Volume 5. One of the more interesting emails discussed the idea of sex in videogames and inventing a reallife sex doll. Ironically, the email ended in "I hope no one takes this seriously." Another prevalent assumption by the mailing lists moderators was that advertising for a private company should not be allowed on the mailing lists. Surprisingly, one of the army personnel cleared up the issue in 1986. Wrote Will Martin from the US Army Materiel Command Automated Logistics Management Systems Activity:

If you are putting out some product info for altruistic reasons, for the good of others or to warn them away from trouble, and have no personal interest in the success or failure of the vendor that offers that product, you can post *anything*. That includes prices, specs, sources of supply, evaluations, rumors, what-have-you.

The biggest numerical change from Vol. 3 to Vol. 5 was the increasing discussions about human and computer interactions. These discussions ranged from video games to using computers to weave. There were also quite a few requests for help. However, unlike Vol. 3, most people had questions concerning software. Vol. 5 takes place in 1982, from August until December. It is quite larger and has much more content. Both numbers for human computer interaction discussions and social concerns discussions rose significantly. There was still a large amount of discussions about computers and such, but it did not scale up. The majority of the technological discussion was about the World-Net, about how it should be implemented and the cost of doing so. The human computer interaction discussions were centred on video games, working at home, getting people to use computers and weaving. The social concerns discussions were mostly about censorship on TV.

The possibility of networks coming together to form a global network was on the minds of many users at the time. The discussion focused mostly on the cost analysis, prospective line-layer, and the protocols. One of the arguments was about whether or not the network should be owned by one company, namely Bell. The argument was that Bell had the best service at the time, but doing so could exclude the rest of the world. TCP/IP was already being used to connect the existing networks and the whole system was working without AT&T already. It was also argued that one company should not have the power to shut down a communication network. Notably, the idea of World-Net had been already explored in the novella by Vernor Vinge, True Names [START_REF] Frenkel | True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier[END_REF]. In the story, written in 1980, a megalomaniac takes over the world's interconnected bulletin board system.

The discussions about video games focused mainly on which games were available and how to access them. The most interesting part about the video game conversation was about the banning of Atari adult video games. Ironically, someone pointed out the possibility of selling sexware/sexbots. At the other end of the spectrum, one suggests using video games in a nursing home as entertainment, to make the elderly less miserable. A more serious discussion was on working at home via a computer. There were a few who were already doing so and they were discussing the pros and cons of it. This brought up the problem of using the sole phone line for online connection. There were those who relied on call waiting and suffered, and then there were those who paid for four lines. The discussion on how to get non-technical people to start using computers generated both good and bad ideas, from using video games to taking away office equipment. The discussion on using computers in weaving did not seem to hold much significance. It was simply a discussion between a few hobbyists exchanging miscellaneous information about weaving history and the technical part of using computers to design and make weaves.

The discussion on censorship in TV also continued for a while. Apart from the typical arguments and statements, the majority of the emails seemed to be against censorship. This seems to be a continuing trend on the mailing lists. On the issue of first amendment, the users of ARPA-Net seemed to always support it. This sort of controversy pops up over and over again, but always the users spoke for free speech. The increase in the number of software questions could be due to a number of factors. The hardware could have become more standardized and did not require much helping. The moderator could have chosen to not send out a repost email. The digests were available and were already helping out. It could also be accredited to CS gaining momentum. One of the surprising discussions in this volume was a discussion of a professor who taught computer science.

As the network and computers became more available to the general public, the researchers became more concerned about the effects of this new technology. They also wanted to play games. The possibilities were endless for them. In fact, they were discussing the idea of a game with different paths and possibilities, similar to that of a modern RPG. They did not want a powerful entity to control the new tool of communication. It was their playground. The censorship in video games and TV demonstrated the public's more conservative ideals. Although, the majority of the emails expressed disdain for censorship, the idea of using computers for sex was not taken seriously back then. The discussion about telecommuting shows a growing interest and opportunity for work at home jobs. However, the technology at the time was not prepared for such advancement. The requirement for multiple phone lines for the sake of convenience was too expensive for a lot of people. But because this was brought up, it certainly would have informed many of the benefits and the difficulties of working at home.

Interestingly, the announcements were not as administrative in Vol. 5. There were several calls for papers and thesis, indicating a reliance of the net for academia. The announcement for a conference, indicating drunkenness and questionable behaviour, was rather surprising. But this demonstrates a growing trend toward more public and social usage. In simply a year's amount of time, Human-Nets had evolved toward a more social oriented nature. But with the diversification of topics, it will have to divide up to accommodate the increasing number of people using the net, discussing more and more irrelevant topics.

From ARPANet to CSNET

This background of ARPANet user aspirations is an important precursor to understanding the international push in the development of CSNET. Although it was short-lived, CSNET offers Internet history some interesting examples of how networking environments were created to suit an international environment. The boisterous, collegial community witnessed on HumanNets became the envy of those who were not working on military contracts and, therefore, were not granted access.

CSNET was an effort to bring the public sphere developed accidentally on ARPANet to the academic community. Several innovationsthe idea of a logical, autonomous network, the nameserver service, and also the important experience for the NSFcan be tied to CSNET. Another important example offered by CSNET is its networking that was conceived as an autonomous network that would connect to ARPANet. Although one could argue that these autonomous networks was what led to the development of a rich environment for networking, it will be of course the autonomy of these networks that will facilitate Internet filtering in the years following. Landweber's proposal was made shortly before the "Great Switch" to TCP/IP and the establishment of DNS in 1983, and so CSNET is an example of the philosophy of independent networks being connected by a single protocol. As noted by David Clark [START_REF] Clark | The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols[END_REF] in his essay on the development of Internet protocols, TCP/IP was an effort to join "separately administered" networks with a common protocol. In this way, CSNET is thought of as a "logical network" that was composed of several different physical networks [START_REF] Comer | The Computer Science Research Network CSNET: A History and Status Report[END_REF] and is an example of what the Internet is like today; software was used to create a seamless experience for the user so that he or she does not recognize that information is traversing separate physical networks. The gateway between CSNET and ARPANet would be enabled by the newly-developed internetworking protocol developed by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, TCP/IP. The central place CSNET had in his conversation is reflected by the specification of DNS described in RFC 883 (Nov. 1983), where CSNET is one of three domains, along with .ARPA and .DDN. In this way, CSNET is an early example of an autonomous network connected by a gateway.

Another aspect of this story that is interesting is the freedom and authority it gave to Landweber himself. Many researchers on the international scene credit their start in networking by attending a seminar with Landweber, a series that came to be known as "Larry's Networkshops." The first seminar was held in London in 1982, where Germany described its research network, active projects in Norway and Sweden were described, the SERCNet Coloured Book protocols from the United Kingdom were presented, and researchers from CERN described what would become HEPNet [START_REF] Malamud | Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue[END_REF]. As this list suggests, networking was already an international phenomenonwhat was missing was a mechanism to bring these different networks together. At the second meeting of Larry's Networkshop in 1983, Landweber announced that CSNET would become international. Israel got a PhoneNet connection in 1984, followed by Korea and Canada. Australia, France, and Germany join later. Soon, Israel, Korea and Japan get full IP access. The 1987 meeting in Princeton brought together the top 100 international networking researchers. A CSNET site list [START_REF] Cic | CSNET Site List[END_REF] distributed in 1988 (Table 1) gives a glimmer of understanding of how CSNET was able to bring together international researchers by connecting their local networks.

As an example of what this looked like on the ground, Germany was establishing its own computer networks concurrently with these developments. Although Germany was not connected to CSNET until 1984, the beginning of international connections came to Germany in the form of a DATEX-P connection from the University of Cologne to Amsterdam as part of the European EARN network. This connection was based on a dedicated line and was fairly expensive to use, but from this connection it was possible to send and receive electronic messages through the CSNET gateway at the University of Wisconsin. Having a connection was just a small aspect of the Internet, but one could receive RFCs about TCP, IP, telnet, FTP, find instructions on how these new protocols could be implemented on a variety of services, and print them out in a computer centre [START_REF] Netplanet | Das Internet in Deutschland[END_REF]. In 1984, with Germany having already seven years' experience with networking computers but little connectivity to international networks, Werner Zorn, the chair of computer science at Karlsruhe University in the southern part of West Germany, articulated the need for Germany to establish international connections. On August 2, 1984, Zorn and a colleague at the University of Karlsruhe sent what has come to be known as the first e-mail from Germany, a reply to the message from Landweber at the University of Wisconsin welcoming him to CSNET [START_REF] Welle | Germany Celebrates 20 Years of E-Mail[END_REF]. West Germany was the only the fourth country to join CSNET, following Canada, Sweden, and Israel. Karlsruhe became the node for messages entering and leaving Germany, quickly adding connections to universities such as Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Institute, as well as members of the business community with connections to Siemens and BASF. Through this connection it was much easier for computer scientists and engineers to communicate with their international counterparts as well as access the growing amount of information that was available online. It became clear that the demand in Germany for international access was high, and in 1985 a research association was created, Deutsche Forschungsnetz [START_REF] Kalle | Das Internet in Deutschland -Ein alter Hut?[END_REF]. Thus, Table 1 lists Berlin's DFN as the location for the German connection to CSNET in 1988.

Missing from Table 1, however, is the connection that Germany makes with China, and this tells an important aspect of the internationalization of the Internet. The technology behind the connections was made by scientists seeking to help others; individuals had to make the world ready for the Internet before the Internet was ready for the world. Qiheng Hu, chairwoman of Internet Society of China and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), points out [START_REF] Hu | Growth of the Internet in China since 1987[END_REF] that the first TCP/IP connection was established long after national networking in China had begun. In a presentation to honour the 20 th anniversary of the first e-mail sent from China, she detailed the extent of networking experiments, not to diminish the German effort, but so that her audience has "the feeling about the hungry and thirsty status, especially from the science and technology community in China." In March 1980, the Chinese Academy of Construction Research created an online international retrieval terminal established in Hong Kong, which provided trial retrieval services to Chinese institutions. In December 1981, the Information Institute for Computer Applications set up an international online terminal through fax lines in Beijing using leased satellite lines through ARPANet to connect to the DIALOG database, an information retrieval and bibliographic database now owned by ProQuest. In October 1983 the Institute of Information of China (now Institute of Science and Technology of Information of China) connected to the European Space Agency Information Retrieval System via satellite link and connected through Italy Public Data Network to the US Public Data Network. From there, China was connected to twelve information systems of different countries. On July 1, 1984, the Institute of High Energy Physics set up a time-sharing terminal with microwave transmission with the M-160 at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (IWHR), a distant terminal of the M-160 because the IHEP did not have computer power for large-scale modelling. The extent to which China's computers could access international information as described by Hu is striking; by 1985, China had over 50 international online retrieval terminals set up. These were all dedicated connections to proprietary services, however.

Given the already strong setup of Chinese computer networks and the prevalence of international connections, it may seem strange that Germany is credited with connecting China to the international computer networks so that it could send a mail message in 1987. (As noted by Jay Hauben [START_REF] Hauben | The Story of China's First Email Link and How it Got Corrected[END_REF], Zorn is not always given credit for this development.) Although the choice of Germany as a partner may not seem obvious, it makes sense in the context of Cold-War prohibitions on the export of high technology to China from the United States. The genesis of the project was when 18 universities received Siemens computers in a project sponsored by the World Bank [START_REF] Zorn | How China was Connected to the International Computer Networks[END_REF][START_REF] Zorn | China's CSNET Connection 1987origin of the China Academic Network CANET[END_REF]. To assist China's use of its computers, the Scientific Siemens User Group had sent 15 people from Germany to China for the WASCO Symposium on September 12, 1983. The German researchers presented trends of the future of networking and practical questions of how to set up computers to make networks happen. Werner Zorn, the computer science professor at the University of Karlsruhe who connected Germany to CSNET, made a presentation on the way in which OSI protocols could be used to operate a network in China. After the symposium, Zorn's new CSNET connection to the United States made it painfully clear to Zorn how difficult it was to communicate with China. Planning for the second WASCO symposium for the fall of 1985 meant that one had to allow for a 14-day turnaround for all communication to China, because telephone and telex were so expensive. It was clear that an Internet link would improve matters greatly, but there were two difficulties: one being money to put it together, the other being the U.S. ban on exports of technology to China. The ban on exports did not affect Germany directly, but there was a concern that should Germany help China develop Internet connections, it might disturb the U.S. government.

Money for the German side of the link to China came from the prime minister of the German state Baden-Wittemberg that same year. Zorn decided that the best way to avoid the appearance of exporting U.S. technology to China was to set up a physically separate link from Germany to China with German equipment and software, and then connect China to CSNET in Germany. For this purpose, Zorn obtained a µVAX II and set it up using Unix 4.2, a good choice because UNIX was popular in China and it made possible a Unix to Unix Copy (UUCP) connection, which is the file transfer protocol behind USENET. It was not possible to obtain funds for a similar computer on the Chinese side, so Zorn decided to follow an alternate plan and set up a dialup connection from China to Karlsruhe. He arranged a two-week lecture and project trip for May 1986 and took the equipment needed for the connectionbasically a modem and softwareto China as excess baggage.

Setting up a dialup link from China was not as easy as it may sound. Telephone calls in China were, for the most part, locally connected and sometimes a caller had to wait as long as an hour for a line. What Zorn needed was a permanent line from the computer centre to the local phone exchange, but this was not likely to happen in an environment where an entire residential area had access to only one phone line. It did not seem like a dialup connection was going to work, but then he learned that there was an X.25 network connection to a nearby university that connected via satellite to Italy. Using X.25 as the lower-level protocol, Zorn was able to set up a connection back to Germany; the idea of sending TCP/IP packets over X.25 connections, of course, had already been established for middle-tier CSNET users and he had implemented this solution on Siemens computers in Germany. With this connection established, messages for China would be held at the Karlsruhe computer and collected remotely from China at periodic intervals.

In setting up this link, Zorn suggests that from the technical side he did very little. The colleagues at ITALCABLE (the Italian network connection) had already done the real work. Even though Karlsruhe received a lot of publicity for the connection, "our contribution actually lay in being fortunate enough to find and pave a way via the different entities involved" [START_REF] Zorn | How China was Connected to the International Computer Networks[END_REF]. However, from the perspective of the history of the Internet, Zorn's contribution was quite essential. In spite of the many international data connections that were established in China, there had not yet been this kind of flexible connection. Proprietary systems using their own protocols were set up, but these only allowed for specific networking solutions. The end-to-end resource established by TCP/IP was missing.

In the summer of 1987, while preparing for the next symposium in Beijing, Zorn asked Larry Landweber for permission to connect Chinain particular, to install the BS2000 software they had used on their own Siemens computer to connect to CSNET. "Larry's view on this was totally positive," and Zorn had his permission to go ahead [START_REF] Zorn | How China was Connected to the International Computer Networks[END_REF]. At a symposium to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first email from China, however, Landweber told Zorn a slightly different story. Landweber notified Zorn immediately when permission was given from the National Science Foundation, but the next day he was notified that the connection had been denied by the White House and connection should be turned off. Thinking of these events, Landweber characterizes the philosophy of Stephen Wolff, who was director of the U.S. National Science Foundation Division of Networking and Communications Research, which was "you don't ask permission in advance. You ask for forgiveness later" [START_REF] Jennings | Panel Discussion: The Impact of the First E-mail[END_REF]. The academics decided that they would continue with the project; as noted by Jay Hauben, the official approval for this connection was granted retroactively in November [START_REF] Hauben | Across the Great Wall': The China-Germany E-mail Connection 1987-1994[END_REF].

The "First Electronic Mail from China to Germany" was sent on Monday, 14 Sep 87 in German and English by Michael Finken, the graduate student Zorn had left behind to finish the installation. In the same way that the connection to international computer networks inspired Germany to strengthen its connection to the Internet, computer science researchers in China were motivated by the connection to CSNET and founded the Chinese CANET in March of the next year. Due to this personal effort, China's national network was connected even earlier than Canada's.

Conclusion

Although one might be accustomed to thinking about the diffusion of the Internetespecially across international boundariesas one of a good idea catching like wildfire, the preceding analysis has shown that the diffusion resulted from a pull as much as a push. What is more, the dream of the international connections possible by the Internet predate even the implementation of TCP/IP itself.

In his analysis of USENET, Michael Hauben has pointed out that USENET was a reliable network. By this, he did not mean that its protocols or hardware were more robust than other possibilities; he says that USENET existed and survived due to the determination of its users. It was strong because it was "a peer to peer network" that individuals looked after. As I hope this paper has shown, the earliest protocols of the Internet were developed and supported by a similar mind-set. It was only by the cosmopolitan outlook of individual researchers that these connections were made. This is not a side example; Bernard Aboba has pointed out that the Internet was international from the start [START_REF] Aboba | How the Internet Came to Be, Told by Vinton Cerf[END_REF]. In spite of the way the history of the Internet is frequently told, CSNET, nor NSFNET, did not "cause" international networking and nor was it the case that countries outside the United States were ignoring the possibilities the computer networking could provide. In fact, quite the opposite is true. International computer networks existed alongside the development of TCP/IP, and in fact it was an international outlook that led to the flexibility of the protocol, as noted by Clark.

When the story told about the Internet is one of technical and administrative innovation, it can safely be elided from the history of the Internet. What has been missing is a sense of why Internet advocates were interested in creating this diverse network that was not defined by participation in military research. The international identity of its innovators explains why these early innovations were important beyond their technical innovations: the idea of international cooperation among the designers and users of the early Internet was essential in deploying a flexible network that could provide worldwide connectivity. By looking at the interests and ideas of the users and advocates of the Internet, one can find user communities that define themselves as members of a community of diverse networks, an attitude that would be a marker of the eventual success of the Internet.

Fig. 1 :

 1 Fig. 1: Types of Discussion on Human Nets in 1981 (Volume 1) and 1983 (Volume 3)The increase in emails asking for help reflects the influx of new users between 1981 and 1982. The content of the discussion came to be more software and programming oriented rather than hardware oriented. The increase in emails

Table 1 :

 1 CSNET Site List

	Service	Domain	Description
	Internet	+ean.ubc.ca	U. of British Columbia -Vancouver, BC, Canada.
			Gateway to CDNNET and EAN networks
	Internet	nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk University College -London, England, UK.
			Gateway to JANET (ac.uk domain) and PSS
	PhoneNet	munnari.oz.au	U. of Melbourne -Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
			Gateway to "oz" (oz.au domain), other hosts
	Phonenet	chalmers.se	Chalmers U. of Technology -Gothenburg,
			Sweden. Gateway to SUNET (Swedish U.
			Network)
	Phonenet	zix.gmd.dbp.de Deutsches Forschungsnetz -Berlin. Federal
			Republic of Germany, Gateway to DFN network
	Phonenet	hut.fi	Helsinki U. of Technology -Helsinki, Finland.
			Gateway to FUNET (Finnish U. network)
	Phonenet	inria.inria.fr	INRIA -Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay CEDEX,
			France. Gateway to COSAC (French National
			Network)
	Phonenet	ira.uka.de	U. of Karlsruhe -Karlsruhe. Federal Republic of
			Germany, Gateway to DFN network
	Phonenet	+utokyo-relay#	U. of Tokyo -Tokyo, Japan. Gateway to JUNET
			(Japanese U. Network)
	Phonenet	sorak.kaist.ac.kr Korea Advanced Inst. of Science and Technology -
			Seoul, Republic of Korea, Gateway to SDN
			network
	Phonenet	waikato.ac.nz	Waikato U. -Hamilton, New Zealand
	Phonenet	ifi.ethz.ch	ETH-Zentrum -Zurich, Switzerland. Gateway to
			CHUNET (Swiss U. Network)
	X.25 dialup	huji.ac.il	Hebrew U. -Jerusalem, Israel. Gateway to ILAN
			network

Acknowledgement. Grateful acknowledgement is made to Aye Muang who, as an undergraduate research student, conducted the evaluation of Human-Nets. He and the author are indebted to the New York University Tandon School of Engineering Undergraduate Summer Research Program and its founder, Associate Dean Iraj M. Kalkhoran, which provided Aye a stipend that supported this research.