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“A Standing Wave in the Web of Our Communications”: Usenet and the Socio-Technical Construction of Cyberspace Values

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From Usenet to CoWebs

Part of the book series: Computer Supported Cooperative Work ((CSCW))

Abstract

Of all Internet services, Usenet (Salzberg, 1998; Spencer, 1998) is probably the least understood and — arguably — the most intriguing. Often confused or conflated with the Internet and predating the Web by more than a decade, Usenet is a logical network that employs the Internet and other physical networks as transport mechanisms. The network is internally structured into tens of thousands of topically organized forums, called newsgroups. Like electronic mail, Usenet is asynchronous; messages and replies to messages do not appear immediately. Usenet is designed so that a message, once posted to a local service, propagates through the network so that all or most servers soon contain a copy, but this process may take several hours to complete. The result is an active deliberative system of global reach and undeniable importance. Usenet cannot be ignored by anyone attempting to understand the nature of social information spaces.

Author’s note: This essay is dedicated to the memory of Usenet pioneer Jim Ellis, who passed away in June 2001 after a battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

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Authors
  1. Bryan Pfaffenberger
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW, 2007, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher Lueg Dipl-Inform, Dr. sc. nat.

  2. Information and Computer Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697-3430, USA

    Danyel Fisher BS, BA, MS

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag London

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Pfaffenberger, B. (2003). “A Standing Wave in the Web of Our Communications”: Usenet and the Socio-Technical Construction of Cyberspace Values. In: Lueg, C., Fisher, D. (eds) From Usenet to CoWebs. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0057-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0057-7_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-532-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0057-7

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