Raymond R, Panko, Ph.D, Stanford Research Institute 333 Ravenswood Ave.
Menlo Park CA 94025
During the 1976 31ection campaign. Jiaa, Carter coordinated caa.unication network.. Many corpor.te ~nic.tion network.
hi • • t.ff through. new coaaunication medium called "computer u.e ca.putera merely for .witching. for example. the . . il." Whenever Carter'. campaign aircraft landed. an aide would international airline. re.erv.tion network. SITA. over which call into tbe nationwide STSC coaputer network and call up a perh.p. • quarter billion .d.inistrative ... ge. .re exch.nged prograa named Mailbox. The aide would then transmit ae •• age. e.ch year. A few network •• like Hewlett-Packard'. COMSIS. alae prepared during the flight. receive new me •• age ••• nd perhaps u.e ccaputer. for coapoaing. re.ding. and filini.
reply to a few incoming ae .. age. (1). During the Autumn c . . paign. over 1.200 .... age. were .ent.
The STSC Mailbox program i. only one example of • relatively new computer application area: the use of computers in human c_nic.tion. There is nothing new about computer-based human·
communic.tion. per .e. of cour.e. Teletypewriter network. bave long u.ed coaputer. for SWitching. and even the fir.t time-.hared computer had a priaativemailboxprogram(2).toletu.er.
exchange brief me .. age.. What i. new i. the rate at with which computer-based human communic.tion .y.tems have been growing in aephi.tication and power during the la.t five or .ix years.
Historical Trends
Although the STSC Mailbox syste. that Carter u.ed is a commercial systea. ao.t ccmputer mail developaent ha. been paid for through research grant. and. mo.t .pplications h.ve been in re.e.rch and military environment ••
The greate.t hotbed of develpaent has been the ARPAIIET. a nationwide computer network funded by the Advanced Re.earcb Project. Agency (ARPA) cf the Defen.e Department. During the 1960' •• ARPA funded much of the world'. advanced comp~ter
There have been several mail offerings on coaaercial ttae-.haring network.. BeSides STSC, .t lea.t one other c_rical time .haring network, TIMlEr, haa begun to att.ck tbe
QOr~ratl! cOlllllUnication m.rket .eriou.ly, with • coaputer . . U offering, OIlTYM. Mo.t time-.baring networka offer at le.ilt rud1aentary computer . . il .ervice.
What i. Computer Mail?
In contra.t to traditional aessage-switcbing .y.te ...
computer . . U .y.te . . do not aerely tranaait Mssage.. Ccaputer aaU .ystn. automate .11 a.pect. of . . U handling. They provide word prooe •• ing tools for ae .. age ca.po.ition and editing. tbus eltainating the traditional teletypewriter prie.tbood. Tbey allow di.tribution li.t. to be prepared ea.ily on-line. They print ae •• age. and al.o file . . ssage. automatically for .ub.equent retrieval. By autoaating the entire life cycle of message handling. by providing .iaple operation. and by letting .ny computer terminal acce.. the .y.tea, coaputer . . 11 bss brought me •• age technology out of the ba .... nt and into indiVidual office ••
re.earch. Late in the decade. ARPA began to build a netwcrk. in When a peraen "log. in" to the computer, tbe exi.tence of new order to make it. re.ource. aore widely avail.ble within the ARPA aail i. reported if any baa arrived .ince the l •• t log in. If re.earch community and within the defen.e coaaunity a. a whole. there i. new mail, the .y.tem print. a one- or two-line .ummary
of each .... age. giving it. date, author, and an option.l The fir.t line. and .witching computer. were in.talled in author-.upplied title. The u.er can print the.e aeaaage •• anewer 1969, but it was not until 1972 that network protocol. had them, delete thea, or file thea for l.ter re.ding. The user . . y evolved .ufficiently to aake the network re.lly u.eful. By l.te then .c.n through old ae .. age. or coapo.e new message.. Delivery 1972. however •• t lea.t a quarter of the coaputers on the network times range from a few .econd. to .everal bours.
could exchange .... age.. thanks to a mail system developed at
Bolt. Beranek snd lIewaan (BBII). During the next five years. a It is caa.on for users to t.ke terminal. along when tbey rash of newaail .ysteas were built for the ARPAIIET. aost of travel or when tbey go hOM. Thie keep. thn in touch and allows which were developed at BBII. MIT. Rand, end the Univer.ity of thea to handle their corre.pondence whenever they choo.e.
Southern California'. Information Science In.titute (lSI). There was .1.0 an extremely advanced mail .y.tem developed at Stanford Re.earcb In.titute. for use in a ltaited c_nity.
Today, mo.t ccaputers on the ARPAIIET c.n exch.nge .. ssage., thank. to the existence of general network •• il standards. There
ne
Outlookare now perhaps 2.000 network mail users. many of whoa are ,The coaaarcial outlook for coaputer mail ie very bright. The computer scientist •• but . . ny of whoa are nonprogr .... r military average cost of a me .. age v.ries considerably froa sy.tem to users. Bec.use ARPANET mail systems bave becoae very easy to .ystem. ranging fl'Oll $0.50 to $10.00. depending upon the use. the portion of nonprogra . . er user. i. growing rapidly. In function. performed. The ratea are .teep. but co.t. are ~.lling
fact. ARPA and the lIavy are about to conduct .n experiment th.t rapidly. It appear. th.t the co.t of a good .ervice will be could reault in a tran.fer of ARPAIlET ccaputer . . U to normal .round $1.00 per me .. age within a year or two, and that ca.puter ailitary caa.unication network.. In addition. one ARPANET aail . . il will be cheaper than po.tage by the aid-1980'.
(3.4) •
• y.tem. HERMES. ia offered coaaerci.lly. via the Telenet computer
network. At po.tage staap price •• coaputer mail oould c.pture a
.ignificant portion of the written ccamunic.tion in corporation.
A .econd .ource of developaent has been computer __ around a trillion pieces of paper annually in the United teleconferencing. in which a coaputer eaulate. the di.cipline. cf St.tes alone (4). So it ie not .urpri.ing that many companies face-to-face group discu •• ions. The fir.t teleconferencing .re beginning to eye tbe computer mail aarket .eriou.ly.
sy.tem was developed in 1971. under Murray Turoff at the Office of Emergency Preparedne... Since then. .everal aore
teleconferencing .y.tns have been built. The most widely used to date haa been PORUM. built by the In.titute for the Puture under ARPA and National Science Pound.tion (NSP) .pon.or.hip.
Twenty-eight PORUM conferences were held on the ARPANET from 1972 through 1974. In l.te 1974. a PORUM variant. PLANET. was installed on the TYMNET computer network for further exper1aentation. PLANET is now offered commercially. by InfcHedia, In 1976, Turoff developed the Electronic Information Exchange Sy.tem. which is being u.ed for experimentation over Telenet.
A third .tre . . of develoJlllent has COllIe in corporate
Where
Do
Hobbyie.ts Pit In?Virtually all analy.ts agree th.t computer mail will flourieh ftr.t in organization ••• ince corporation •• the governaent, and the ailitary can pay the larse bill. needed for .y.tea
development and operation. Organization. can pay • gre.t .de.l for computer . . il because they already pay • gre.t de.l for pap.erwork.
But it atill .eeaa poaaible tb.t computer . . il may develop
FIRST COMPUTER FAIRE PROCEEDINGS BOX 1579, PALO ALTO CA 94302 PAC'..E 140 first in the community, rather than in organizations -- not in
individual homes, because equipment is not in place, and a full ca.aercial syetem would be expensive -- but in the computer hobbyiest arena, where computer mail networks oould be used to exchanee ideas and just ohat, with existing equipment and with relatively little software development cost.
Bsfore disoussing details, we wish to give several reasons for saying that hob~iest computer mail is not an inherently orazy idea. First and .ost importantly, hobbyiests are very active snd need to communioate. As Dave Caulkins has reoently estimated (5), there were about 3,000 hobby oomputers and 15,000 computer hobbyiests 1n the United States in 1976. There sre probably a lot more today. They are spending a great deal of time and money on their hardware, and many are oapable programmers.
Seoond, there is a strong hi.torioal preoedent: ARPANET oo.puter mail itself. ARPA' projects have been serious and worthwhile efforts, but there has always been a distinot hobbyiest flavor to the ARPA oontraotor oommunity. Typical ARPA researchers work on exciting projects such as artifioial
I will sketch two possible scenarios for hobbyieat oomputer mail's possible evolution. In the first, "HAM Computer Mail"
would evolve in the limited hobbyiest community. In the seoond, nCB Computer Mail" would be broadly aooessible in the o~nity.
HAM Computer MaU HAM radio, despite its long popularity, has never been large. Its stiff entrance requirements, inoluding lioenaing testa and the purohasing or buUding of expensiveequipaent, have limited its size. Analogously, if hobbyiest oomputer mail i.
oonfined to highly sophistio.ted oomputer user. of the type that now populate the oommunity, the,n hobbyiest oomputer maU i.
likely to remain small, like amateur ,redio.
Nevertheless, amateur oomputer mail will almost oertainly appear first among ourrent hobbyie.t., ,beomuse hobbyie.ts have oommunioation need., the ability to 'de.1gn,and implement a oommunioation sy.te. and, I suspeot, a atrong inolination to do so.
intelligence. They tend to be more strongly committed to Teohnically, two features will have to be added to research than to their own organizations, and they tend to work current hobby computers to implement HAM computer mail. The very long hours. In many ways, the ARPANET research caa.unity first is message-handling software, to let individuals oompose has always been a collection of oomputer enthusiasts. Morevover, messages, prepare distribution lists, read incoming .ess ... aDd even before the network was oonstruoted. the ARPA re.earch file inooming messages for later reading. This i. an intere.tinC community was fairly tightly knit, meeting at oonferenoes and problem, but it raises no substantial barr~ers other than hard .wapping employers with bewildering regularity. work. As on the ARPANET. good mail programs. once oreated. would
probably be adopted rapidly by the hobbyie.t oommunity.
When the ARPANET was created, it provided a natural tool for community communication, and, as noted above, computer .ail blo.somed as soon as the network became operational. While much ARPANET mail development has been deliberately funded, perhaps hslf of all .a11 systems have been written in people's spare time.
Although such statistics are not kept, it is generally believed that the ARPANET is used mostly for message
communication. Again, for balance, we reiterate that ARPANET projects, despite their hobbyiest air, have been geared toward pragmatic goals.
A third just';fication for considering co.puter maU is that corporations are likely to be quite slow on the uptake of computer .ail. While excellent software is available and price.
are already attractive, the corporate environment will not be an easy one to enter. First, telecommunications in corporations is by-and-large a low level function in the hierarchy. Emphaais is on thrift, not innovation, and innovation is generally a painful process. While some large organizations are innovative, it remains to be seen how rapidly theae pace setter. will adopt computer'mail or how rapidly other companies will follow.
Moreover, current computer mail systems, de.pite their sophistication, are not yet well-adapted to the needs of corporations (_).
A fourth, and to .y mind deciSive, reason for considering oomputer mail is the recent growth of CB radio. In the early 1970's, trucking and recreational vehicle users began to provide a market tor cheap and useful CB equipment. Soon, CB began to grow wildly. About one U.S. household in 10 now has one or more CB rigs, and growth is oontinuing at an astounding rate.
CB is being used primarily in a party-line mode, in which
The other needed feature i. networking, and this ia indeed a problem. The simplest solution would be for a hobbyieat computer club, such as Homebrew, to collectively purohase a me .. age-.witching co.puter to handle party-line communioation, private .essage transmission, a bulletin board, and so on. U.era would then need acoustic oouplers, so that they could phone into the .... age oomputer periodically.
The problem with this approach is that it requires somebody to purchase the message computer. An individual club could do this most easily, since it has communication need. and many progr .... rs who lack computers to work on. On the 'other hand, hobbyiest clubs tend to be low-budget operations. Another approach would be for some hobby computer manufaoturer to install a .... age computer as a way ot stimulating sales and discovering market trends. Weyerhaeuser did something like this in ttbe 1960's, when it funded a number ot communes. Weyerhaeuser's funding paid ott quite lavishly, because it di.covered the emerging indoor plant market and plunged into it.
Potentially the best approach would be tor some
entrepreneur or club to set up a .e"ese-.witcbing oomputer, tben charge users for service. On current time-sharing systems, however, billing is extremely expen.ive. 'Some breakthroughs in charging practices would be needed to provide service oheaply yet get users to pay their bills.
If a separate messese computer is not fea.ible, the alternative is to create a network of individual hobbyiest computers. Other speakers in this se.sion disous. this
possibility and I will gladly deter to their discu .. ion.. .inoe I find the idea of a voluntary distributed oomputer network to be mind-numbing.
changing groups of people chat, usually annonymously. Party-line Let me do something uncharaoteristio ot oon.ultants and conversation has one major advantage, for radio sellers: it venture an opinion on how HAM computer mail will mo.t likely oome provides an instant community of users. In contra.t. about. In my crystal ball. I see a club like Homebrew oombiniac person-to-per.on message .ystems require either a closely-knit its due. and a grant from a computer manufaoturer'or telephone community within whioh traffic will naturally be high or a very oompany. to purohase a minico.puter. Why'.houlda hobbyiest olub large user base so that new users will hsve someone to talk to. purohase a "large" minico.puter instead ot .taying with mioro.?
In the party-line mode. whole communities need not make a Because only about one co.puter hobbyie.t in three. by,.y orude deci.ion to Join. and potential u.ers will automatically have estimBte. now owns a co.puter or shares one. The bUlk'ot all someone to talk to. Of course once a party-11ne community grows hobbyiest club .e.bers are programmers who would be comtortable large. per.on-to-person co_unioetion can flourish. with a mini. These "neked hobbyie.t." oould progr . . t,he _se • .,e
Computer conterencing ofters some party-line featurea, although mo.t systems are fragmented into numerous private conferences. In fact, the first major conferencing system was called Party-Line. Most successful conferences (rated by user satistaction) have a free-wheeling air, and in at least two conferencing systems, public ·grafUtin conferences have dominated tratfic patterns.
How Mi&ht Hobbyiest Computer Mail Evolve?
computer and handle the Bundanitie. ot accounting ,nd billing.
User. ot the cpoperative message cOmputer would need only a terminal and acoustic coupler; and they WOUld have an ,"in" for a small outlay. 'HobieStl! with computera, in turn. oould use their own oomputer tor message composition and reading, using the message computer only as a switoh. Their servioe te_a would be reduced beoause they would use the message computer lese heavily
a~ each session. This approaoh--using a cooperative . . ssage computer--seems ideal, because it could make all club m .. bers active ,users. instead of partiCipants. If 'a coop computer is purchased, furthermore, it could be a general time-.haring .yet . . for other forms of .oftware development.
FIRST coMPUTER FAIRE PROCEEDINGS
CB Computer Mail While HAM radio has remained an arcane hobby, CB radio has srown to becolle one of laerica's major communications media.
The reasons for CB', success are co.pletely straishtforward: a CBris can be purchased for under $200, and its operation is sillpl1city itself. Sillilarly, if cOllputer mail is iIIplemented so that anyone with a terminal and a pre-paid account can use the systell, the resultant ·CB cOllputer mail· service is likely to spread rapidly and srow far beyond the hobbyiest lIarket.
'In many ways, CB cOllputer mail would be easier to taplement than HAM cOllputer lIail. It could have the size to ,net york several lIeMUe, !lOlIputers. an.d, so raduc,e telephone charses to users, by lIaking all calls local calls. its size could also allow sillplified billing, say throUSh major credit cards.
If CBcOllputer ma1l is to becolle extrallely widespread, it may'have to be illpletlented by the local telephone company, lIuch l1ke dial-a-joke and tille-of-day services. If the costs of oomputer " i l fall as low as I believe they will (3,4), the revenues sained by the basic lIessage unit charses will be sufficient to justify the service. Moreover, if services are indeed illplemented by telephone collpanies, resional and national interconnection will be possible and, quite probably,
sufficiently lucrative for early developllent.
How would the current hobbyiest cOllllUnity sreet CB cQIIPuterllail? My suess is that they will view it with
considerable distaste, lIuoh as HAM radio operators have little to do with CB radio. Perhaps hobby cOllputerists will pull back cOllpletely, but I think this would be a srave error. Hobbyiest cOIIputins is passing froll a hardware era, I believe, to a prcsr8lllling era, and it will ultillately enter a service era.
Whether the current hobbyiest community follows the mainstre.. or becolles an isolated elite is one of the 1I0St critical issues now facins the community. CB computer lIail could well be the crucible in which the long-term shape of hobby cOllllUnity is proofed and shaped.
Conclusions
It appears that cOllputer lIail, which developed primarily on the ARPANET, has the potential to form an iIIportant cOllllUnication lIediuII for the cOllputer hobbyiest cOllllUnity. There are BIIple software concepts available for the des18n of hobby cOllputer mail systells, but networking is a .. jor problell area. Hobbyiest cOllputer lIail lIay be restricted to serious hobbyiests, in which case it lIay retia in forever an arcane 118diUII, analosous to HAM radio. On the other hand, if hobbyiest computer lIail can be opened up to casual users, it lIay becOlle ·CB computer lIail· and spread as rapidly as CB radio.
References
1. Holuea, JoM,"Collputer Tied Carter, Mondale Campa18ns,·
The Washington Star, p. A-3, Nov8llber 21, 1976.
2. Crisman, P~A., ed., The COllpatible Tille-Sharing Systell, A Prosram.er's Guide (2nd Ed.), The MIT Press, Callbridge, Massachusetts, 1965, Section AH.9.05, quoted in Stuart:L.
Mathison and Philip M. Walker, COllputers and
Telecollll\lnications: Issues in Public Policy, Prentice-Hall, Inc., ~ngelwood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970.
3. Panko, Raymond R. (Ra3y), The Outlook for Computer 'Message Services: A Prelill1nary AssesSllent, TelecollllUnications Sciences Center, Stanford'Research Institute, Menlo Park, Califol'llia, unpublished draft, March 1976.
4. Panko, Raymond R. (Ra3y), ~The Outlook for Computer Mail,"
to be p~~~i~ed in the Journal of TelecOllllUnicationa Policy.
5. Caulkins, David, ·A COllputer HobbyiestClub Survijy," Byte,---pp 116-118, Vol. 2, No.1, January 1977.
5. Caulkins, David, ·A COllputer HobbyiestClub Survijy," Byte,---pp 116-118, Vol. 2, No.1, January 1977.