K12Net Begun on the Fidonet hobbyist network, K12Net is now also carried on many Usenet systems and provides a host of interesting and valuable services. These include international chat for students, foreign-language discussions (for example, there are French and German- only conference where American students can practice those languages with students from Quebec and German). There are also conferences aimed at teachers of specific subjects, from physical education to physics. The K12 network still has limited distribution, so ask your system administrator if your system carries it. Kidsphere Kidsphere is a mailing list for elementary and secondary teachers, who use it to arrange joint projects and discuss educational telecommunications. You will find news of new software, lists of sites from which you can get computer-graphics pictures from various NASA satellites and probes and other news of interest to modem-using teachers. To subscribe, send a request by e-mail to kidsphere- request@vms.cis.pitt.edu or joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu and you will start receiving messages within a couple of days. To contribute to the discussion, send messages to kidsphere@vms.cis.pitt.edu. KIDS is a spin-off of KIDSPHERE just for students who want to contact students. To subscribe, send a request to joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu, as above. To contribute, send messages to kids@vms.cist.pitt.edu. MicroMUSE This is an online, futuristic city, built entirely by participants (see chapter 12 for information on MUSEs and MUDs in general). Hundreds of students from all over have participated in this educational exercise, coordinated by MIT. Telnet to michael.ai.mit.edu. Log on as guest and then follow the prompts for more information. NASA Spacelink This system, run by NASA in Huntsville, Ala., provides all sorts of reports and data about NASA, its history and its various missions, past and present. Telnet spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov or 128.158.13.250. When you connect, you'll be given an overview of the system and asked to register. The system maintains a large file library of GIF-format space graphics, but note that you can't download these through telnet. If you want to, you have to dial the system directly, at (205) 895- 0028. Many can be obtained through ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov, however. Newton Run by the Argonne National Laboratory, it offers conferences for teachers and students, including one called "Ask a Scientist." Telnet: newton.dep.anl.gov. Log in as: cocotext You'll be asked to provide your name and address. When you get the main menu, hit 4 for the various conferences. The "Ask a Scientist" category lets you ask questions of scientists in fields from biology to earth science. Other categories let you discuss teaching, sports and computer networks. OERI The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Resources and Improvement runs a gopher system that provides numerous educational resources, information and statistics for teachers. Use gopher to connect to gopher.ed.gov. Spacemet Forum If your system doesn't carry the K12 conferences, but does provide you with telnet, you can reach the conferences through SpaceMet Forum, a bulletin-board system aimed at teachers and students that is run by the physics and astronomy department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Telnet: spacemet.phast.umass.edu. When you connect, hit escape once, after which you'll be asked to log on. Like K12Net, SpaceMet Forum began as a Fidonet system, but has since grown much larger. Mort and Helen Sternheim, professors at the university, started SpaceMet as a one-line bulletin-board system several years ago to help bolster middle-school science education in nearby towns. In addition to the K12 conferences, SpaceMet carries numerous educationally oriented conferences. It also has a large file library of interest to educators and students, but be aware that getting files to your site could be difficult and maybe even impossible. Unlike most other Internet sites, Spacemet does not use an ftp interface. The Sternheims say ZMODEM sometimes works over the network, but don't count on it. Yahoo This Stanford University web service provides an archive of links to other educational resources on the net at http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo/Education/ 13.3 USENET AND BITNET IN THE CLASSROOM There are numerous Usenet newsgroups of potential interest to teachers and students. As you might expect, many are of a scientific bent. You can find these by typing l sci. in rn or using nngrep sci. for nn. There are now close to 40, with subjects ranging from archaeology to economics (the "dismal science," remember?) to astronomy to nanotechnology (the construction of microscopically small machines). One thing students will quickly learn from many of these groups: science is not just dull, boring facts. Science is argument and standing your ground and making your case. The Usenet sci. groups encourage critical thinking. Beyond science, social-studies and history classes can keep busy learning about other countries, through the soc.culture newsgroups. Most of these newsgroups originated as ways for expatriates of a given country to keep in touch with their homeland and its culture. In times of crisis, however, these groups often become places to disseminate information from or into the country and to discuss what is happening. From Afghanistan to Yugoslavia, close to 50 countries are now represented on Usenet. To see which groups are available, use l soc.culture. in rn or nngrep soc.culture. for nn. Several "talk" newsgroups provide additional topical discussions, but teachers should screen them first before recommending them to students. They range from talk.abortion and talk.politics.guns to talk.politics.space and talk.environment. One caveat: Teachers might want to peruse particular newsgroups before setting their students loose in them. Some have higher levels of flaming and blather than others, not to mention content that some might not consider appropriate in a school setting. Some schools have developed "contracts" that students are required to sign that set out acceptable Net behavior. There are also a number of Bitnet discussion groups of potential interest to students and teachers. See Chapter 5 for information on finding and subscribing to Bitnet discussion groups. Some with an educational orientation include: biopi-l ksuvm.bitnet Secondary biology education chemed-l uwf.bitnet Chemistry education dts-l iubvm.bitnet The Dead Teacher's Society list phys-l uwf.bitnet Discussions for physics teachers physhare psuvm.bitnet Where physics teachers share resources scimath-l psuvm.bitnet Science and math education To get a list of ftp sites that carry astronomical images in the GIF graphics format, use ftp to connect to nic.funet.fi. Switch to the /pub/astro/general directory and get the file astroftp.txt. Among the sites listed is ames.arc.nasa.gov, which carries images taken by the Voyager and Galileo probes, among other pictures. CHAPTER 14: BUSINESS ON THE NET 14.1 SETTING UP SHOP Back in olden days, oh, before 1990 or so, there were no markets in the virtual community -- if you wanted to buy a book, you still had to jump in your car and drive to the nearest bookstore. This was because back then, the Net consisted mainly of a series of government-funded networks on which explicit commercial activity was forbidden. Today, much of the Net is run by private companies, which generally have no such restrictions, and businesses are falling over themselves to get online -- from giant companies like AT&T to small flower shops. In 1994, Home Shopping Network, better known for selling cubic zirconia on cable TV, bought the Internet Shopping Network, an online computer store. Its rival, QVC, also has plans for an Internet service. So with an Internet account today, you can buy everything from computers to condoms. Much of this is being driven by the World-Wide Web, which makes possible such things as online catalogs and order forms. To be sure, there were online stores before the Web took off, but the Web lets a company show off its wares, and logo, in an easy-on-the-eyes (and easy- to-use) format. And pre-Web efforts concentrated more on giving you limited access to an online catalog -- you still had to call a phone number somewhere to actually place an order. 14.2 ONLINE STOREFRONTS Some companies, particularly large computer companies such as Digital Equipment Corp. and Sun Microsystems, Inc., have set up their own online storefronts. Smaller companies, though, are increasingly setting up shop in online "malls." The idea behind these malls is similar to that of real ones -- you go to the mall for one particular item, and then browse around seeing what else there is (for stores, the advantages are also similar -- the mall owner is responsible for advertising, promises a certain amount of "foot traffic" and does all the maintenance). One of the earliest malls, in fact, one based on gopher, is run by Msen, a public-access Internet provider in Ann Arbor, Mich. Its Msen Marketplace offers a travel agency, "Internet Business Pages" listing companies with services available on the Internet, and an "Online Career Center, offering help-wanted ads from across the U.S. You can reach Msen through gopher at gopher.msen.com At the main menu, select "Msen Marketplace." As of this writing (November, 1994), CommerceNet remains more a concept than an actual online mall. But if you want to take a peek through a knothole at the construction, point your Web browser at http://www.commerce.net HotWired and the Global Network Navigator represent two other ways to do business on the Internet. Both are online magazines on the Web, featuring not only links to other services, but original writing, as well (HotWired, started by Wired magazine, even lets readers participate in public forums on the articles). Both carry advertising in the form of icons. Click on the icons (or in the case of Lynx, move your cursor to the advertiser's name and hit enter) and you'll be connected to advertising material related to whatever the company in question is trying to sell. You can try HotWired at http://www.hotwired.com and Global Network Navigator at http://gnn.com For the former, you'll have to register first (unusual for a Web resource); for the latter, you'll have to chose a local GNN server first. 14.3 THE CHECK IS IN THE (E)-MAIL But are *you* going to buy something over the Internet? For all the hype over small florists getting international orders over the Internet, one has to wonder whether these storefronts will ultimately prove more successful than the ones that have long been present on commercial networks such as CompuServe and Prodigy. Are you going to entrust your credit-card number to the Internet, a network on which security concerns have made front-page news more than once? Some electronic merchants say that sending your credit-card number over the Internet is really no more risky than handing it over to a clerk in a department store. Their argument is base on security through obscurity -- there are so many e-mail messages pouring through the Internet each day that it would be virtually impossible for a hacker to find the ones containing credit-card information. Others, however, are more wary -- as are their potential customers. Merchants also want some assurances that the person making an order really is who she says she is. Internet e-mail is simply ASCII text, and while the sheer volume of it these days would make it difficult to find specific messages, one should never underestimate the ability of a harcker with a computer to find a needle in a haystack (i.e., one credit card number out of thousands of messages). As you might expect, a number of companies are working on making the Internet safe for business. CommerceNet, a joint venture between the U.S. government and companies in California's Silicon Valley, has developed a system based on encryption. When you fill out an online order form, it is encoded in such a way that only the merchant you're sending it to can de-code it -- and inside will be your unique "digital signature," proving you are, in fact, you. But this approach relies on you having a special piece of software on your computer to encrypt the order form. Netscape's World-Wide Web browser is the first to incorporate this software (that's what the little broken key in the lower left hand corner is for), but other companies that sell Web browsers will be adding it over the next few months. The basic way it works relies on a technique known as public-key encryption. In this system, the merchant has a public key, or mathematical formula, that can be used to encrypt messages meant for him. Anybody can use this key, but only the merchant has the private key that can open up the message. Now you can fill out an online order form and include your credit-card number -- and be assured that nobody can But some argue this sort of technique would impede impulse purchase (surely a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution), because you need the right software to handle the encryption on your computer. So other companies are working on the online equivalent of credit cards good at participating merchants. First, you apply for an account with one of these companies the old-fashioned way -- by telephone or postal mail. Then, when you connect to a participating merchant and submit an order, the merchant's computer sends a message to the "credit card" computer. That computer then sends a message to you, asking you to confirm the order. One company's computer will even ask you to answer a question only you could answer (such as your mother's maiden name or your dog's name). Assuming you answer affirmatively, the transaction is then completed. A third approach involves an attempt to create an electronic equivalent of cold, hard cash. Proponents say one of the problems with the first two approaches is that somebody, somewhere, is keeping track of who you are and what you buy. Instead, in an approach developed by a Dutch company called DigiCash, your bank essentially lets you withdraw funds into a digital account that sits on your personal computer. Then when you enter an online store that accepts this digital money, you can pay them with these funds. This approach, like the cryptography one, requires special software (which creates your "digital signature"), as well as an account with a participating bank. Now proponents of the last two methods argue that, ultimately, the bulk of Internet business will center not on big-ticket items such as computers or cars, but on information. Right now, information for sale tends to be very expensive and sold on the basis of high hourly rates. With the potential mass market represented by the Internet, though, people with information to sell might find it more lucrative to lower their rates and go for volume. With an all electronic system, it might become possible, say, to sell information for a small per-article or per- search charge. Over the next year or so, you'll see all three types of systems become more common in online stores. Expect some confusion as merchants and users try to figure out which system to use. 14.4 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY 1994 represented something of a watershed for the Internet -- it was the year the people who normally advertise in the back of the National Inquirer and Cosmopolitan discovered the Net. Usenet participants found their favorite conferences filled with ads for everything from thigh-reducing cream to pornography. Canter and Siegel, a pair of lawyers in Phoenix, Ariz., gained national media attention when they flooded some 6,000 separate Usenet newsgroups with ads for a $99 immigration service. The reason they gained such notice was not because they had done something unique (in January, 1994, a system administrator at a small college in Pennsylvania did much the same thing with postings about how the Los Angeles earthquake proved the Second Coming was imminent), but because of the reaction of Internet users. Simply, they were outraged that no matter what newsgroup they went into, whether it was to discuss Unix programming or planning a wedding, they found the same darn ad, over and over and over. Some responded by posting messages on how to get the same services offered by the lawyers for free. More deluged the lawyers -- and the administrators at the system they used -- with protest messages, some 200 megabytes worth in just two days. Suddenly, the once obscure Usenet phrase "to spam" (from the Monty Python skit about the restaurant that only serves the stuff) was making the pages of the New York Times. But what the lawyers pulled may be the last time anybody gets away with something like that. Today, numerous Usenet users stay on the alert for spamming. Using a technique known as "cancelling," they are able to wipe out such messages almost as soon as they pop up. The moral of the story is that Internet users do not object to advertising in general, but that many feel it has a proper place -- in online catalogs that users have to make a point of going to, not shoved down people's throats in discussion areas. 14.5 FYI You can read about Digicash's e-cash proposal at its Web site: http://www.digicash.com. Open Marketplace, Inc., is developing a credit-card type of approach to commerce. You can get a look on the Web at http://www.openmarket.com/omp.html. Dave Taylor's "Internet Shopping Mall" is a comprehensive listing of online stores. You can get it via anonymous FTP at ftp.netcom.com. Look in the /pub/Gu/Guides directory. It's also available via Gopher at peg.cwis.uci.edu. From the main menu, select Accessing the Internet, PEG, Internet Assistance and then Internet Shopping Mall (you may have to go down a couple of pages to get there). If you want to discuss the online shopping experience, the imall-chat mailing list is for you. To subscribe, write to listserv@netcom.com. Leave your subject line blank, and as your message, write: subscribe imall-chat. Bob O'Keefe at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute maintains an extensive listing of businesses on the Net. It's available via the Web at http://www.rpi.edu/okeefe/businss.html. You'll find another extensive listing at Stanford University's Yahoo site on the Web: http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo/Business/Corporations Kent State University in Ohio maintains a repository of "Business Sources on the Net." Use gopher to connect to refmac.kent.edu. Two books to take a look at are Jill Ellsworth's "The Internet Business Book" (John Wiley and Sons) and Mary Cronin's "Doing Business on the Internet" (1994, Van Nostrand Reinhold). The alt.current-events.net-abuse Usenet newsgroup is the place to discuss spamming and other obnoxious advertising. Chapter 15: THE END? The revolution is just beginning. New communications systems and digital technologies have already meant dramatic changes in the way we live. Think of what is already routine that would have been considered impossible just ten years ago. You can browse through the holdings of your local library -- or of libraries halfway around the world -- do your banking and see if your neighbor has gone bankrupt, all through a computer and modem. Imploding costs coupled with exploding power are bringing ever more powerful computer and digital systems to ever growing numbers of people. The Net, with its rapidly expanding collection of databases and other information sources, is no longer limited to the industrialized nations of the West; today it extends from Siberia to Zimbabwe. The cost of computers and modems used to plug into the Net, meanwhile, continue to plummet, making them ever more affordable, even as the Internet becomes easier to use. Cyberspace has become a vital part of millions of people's daily lives. People form relationships online, they fall in love, they get married, all because of initial contacts in cyberspace, that ephemeral ``place'' that transcends national and state boundaries. Business deals are transacted entirely in ASCII. Political and social movements begin online, coordinated by people who could be thousands of miles apart. Yet this is only the beginning. We live in an age of communication, yet the various media we use to talk to one another remain largely separate systems. One day, however, your telephone, TV, fax machine and personal computer will be replaced by a single ``information processor'' linked to the worldwide Net by strands of optical fiber. Beyond databases and file libraries, power will be at your fingertips. Linked to thousands, even millions of like-minded people, you'll be able to participate in social and political movements across the country and around the world. How does this happen? In part, it will come about through new technologies. High-definition television will require the development of inexpensive computers that can process as much information as today's workstations. Telephone and cable companies will cooperate, or in some cases compete, to bring those fiber-optic cables into your home. The Clinton administration, arguably the first led by people who know how to use not only computer networks but computers, is pushing for creation of a series of "information superhighways" comparable in scope to the Interstate highway system of the 1950s (one of whose champions in the Senate has a son elected vice president in 1992). Right now, we are in the network equivalent of the early 1950s, just before the creation of that massive highway network. Sure, there are plenty of interesting things out there, but you have to meander along two-lane roads, and have a good map, to get to them. Creation of this new Net will require more than just high-speed channels and routing equipment; it will require a new communications paradigm: the Net as information utility. The Net remains a somewhat complicated and mysterious place. To get something out of the Net today, you have to spend a fair amount of time with a Net veteran or a manual like this. You have to learn such arcana as the vagaries of the Unix cd command. Contrast this with the telephone, which now also provides access to large amounts of information through push buttons, or a computer network such as Prodigy, which one navigates through simple commands and mouse clicks. Internet system administrators have begun to realize that not all people want to learn the intricacies of Unix, and that that fact does not make them bad people. We are already seeing the development of simple interfaces that will put the Net's power to use by millions of people. You can already see their influence in the menus of gophers and the World-Wide Web, which require no complex computing skills but which open the gates to thousands of information resources. Mail programs and text editors such as pico and pine promise much of the power of older programs such as emacs at a fraction of the complexity. Some software engineers are taking this even further, by creating graphical interfaces that will let somebody navigate the Internet just by clicking on the screen with a mouse or by calling up an easy text editor,