[ih] Politics behind the Internet

[Jack Haverty]

You're right.  I had forgotten about CSNET.

But even in CSNET the focus was internal - not necessarily on government 
projects, but on whatever projects the computer science departments were 
doing.  The focus was inward within the community, rather than outward 
to the general public.  I could have said that better....

Jack

On 7/21/24 19:14, Craig Partridge wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2024 at 7:59 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>     IIRC, there was little talk of "spreading" either politically or
>     economically.  Simply put, there was no relevant audience reachable
>     through the networks.   All users were internal, working on or for
>     government projects.
>
>
> I broadly agree with Jack but will disagree in one element - it wasn't 
> all inward focused on ARPA funded folks.  By 1980, computer science 
> programs in the United States noticed that departments that had 
> ARPANET access were experiencing greater research success, in part 
> because it was easier to collaborate with other researchers.  This led 
> to the notion of providing email and (limited) TCP/IP access to the 
> Internet via CSNET, which was set up as a joint DARPA-NSF program in 
> 1981.  Broadly, that worked -- by 1986, over 150 universities and 
> research labs (such as HP Labs) were on CSNET, to which you have to 
> add the many universities directly on ARPANET.  Essentially, any top 
> 100 and most top 200 research universities in the US were on ARPANET 
> or CSNET.
>
> Thus when NSF was looking for a way to supercharge computing and 
> research in STEM, with supercomputers and network access, CSNET showed 
> how that could work.
>
> Craig
>
> -- 
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities 
> and mailing lists.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 665 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20240721/3eac8979/attachment.asc>