Robert Willey, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts

University of California, San Diego

Arpanet, the precursor of the Internet, was begun at the Department of Defense in 1966. The plan was to connect computers together to save money, by allowing researchers in different locations to share computing resources. It began with four computers, now 25 years later the Internet connects over two million. As the idea of connecting computers together caught on people started making local area networks within universities, laboratories, and businesses. A system was needed to connect these smaller networks together, an "inter-net". The Internet has become the network of networks and is the model we have for national and international information infrastructures.

The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was adopted as the standard communications language by the mid-1980’s. Vint Cerf, President of the Internet Society (and new Vice President of MCI) says that "the Internet is really like basic telephone dial tone, but for computers." It allows computers to communicate with each other. Packets of information are routed from one computer to another. These packets can contain a variety of types of data, such as text (electronic mail), or video (conferencing). In order for the packets to be routed to the desired location each computer has a unique Internet address, represented by four numbers separated by periods. This system will support two billion computers.

Over the years a number of programs have been written to take advantage of the connections provided by the network. A number of them have become standard tools that are now widely available and are well supported. New programs are being continually added, some designed for general users of various backgrounds and sophistication, others meant for special purposes or a select group. The software survey presented here will focus on software that is commonly available and does not require special purpose hardware.

Electronic mail can be used to send messages from a person using one computer to someone on the same computer or to another computer on the network. Messages can travel around the world in seconds greatly enlarging the field of accessible colleagues. We are no longer limited in our collaborations to the people in our immediate physical surroundings, making it possible to communicate with colleagues in other countries as easily as we do with those in the same building.

Knowing a person's email address can sometimes be helpful in finding out further information, such as their telephone number or surface mail address. The finger command when applied to Scott Yanoff provides information on retrieving his list of Internet services. The command on UNIX systems would be "finger yanoff@csd4.csd.uwm.edu". The command "finger bobw@carla.ucsd.edu" will give access to the author's current activities.

Several programs have been written to find for electronic mail addresses, such as whois and X.500 searches. For more information on locating the email address of a person, read: "FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses", available from mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu by writing an email with the message "send usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses". This document is posted regularly to the Usenet group "news.answers".

Electronic mail was first used for one-to-one communication but soon the value was seen of one-to-many and many-to-many dialogue. This gave rise to various news groups and bulletin board systems.

USENET is a kind of global bulletin board in which millions of people exchange information on all kinds of topics. There are currently about 10,000 groups. To join a newsgroup you send an electronic mail request to subscribe. There are various forms of subscriptions which must be made in the proper format since much is done automatically. Sometimes the subscription request is in the "subject" field of the email message, sometimes it is in the first line of the message. When you join a group you may wish to make yourself a note of how to unsubscribe, in case you decide later you no longer wish to receive messages from the group. News functions in some ways like email, except that one person can write to many. This is a form of desktop broadcasting.

Many groups compile frequently asked question (FAQ) lists in order to answer the typical questions that a new member has. This spares the group from having to go over fundamental information over and over, and provides new users with a convenient way to come up to speed.

Telnet was one of the first network programs and still one of the most used. When a person is connected to a computer on the network telnet can be used to make a connection to access the resources of another computer. The user issues the telnet command and requests that a connection be opened on another machine. The remote machine can be specified by name. If the user's computer (client) does not recognize the name of the remote machine (server) the connection cannot be made. In this case the unique Internet address number can be used to avoid confusion. The command "telnet 132.239.50.16" opens a connection to the University of California card catalog. Only affiliated users may make full use of the extended citation searches at this time, but anyone may take advantage of the system to obtain basic information about books in the collection.

In addition to the generalized catalogs there are specialized collections concerned with particular topics, such as the Beethoven Bibliography Database, available from the Beethoven Center at San Jose State University. Telnet is used to connect to sjsulib.sjsu.edu, the login is: lib, and then no password is required; at the main menu for the SJSU Library catalog, select option D (Connect to another database), then select option 2 for the Beethoven Bibliography Database.

The file transfer protocol (ftp) was developed in order to allow a user on one computer (client) to copy files stored on another computer (host). Thousands of sites provide an open policy to connecting, allowing you to download files without having a regular account their machines. These are known as "anonymous" ftp sites allowing the user to log in without the need for an account or password. Files include all kinds of information, including free programs and public-domain utilities. The command "ftp ccrma-ftp.stanford.edu" opens a connection to the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University.

As the number of ftp sites grows and the number of files available for copying soars, it has become difficult to find what is being looked for. Several programs have been written to search known ftp sites automatically, returning to the user lists of files that can then be examined. One of the most popular is called gopher and follows a simple protocol for tunneling through TCP/IP Internet.

Gopher is a menu-driven system for navigating the Internet. You do not lose anything if you have a system without graphic capability since the results are words. Gopher searches can be initiated from client software or made through an available gopher server.

The Computer-Assisted Information Retrieval service System (CAIRSS) at the University of Texas at San Antonio is an online bibliographic database of music research with 18 primary journals. It is part of the Music Research Information System (MRIS) which can be reached by "telnet runner.utsa.edu" or using the IP number "telnet 129.115.50.16". Enter "imr" for login, no password is needed.

The World Wide Web was begun in 1991 by Swiss scientists who wanted to share information with full multimedia support. "Browsing" programs are used to request, process, and display documents, written using hypertext markup language (HTML) using standard text mixed with formatting codes. "Hypertext" is a term coined by Ted Nelson in the late 1960’s, referring to text that contains connections to other text or other documents. Hypertext links are made by hiding pointers to other sources of information behind certain words or phrases. Formatting is used to indicate that other documents can be accessed by clicking on highlighted words. This allows the user to read in an order that makes sense to them, rather than from beginning to end. This ability to jump from one location to another encourages browsing. The highlighted words represent links to other documents, which can be on the same computer, or one in another part of the world. Many web pages are mostly pointers to other documents. Clicking on the highlighted words takes the user directly to the computer holding the desired document, which is identified by its universal resource locator (URL). Links can be made to text, color graphics, sounds, video, and other types of data.

Mosaic was the first widely distributed browser for the web and exists for both PC and Macintosh. The browser gives the user the choice of accessing web documents, whose names end with ".html" extensions. The browser can also be used to perform ftp, read news, search gopherspace, and other operations from one interface. Mosaic began as a free program and a million copies have already been distributed, many from ftp sites. Other browsers have been written and connections with other software packages has begun.

Center for Research in Computing and the Arts: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu

Robert Willey's homepage: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/bob-homepage.html

Robert Willey's bookmarks: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/bookmarks.html

El Camino de Silicio, promoting computer music in the Americas: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/camino.html

New Music for Disklavier and Synthesizer, an archive of midifiles for Yamaha's computer-controlled piano: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/disklavier.html

Music Resources on the Internet, the complete paper from which this document is excerpted, including examples and hypertext links: http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/tdme.html

Music Resources on the Internet, a service of the Indiana University Music Library:

http://www.music.indiana.edu/misc/music_resources.html

The Music Library of the Future, from McGill University:

http://lecaine.music.mcgill.ca/MLF_Project/Html/MLF_Proposal.html

Since the network has grown quickly it is too early to grasp the eventual significance of what is being unleashed. We can make some observations on our situation and make a look towards the future. Every opportunity brings with it a challenge.

Word processing has been referred to as desktop publishing, when it was really document preparation. The increasing speed of the product cycle–research and development, introduction, maturity, and obsolescence presses us to go through the process quickly, especially when the "product" is information. The ability to open a document to the world does not necessary justify its widespread availability. It still remains expensive to develop quality sources. The format in which information is stored changes, as does the hardware that access it.

The move towards desktop publishing in the electronic domain allows for instant publication, but materials created in this environment can just as quickly disappear. Information on the web has a temporary and intermittent nature, its availability depends on the host computer's health, the network in between the host and client being available, and the client and its software functioning correctly. Information that can be accessed at one moment may be unavailable later; there is no guarantee that it will be maintained. Citations in books serve the same purpose as links on web pages. Pointers to hard copy may have a longer life, though they depend on contact with the physical object they address.

Educators and public planners should consider ways to insure the distribution of information in a democratic manner, to make the electronic commons open to all citizens. As the price of computing and telecommunications systems drops this should become less of an issue, but we are still responsible for at least marking the trail. FAQ lists are a step in the right direction, providing paths to acquiring the information necessary to participate in newsgroups.

The great amount of information challenges us to devise a way to organize it. As the amount of information in a field increases it becomes harder to be an expert. It is no longer possible for even experts to know everything about a field. We want tools to access information at deep levels bypassing the requirements of specialization. It should be possible to access information without being an expert in the field under investigation. The amount of computer expertise to use the system must also be reduced.

Educators should take a proactive role rather than reactive one in the development of educational systems involving communications technology. Society is going to be transformed by the information revolution. The net is going to have profound effects on our culture, on a scale to be compared with radio, movies, and television. We can help to develop learning societies which are plugged into electronic campuses with virtual classrooms. The systems that we can start to imagine will be possible using the national information infrastructure that is being assembled. The integration of this into a world information infrastructure, with interactive information retrieval on demand will affect many areas of our lives. The rapid increase in the use of electronic mail and the World Wide Web illustrate the desire to make the network easier to use, and the readiness to use it for purposes no longer associated only with the research institutions in which the network was created.