"Bruce Sterling - Internet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Military people want it spy-proof and secure. And so on and so on.

All these sources of conflict remain in a stumbling balance
today, and the Internet, so far, remains in a thrivingly anarchical
condition. Once upon a time, the NSFnet's high-speed, high-capacity
lines were known as the "Internet Backbone," and their owners could
rather lord it over the rest of the Internet; but today there are
"backbones" in Canada, Japan, and Europe, and even privately owned
commercial Internet backbones specially created for carrying business
traffic. Today, even privately owned desktop computers can become
Internet nodes. You can carry one under your arm. Soon, perhaps, on
your wrist.

But what does one *do* with the Internet? Four things,
basically: mail, discussion groups, long-distance computing, and file
transfers.

Internet mail is "e-mail," electronic mail, faster by several
orders of magnitude than the US Mail, which is scornfully known by
Internet regulars as "snailmail." Internet mail is somewhat like fax.
It's electronic text. But you don't have to pay for it (at least not
directly), and it's global in scope. E-mail can also send software and
certain forms of compressed digital imagery. New forms of mail are in
the works.

The discussion groups, or "newsgroups," are a world of their
own. This world of news, debate and argument is generally known as
"USENET. " USENET is, in point of fact, quite different from the
Internet. USENET is rather like an enormous billowing crowd of
gossipy, news-hungry people, wandering in and through the
Internet on their way to various private backyard barbecues.
USENET is not so much a physical network as a set of social
conventions. In any case, at the moment there are some 2,500
separate newsgroups on USENET, and their discussions generate about
7 million words of typed commentary every single day. Naturally
there is a vast amount of talk about computers on USENET, but the
variety of subjects discussed is enormous, and it's growing larger all
the time. USENET also distributes various free electronic journals and
publications.

Both netnews and e-mail are very widely available, even
outside the high-speed core of the Internet itself. News and e-mail
are easily available over common phone-lines, from Internet fringe-
realms like BITnet, UUCP and Fidonet. The last two Internet services,
long-distance computing and file transfer, require what is known as
"direct Internet access" -- using TCP/IP.

Long-distance computing was an original inspiration for
ARPANET and is still a very useful service, at least for some.
Programmers can maintain accounts on distant, powerful computers,