Academic literature on the topic 'Usenet (Computer network)'

Many colleges and universities in the U. S. are electronically linked to the internet, the worldwide web of computer networks. Advisors can begin to use internet resources by subscribing to the user-friendly academic advising forum called ACADV. Through ACADV, advisors participate in a daily discussion group that connects them with colleagues around the world. After an advisor who is a new internet user becomes comfortable with ACADV, many other network resources can be explored. Abstruse computer terms and abbreviations such as e-mail, Usenet, Telnet, and FTP will become familiar and meaningful after only a short time. Advisors who learn the terms and concepts enabling them to communicate via computer effectively will discover much of value in the world of computer-mediated communications.

Usenet distributes thousands of topically-oriented discussion groups, reaching millions of readers world-wide. Newsgroup participants often create distinctive sub-cultures, which have been all but ignored in scholarly work on computer networks and computer-mediated communication. I illustrate how Usenet discourse can operate as a culture-creating force, and how practice theory can be used to approach Usenet cultures, with a deep analysis of one message in the group ‘rec.arts.tv.soaps.’ This group, which discusses television soap operas, is one of the most prolific on Usenet. The use of a single message demonstrates the potential of all Usenet talk as a locus of cultural meaning. The specific claims I make about such meanings in rec.arts.tv.soaps are grounded in my ethnographic research on this group over the last two years.

The Internet Oracle (originally, the Usenet Oracle) was one of the earlier forms of collaborative creation on the Net. The submersion of its authors in an anonymous, collective personality may reflect postmodern notions of the "textualization of the self" in digital writing, or perhaps rather a pre-modern conception of nonprofessional writing as an anonymous dialogue among equals. Participants in the Oracle identify with a "hackish culture" that values wit, self-reflexivity, and anti-authoritarianism, and have managed to create a virtual community with its own conventions and mythos. Originally published in late 1992, this essay has been updated with links to material now available on the Web, and a new Appendix surveys changes in the Internet Oracle since 1992, provides links to new Oracle resources, and considers whether the original conclusions remain valid after four frenetic years of Internet growth.

The Usenet is a global computer conferencing system on which users can affix textual messages under 4500 different categories. It currently has approximately 4,165,000 readers, and these .readers have appropriated language by adapting it to the Usenet's culture and medium. This thesis conceptualizes the Usenet community's appropriation of language, provides insights into how media and media restrictions cause their users to appropriate language, and discusses how future media may further cause users to appropriate language. With the Usenet we have a chance to study a relatively new community bound by relatively new technology, and perhaps we can learn more about the appropriation process by studying the two.

With the advent of the electronic mail system in the 1970s, a new opportunity for direct marketing using unsolicited electronic mail became apparent. In 1978, Gary Thuerk compiled a list of those on the Arpanet and then sent out a huge mailing publicising Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC—now Compaq) systems. The reaction from the Defense Communications Agency (DCA), who ran Arpanet, was very negative, and it was this negative reaction that ensured that it was a long time before unsolicited e-mail was used again (Templeton, 2003). As long as the U.S. government controlled a major part of the backbone, most forms of commercial activity were forbidden (Hayes, 2003). However, in 1993, the Internet Network Information Center was privatized, and with no central government controls, spam, as it is now called, came into wider use. The term spam was taken from the Monty Python Flying Circus (a UK comedy group) and their comedy skit that featured the ironic spam song sung in praise of spam (luncheon meat)—“spam, spam, spam, lovely spam”—and it came to mean mail that was unsolicited. Conversely, the term ham came to mean e-mail that was wanted. Brad Templeton, a UseNet pioneer and chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has traced the first usage of the term spam back to MUDs (Multi User Dungeons), or real-time multi-person shared environment, and the MUD community. These groups introduced the term spam to the early chat rooms (Internet Relay Chats). The first major UseNet (the world’s largest online conferencing system) spam sent in January 1994 and was a religious posting: “Global alert for all: Jesus is coming soon.” The term spam was more broadly popularised in April 1994, when two lawyers, Canter and Siegel from Arizona, posted a message that advertized their information and legal services for immigrants applying for the U.S. Green Card scheme. The message was posted to every newsgroup on UseNet, and after this incident, the term spam became synonymous with junk or unsolicited e-mail. Spam spread quickly among the UseNet groups who were easy targets for spammers simply because the e-mail addresses of members were widely available (Templeton, 2003).

This study examines knowledge exchange in a worldwide, extra-organizational, Usenet-based electronic network of practice. Participation in such networks is voluntary, globally distributed, and network participants generally do not have personal or organizational ties. The purpose of the study was to investigate two questions: first, what type of knowledge is being transferred in these networks, and second, how is knowledge transferred across individuals in electronic networks. To address these questions, we observed and saved all messages posted to comp.lang.C++ for a period of 7 weeks. Our analyses include content analysis of 1,562 messages, survey responses from 593 participants, and objective data from the electronic message postings. The study illuminates how people use computer-mediated communication to support knowledge transfer, the types of knowledge transferred, as well as how knowledge flows in this network.

The rise of the Internet has spawned the prolific use of the adjective “virtual.” Both the popular press and scholarly researchers have written about virtual work, virtual teams, virtual organizations, and virtual groups. But perhaps one of the most interesting phenomena to come to the forefront has been that of virtual communities. Many definitions of this term have been proposed and the term has been used in many different ways. This article will examine some of the most popular definitions and guidelines to understand what truly constitutes a virtual community. To define a virtual community, one needs to first examine the two words separately, particularly the sociological definition of “community.” The German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, in his 1887 book, made the distinction between two basic types of social groups: Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). The former was often exemplified by the family or neighborhood (Tonnies, 1957). Sociology literature also often refers to the definition given by George Hillery, who reviewed 94 different definitions in academic studies. Three elements were common to the definitions, namely that community (1) was based on geographic areas, (2) included social interaction among people, and (3) had common ties such as social life, norms, means, or ends (Hillery, 1955). Thus the term community typically connotes a group of people within some geographic boundary, such as a neighborhood, or perhaps smaller subsection of a larger city. Further specification might have defined a community as a group of people within the geographic boundary with a common interest, such as the Jewish community of Brooklyn or the physician community of London. Therefore, members of the community were drawn together by both local proximity and common interest, even if the interest was in the geographic area itself. The term virtual, precipitated by the advent of information technology, and specifically, the Internet, means without a physical place as a home (Handy, 1995), or that which is electronic or enabled by technology (Lee, Vogel, & Limayem, 2003). Information technology therefore has expanded the means by which the social interaction in communities can be accomplished. While for most of human existence interaction was strictly limited to the face-to-face medium, social interaction can now be accomplished virtually, thus eliminating the necessity of being physically close enough to communicate. This type of communication is called computer-mediated communication (CMC). Combining the two terms together, thus, would mean eliminating the geographic requirements and allowing that the social interaction would occur virtually, that is, via information technology, among people with common ties. In fact, people have been coming together in virtual communities on the Internet for over 25 years. Usenet newsgroups, started in 1979, are widely regarded as the first virtual communities on the Internet (M. A. Smith, 1999), and The Well (www.well.com), started in 1985, is often referred to as an early exemplar of virtual community (Rheingold, 1993). Virtual communities may be part of a long-term shift away from geographic ties to common interest ties (Wellman & Gulia, 1999b). Formal definitions and understandings of the term virtual community still remain problematic, however (Lee et al., 2003). Perhaps the most cited definition is that of Howard Rheingold, a prominent author, consultant, and member of The Well: Social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. (Rheingold, 1993, p. 5) Common to many of the definitions is the presence of shared interests or goals (Dennis, Pootheri, & Natarajan, 1998; Figallo, 1998; Kilsheimer, 1997). With the advent of information technology, locating/contacting others outside the local community has become relatively easy, especially when one seeks others who have a unique or uncommon interest. It may be that technology makes it easier for communities to form. For example, it may be difficult for someone interested in traditional bowhunting to locate others with the same inclinations by popping into the local tavern or socializing at a church function. However, a simple search in Google reveals a vibrant community centered around such an interest (www.bowsite.com/). There are virtual communities for nearly every interest that comes to mind, from medical afflictions (e.g., breast cancer, Parkinson’s, Down’s syndrome) to hobbies (e.g., coin collecting, wine, saltwater aquariums) to professions (e.g., nursing, law, finance). Implicit with the notion of community is some permanence among members and frequency of visits by members (A. D. Smith, 1999). Virtual communities must have a sense of long-term interaction (Erickson, 1997), not a place where people go only occasionally or where there are always different people. It is not uncommon for people to develop strong attachments to virtual communities, visiting them often enough to be described as “addicted” (Hiltz, 1984; Hiltz & Wellman, 1997). The members often feel part of a larger social whole within a web of relationships with others (Figallo, 1998). Indeed, many researchers have considered virtual communities as social networks (Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Wellman, 1996; Wellman & Gulia, 1999a). Ridings et al. (2002) offer a comprehensive definition that incorporates the afore-mentioned concepts: Groups of people with common interests and practices that communicate regularly and for some duration in an organized way over the Internet through a common location or mechanism. (p. 273)