WEBVTT - What is USENET? 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey Thearin, 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:15.880 Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.520 an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.239 you today? I thought we'd talked about something that's both 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.239 a throwback and it's still very much current, which is 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.800 the networked communication system called us net. While I think 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.440 just about everyone is familiar with certain Internet related services, 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.960 you know, like email or web browsing, maybe to a 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.879 lesser extent, things like FTP, that sort of thingt I 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.199 think depends on the person. Some of you may have 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.040 only heard or seen references to UNT, some of you 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:52.879 may never have heard of it at all, And of 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:55.400 course I think some of you are probably very familiar 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.720 with it. In fact, from what I understand you, SET 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:02.800 is actually kind of experiencing some lot of a renaissance 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.640 among younger users like millennial and gen Z users. I 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:10.520 would not know. I'm gen X, so I'm out of 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.240 the loop everywhere. We're not even included in those articles 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.040 that are about all the different generations and how they 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:19.880 differ from each other. Gen X is always left out 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.480 of that, so I don't know what's going on with 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.360 my own generation. But I'm getting off track. So usenet 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:32.360 is older than the Web. When Tim berners Lee introduced 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.120 the technology that would underlie the Worldwide Web in the 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:38.720 early nineties, Usenet had already been a thing for more 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:43.560 than a decade at that point. So our story begins 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.400 in North Carolina, primarily at Duke University. You had a 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.240 couple of graduate students at Duke named Jim Ellis and 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:56.720 Tom Truscott, and they were experimenting. They were creating a protocol. 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.320 And remember, a protocol is a set of rules, a 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:05.160 set of instructions that a computer follows, and the protocols 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:10.639 define how computers do certain tasks. They were working on 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:15.560 one called Unix to Unix Copy Protocol or UUCP. Now, 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.919 you also had a student at the University of North 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:24.480 Carolina Chapel Hill named Stephen Bellevian who would create software 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.399 that would leverage this protocol and allow people to interface 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.880 with it. He would become very important in the creation 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.480 of us neet. In fact, also he ended up writing 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.000 several articles about the history of us net that were 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.920 incredibly useful when I was putting this piece together. He 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.840 wrote them for a circleid dot com, so you can 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.720 go there and read. I think it's a nine part 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.760 series where he goes into detail, sometimes great technical detail, 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:55.480 which I will not be doing for this episode. I 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.480 think it goes beyond the scope of what I want 0:02:57.520 --> 0:02:59.919 to do. Plus I'd be more likely to mess things 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:05.520 up than to save them correctly. Anyway, this protocol made 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.880 it possible for different computers to exchange files and messages 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:14.200 if they were networked to one another. And by computers 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.320 I'm really talking about like mainframes and mini computers at 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:21.200 this point, primarily mini computers. Now, a mini computer is 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.840 not the same thing as a desktop or a laptop. 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.160 Those would be micro computers. A mini computer was still 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:32.679 a big old honkin computer system, like back in the seventies. 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.720 So a mainframe could potentially take up an entire room 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.560 or sometimes even an entire floor of a building. That's 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.720 how big mainframe computers could be. A mini computer might 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.880 be as small quote unquote as the size of an 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:52.119 entire desk or maybe a couple of refrigerators. These machines 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:56.560 often had pretty significant computing power for the time, but 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.320 they were not nearly as powerful as mainframes, or did 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.840 they have the capacity to process as much information per 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.280 unit of time as a mainframe could. They were, however, 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.000 marginally not marginally, they were significantly less expensive than mainframes, 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.360 so they became a core component of computer science departments 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:21.839 of various you know, schools that were specifically centered around technology. 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.279 One of those mini computers was the PDP eleven from 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:31.400 DC and it could run the Unix operating system. So 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:33.640 you know, there's lots of different opring systems out there. 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:38.720 Unix is one of the big ones, often used in 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.599 things like like web servers and things of that nature. 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:45.920 Unix and Linux, whereas you know, we're mostly familiar with 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.960 either Mac up Brain system or Windows, depending on the 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.640 type of machine you use. Anyway, the mini computer PDP 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:58.080 eleven was the sort of computer system that graduate students 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.799 had access to. This this was before many computers would 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:07.520 be powerful enough to do anything significant in the computing world. 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:10.960 Like they were great for hobbyists. They had lots of 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.880 useful tasks, but they were extremely limited. They would not 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:19.119 be useful in a research capacity for the most part. 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.320 So the students also had access to dial up modems, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.480 which at that time ran at a blistering three hundred 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.640 bps that stands for bits per second, so the three 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.560 hundred bits per second is actually not blistering. That was 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:38.520 just a joke. Also, at this point, hardware displays were 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:41.400 really rare. Like computer minors, you just didn't really have 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.919 them in a lot of these systems. So for a 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.720 lot of these mini computers, you would not get your 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:50.080 results displayed on a screen. Instead, it would print on 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.159 a sheet of paper. So you would make some code 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.360 and then you would get a print out of results 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:58.800 and that would be when you'd find out whether or 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.520 not your code was good. If it wasn't, it had 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.640 to go back and fix it and then print out again. 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.120 It was pretty wild stuff back in those days. Well, 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:10.680 it gets even better than that. The original use net 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:15.960 network relied on acoustic coupler modems. So this is the 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.960 kind of modem that, as the name implies, uses sound 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:24.720 acoustics to make connections between computers. So each computer would 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.320 have a modem that would have a coupler, and the 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.159 coupler would hold a handset of a landline telephone, so 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.919 you would take the telephone out of its cradle. You 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.200 would put the telephone into the coupler the right way, 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.719 so that the microphones on one side, the speakers on 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.080 the other. You would then dial the number of the 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:46.640 computer system that you were hoping to connect to, which 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.159 also would have a handset and a coupler, and then 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:55.280 your computer would make noises indicating either a zero or 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.320 a one, so bits in other words, through the coupler, 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.000 and these noise would travel over the phone lines, just 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.240 as voice communication would if two people were just talking 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:07.440 on the phone. So the motive on the other end 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.640 would receive these noises and the coupler would convert them 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.680 into voltage signals that the computer would then interpret as 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.880 bits as zeros are wants, and you could have communication 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.320 between computers this way. Now, the reason why the students 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.440 went with this specific method wasn't because that's the only 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.200 technology they had access to. Instead, it was because they 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:31.400 were trying to get around some pretty tough regulatory hurdles. 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.800 Back in those days, AT and T essentially had a 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:39.920 monopoly over phone communications within the United States, so this 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.080 approach helped sidestep some obstacles they would otherwise have faced 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.320 when trying to connect the systems together. Right because you're 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.200 doing a voice call rather than a data call, at 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:53.160 least as far as the telephone system is concerned. It's 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.440 just sending signals of sound across You're not using it 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:02.760 as a data connection per se. And so it was 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:05.960 a way to kind of sidestep the very steep prices 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:07.920 you would have to pay in order to have a 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.400 data connection. So, by the way, AT and T tried 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:14.320 desperately to fight that and to make it so that 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.920 they could still charge enormous amounts of money for those connections, 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:23.120 but ultimately they lost that particular court battle. Anyway, Stephen 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:27.880 Bellvan wrote software to create a sort of client, kind 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.080 of like a web browser. It was a client that 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:35.080 would serve as the interface for use net and the 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.640 UUCP protocol, which I know, I just was repetitive. It's 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.720 like saying ATM machine. And also the computer systems and 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.559 modems were all doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.560 and stalling the software on different mini computers made it 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:55.360 possible to exchange information and files between these mini computers INI, 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.800 not A and Y. In fact, there were not very 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.560 many computers connected to use net at all initially, so 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:06.160 they called it use net, which is short for Users Network. 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.200 The first three computers connected to the network were in 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:13.440 Duke University Duke Medical School and the University of North 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.680 Carolina Chapel Hill. Obviously it would grow from there. But 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:22.240 we're gonna have to really sit down and explain what 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.160 use net is and a bit about how it's organized, 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:27.920 to really get an understanding of what makes it special. 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.920 So if you're at all familiar with Reddit, the description 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.480 of use net is going to sound a little bit 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:38.920 familiar to you on a surface level. So the use 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:43.320 net network consists of discussion groups. These are called newsgroups. 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.080 These would be a lot like subreddits on Reddit. So 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.640 each newsgroup is dedicated to a specific subject or topic. 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:55.280 Users can read and at least in most cases post 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.000 to newsgroups. There are limitations on that. I'll talk about 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.800 that in a bit. And you can subscribe to specific 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.800 newsgroups so that you can keep up with the new 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:07.640 stuff that's posted to them. At least you can do that. Now, 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.920 that's not how it worked initially, because originally the client 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:15.960 that Stephen Bellvan programmed was limited to updating the information 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:21.040 based on the last time you access the newsgroup according 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.360 to the computer's logs, and it would give you all 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.240 the updates, so you couldn't just jump around and grab 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:29.640 just the stuff you were interested in in the one 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:31.920 newsgroup that you were Let's say that you are just 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.520 absolutely fascinated with Dudgeons and dragons, and that's the only 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.040 newsgroup you wanted to be part of, so that was 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.880 all you were focusing on. Well, with Bellevan's client, you 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.160 would get everything, not just that newsgroup. The reason for 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:48.600 this is that Bellvan felt that usenet wouldn't get that 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.080 much traffic. He thought maybe it would generate an article 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.560 or two per day, people would write a piece for 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.760 use net, or maybe you would get two pieces in 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:00.920 a day, and so it'd be a very small update 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.319 each day. So there's no reason to worry about it 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:06.400 because he was you know, at the time, we were 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:10.240 talking about three computers, and again there were many computers. 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:11.960 They were ones that you had to have access to 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.520 as a student to be able to even use in 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:19.440 the first place, so by by definition, it was limited. 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:23.000 Plus this is a you know, a newsgroup you would 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.560 only have access to if you had booked time with 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.679 that mini computer, which was a process. Right, you had 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.440 to access it, and that required you to sign up, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:33.719 and you know, sometimes you had a log book and 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:35.480 everything so that you could have access to it so 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.600 that other students would know that at that time you 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:43.760 were accessing the computer system. Anyway, we're gonna take a 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:45.560 quick break. When we come back, I'll talk a little 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:59.600 bit more about some interesting comparison's contrasts with Reddit. Okay, 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.079 we're so. Reddit tends to be a place where users 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:07.440 share links to interesting stuff to a relevant subreddit reddit, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:11.000 and then conversation will flow from there. So a fairly 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:15.960 typical Reddit post might have a headline associated with a 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.840 news story, and you could click through and that will 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.000 actually take you to the news story itself, or you 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.680 can click into the messages and read the conversation around 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.560 the news item. But I mean, you could just have 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.240 a Reddit post that just is an original piece, a 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.680 user generated piece. Maybe it includes a photo or a 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.720 gift or something like that. But that's typically the way 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:40.480 reddits work, especially in the subreds I go to. Those 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:46.520 are almost always about sharing articles and links to interesting stuff. Well, 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.200 us neet was just originally limited to plain old text. 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:53.880 There was no Worldwide Web yet, so you couldn't hyperlink 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.040 to a web page. Web pages didn't exist initially, you 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:01.400 couldn't upload a file to use net Folks did see 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.920 that would be really useful if you could do that, 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.040 if you could create a way to upload and download 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.840 files to and from us net, but it would require 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:11.640 a bit of work in order to make this possible. 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.320 As such, students started to work on a way to 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.200 allow for the uploading and downloading of binary files. So 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.760 binary refers to basic computer language. You know, it's zeros 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.280 and ones. Those zeros and ones can represent anything, you know. 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:32.440 We're talking everything from software to orchestral symphonies to the 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.520 dancing baby gif that was all the rage on the 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:39.440 internet thanks to Ali mcbeil man. I'm dating myself with 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.600 this episode. So these smarty pants students came up with 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:48.400 a way to encode binary data into text because that's 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.319 what us net could handle. It could handle text. So 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.719 you would take your program. You would then have to 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.719 convert your program into binary code. You would have to 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:02.160 convert the binary code into text and then upload that. 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:07.920 Someone else could then grab that thread of posts and 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:12.319 then use a decoder to decode the text back into binary, 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:16.000 and then finally convert the binary into whatever the original 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:18.280 file format was. So there are a lot of steps, 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:22.840 but it would work. But there was a catch because 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.640 used that articles have a limit as to how much 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.080 data they can hold. So typically uploading a file means 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.840 that the file is going to be split across multiple posts, 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.000 and by multiple I mean potentially lots of posts, because 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.160 if you're trying to download something significantly large, like today, 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.360 if you were trying to download a high resolution video, 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.720 you could be talking about thousands of posts that make 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.280 up this video. So part of the issue was that 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:51.320 early encoding methods would inflate the file size significantly, by 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.960 like forty percent, so the file would get even larger 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:57.960 because of the encoding method Now, fortunately, folks would come 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:01.400 up with alternatives and they would find ways to encode 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.280 the binary into texts that would reduce that overhead. Also, 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.960 keep in mind that when us net was a new thing, 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:09.840 the folks who were using it were relying on those 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.120 dial up modems. They had really hefty limitations and how 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.040 much data they could download per second, so we weren't 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:18.960 typically talking about big files at least in the early 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.840 days of use net. Anyway, the support for binary files 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:24.880 meant that us neet would become a way to communicate 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:28.280 not just through text, but through files as well. This 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:30.520 is as you might imagine that led to some issues 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.760 with piracy, but well that's a matter for another episode, 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:36.400 so we're just going to move on and keep on 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.520 talking about us net. So a fundamental feature of us 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:44.600 net is that it's not a centralized service. This is 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:47.920 another way we can contrast it with Reddit. While Reddit 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.080 has some surface level similarities to us net, beneath the 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:55.720 hood things are very different. So Reddit is essentially centralized. 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.280 It means that the service ultimately runs on servers that 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:03.000 Reddit either owns or leases from, like a cloud competing 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:06.480 provider such as Amazon Web Services. But the point is 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:11.320 the underlying foundation for Reddit is in a centralized group 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.080 of servers. Centralized in this case doesn't necessarily mean geographically 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.240 by the way. That's because networking gets all whibbly wobbly, 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:22.760 but it does mean that's in this definite, finite number 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:26.680 of servers, and that is where Reddit lives. Use net, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:31.240 on the other hand, is decentralized. Anyone could create a 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.560 use net server. You'd have to download the right software, 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.680 but you could do it. So the way use networks 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.680 is more like a peer to peer network. So let's 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.200 say you create a use net server. You connect your 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.880 server to the use net network at large, You indicate 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.880 which news groups in particular you want to prioritize on 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.560 your server, and your server will regularly ping other servers, 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.320 the bigger nodes in use Net's network to look for 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.800 updates to those newsgroups and thus pull in new information 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.280 whenever there is new information, and then your users on 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.520 your server can access that. Now, let's say that your 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.320 users on your server create a newsgroup that gets a 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.400 lot of popularity, and eventually other servers on the us 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.760 net network are interested in that newsgroup, so they start 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:24.400 pigging your server and they get updates on your user's 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.240 newsgroup and they serve it to their users. So the 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:32.560 whole network is decentralized and to an extent asynchronous. You 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.840 might access a newsgroup and read an article and some 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.440 of the posts beneath it, and then you decide you 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:40.359 want to write your own response, So you create your 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.640 own response and you send it to post. Now that's 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:48.119 going to go to whatever server you're connected to through usnet, 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:53.439 But that doesn't automatically populate across every use net server 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.840 that carries that newsgroup. That you have to wait for 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.960 them all to sort of synchronize, which means that they're 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.000 there's going to be a time where some versions of 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.320 that news group are going to have your reply, some 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.200 versions are not, and it means that other people might reply. 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:11.440 They might even make the same point you made. If 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:13.840 you're unlucky, they might make it better than you did, 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:16.880 and then you just seem to be, you know, repeating 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.560 what someone else said. But when you wrote your post, 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.360 you had that that reply didn't exist, or at least 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.680 you hadn't seen it yet because yours had not synchronized 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:29.200 with the most recent information. So it gets a little 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:34.320 bit like muddy when you're talking about, you know, what's 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:36.639 the latest information on us net. Well, it really depends 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.800 upon which server you're talking about and whether or not 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.280 that was the point where new material was generated or 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:48.800 if in fact it's waiting to be propagated across the 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.600 entire network. Now. One benefit of this approach is that 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:58.040 us net is somewhat shielded against censorship and interference because 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:03.640 there's no one to shut down it's distributed right now. 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:07.399 That doesn't mean that an authority cannot try, and even 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.040 in extreme cases, sometimes succeed to take stuff off us net. 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:15.640 But it ain't easy. It is a pretty tough thing 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.480 to do because there's not any one entity you can 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.639 go to like you can't. You could go to Reddit 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:25.040 and demand Reddit remove something, which you may or may 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:28.080 not work, depending on the nature of the thing, but 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:29.960 you can't really do that with us net because again, 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.840 it's not one single entity that controls use net. It's 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:39.280 it's a hive mind. The structure of newsgroups actually follows hierarchies, 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:45.600 and that is like large categorizations. Right today, you could 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.119 argue the most famous use net hierarchy is the ALT hierarchy, 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:53.240 which is funny because the ALT in this case stands 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:57.440 for alternative, specifically an alternative to the big seven newsgroup 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.400 hierarchies that are seen as the more establish but whatever, 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:05.400 that's not how everything started. There were no seven hierarchies 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:08.400 when use net first started. In fact, in the beginning, 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.320 there were only three hierarchies of newsgroups, and all that 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.320 was posted should fall under one of the three, and 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:22.000 it was adequate. So the three hierarchies were net, FA, FA, 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:27.680 and mod mod, So all newsgroups started with one of 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.280 those designations. So you might have one that says like 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:36.000 net dot discussion that would be a newsgroup. The net 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.520 hierarchy was pretty much the catch all. It started as 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.200 a hierarchy for newsgroups that were focusing on conversations about 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:47.280 the network itself, but that rapidly expanded to non network topics, 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.840 so you would get people creating like net dot politics 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:55.680 or net dot jokes. The FA hierarchy was an acronym 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:59.879 for from arpinnet. It got started after a student at 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.840 the University of California at Berkeley named Mark Horton joined 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.880 usenet in nineteen eighty and started to add material from 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.880 an arpinet mailing list to the network. Access to Arpinet 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.600 was really limited. It was very difficult to get access, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.199 so what Horton was doing was kind of a service, 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.199 was providing other people the opportunity to read these mailing lists, 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.360 when otherwise they would not have any access to those 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.359 mailing lists. So arpinnet was sort of a predecessor to 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:29.479 the Internet. It was the network where computer scientists and 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.480 engineers were developing the rules that would allow for Internet communication. 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:38.560 So some people say, like, it's the grandfather of the 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:40.800 Internet if you think of it that way. I think 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.439 that's a little oversimplification, but it kind of gets the 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:47.240 idea across. So Horton's contributions would lead to a new 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:51.159 hierarchy dedicated to sharing information from Arbennet mailing lists, the 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:57.400 FA hierarchy, And originally that was a read only hierarchy, 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.000 so stuff that was posted to that newsgroup you could read, 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.440 but you could not contribute to it unless you were 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:06.600 one of the authorized entities that could post from mailing 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:13.720 lists to that hierarchy. Then, as for the mod hierarchy, 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:16.360 that was for newsgroups that needed to be a bit 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:20.280 more controlled and buttoned up, because it was pretty clear 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.920 that as more students started to use Usenet, the tendency 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.600 to do goofy stuff like contributing off topic posts to 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.879 a thread or intentionally trying to start flame wars on 0:22:33.000 --> 0:22:36.720 use net. That's really where that got started. These things would, 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.440 you know, derail conversations or sometimes completely pull focus from 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:44.239 whatever the topic at discussion was supposed to be. So 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:48.800 the mod hierarchy was moderated. That's what MOD stood for. 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:52.960 It was a moderated hierarchy. Every post under the mod 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:57.359 hierarchy would have to be approved by a moderator before 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:01.359 it was posted to. A newsgroup is often used for 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:05.560 stuff like official news and official announcements, that kind of 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:09.879 stuff where you didn't want the Hoi poloi to start 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.440 mucking everything up and confusing the message. So those were 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:18.320 your three You had your NET, your FA, and your 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:21.720 MOD and things would carry along that way until we 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:25.679 would get to the mid eighties. I'll explain more, but 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:33.560 first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsors. 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:41.160 So we're up to the mid eighties. So remember us 0:23:41.200 --> 0:23:44.560 NET kind of got start in seventy nine, really got 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.959 going in nineteen eighty. We get up to around nineteen 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:50.880 eighty six and into nineteen eighty seven, and a few 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.680 things happened that would shake things up for us NET 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:57.800 in a really significant way. For one, graduate students Phil 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:01.720 Lapsley of the University of California, Berkeley and Brian Cantor 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:05.800 of University of California, San Diego wrote a Request for 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:09.600 Comments or RFC in nineteen eighty six in which they 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:14.000 described the specification for a new set of rules called 0:24:14.000 --> 0:24:19.400 the Network News Transfer Protocol or in INTP. SO from 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:22.520 nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty six, the primary way 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:27.400 that you know, people were accessing use net was through 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:33.240 these time shared mini computer systems, So you didn't really 0:24:33.600 --> 0:24:36.720 have access unless you had booked that time with the 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.080 mini computer, and as I said, that had really limited things. 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:45.560 NNTP made it more possible to access us net using 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:49.160 a microcomputer a personal computer, because by the mid eighties 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:51.639 these were now a thing that were capable enough to 0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:54.280