🚀 go-pugleaf

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This file should be called EMAIL025.TXT
Version 0.2.5
17 July 1993

This rough version is missing 8 out of 28 chapters and 1 out of 5 
appendices.

Copyright (c) 1993 by John E. Goodwin.  All Rights Reserved.

You may make and distribute verbatim copies of these course notes for 
non-commercial purposes using any means, provided this copyright notice 
is preserved on all copies.

For information on taking the internetworking course, contact

     John Goodwin (jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov)
     P.O. Box 6022
     St. Charles, IL  60174, U.S.A.

--------------------------(begin part 2 of 3)----------------------------
<Part II>  Special Concerns

This Part lists briefly some of the ways in which various groups of 
people can use internetworking skills.



<Chapter 11>  Special for Businesses

I wish I had better news for business use of the Internet.  I wish I 
could describe hundreds of free services of interest to *business* and 
tell you how to use the Internet for profit.  But it's not there yet.  
However, before you turn away with a sad but knowing smile on your face 
shaking your head over another unlikely technological dream--you've seen 
it before--consider this:  the main potential of the Internet is as a 
communication medium.  Is radio and television important to businesses?  
What about newspapers and magazines?  Or direct mail?  Very few 
businesses make money by selling newspapers or operating radio stations, 
but many, many businesses use these media for advertising.  You and your 
employees need to become adept at using this medium for the same reasons 
you've mastered layout of newpaper ads and writing form letters.  

It is very important to understand that the Internet is not a broadcast 
medium but more like the telephone or mail system.  It specializes in 
contacting individuals one at a time.  In other words, you are not going 
to get a list of all 25 million E-mail addresses and bombard them every 
10 minutes with a 30 second sound byte.  Nor are you going to send 100 
people a letter asking them to contact 100 persons each.  On the other 
hand you might use the medium to contact a mailing list of your 
customers or self-publish a promotional brochure.

The amount of commercial traffic on the Internet is disappointingly 
small--but important.  Mostly this is for historical reasons.  The 
backbone network in the United States, NSFnet (for National Science 
Foundation) has an "acceptable use" policy for traffic carried over it.  
This restricts traffic to messages that support the R&D effort of 
certain government laboratories and universities.  Clearly, there is
not room for commercial traffic if you are directly connected to the 
NSFnet.

But nowadays one can get on the Internet without connecting directly to 
NSFnet, and the amount of commercial traffic is growing.  Don't 
overlook:

  o  Making product information and brochures available by E-mail as 
well as by the postal service.

  o  Allowing customer-support inquiries by E-mail.

  o  Starting a mailing list for your customers or clients.

  o  Setting up a "mail-server" to let clients get information about 
your product automatically, without having to wait for you to log on 
(required direct connection to the Internet).

  o  Putting your product information on an anonymous FTP server 
(requires that you have a fileserver on the net or find an FTP site 
willing to take the information).

Suprisingly, there are, to my knowledge, no pay-for-advertising services 
that support mailservers or anonymous FTP sites.  It is a fair 
prediction that this advertising medium will develop as more persons 
join the net.  You could put your information on bulletin boards, of 
course, but only members will see it there--not the 25 million people 
with E-mail access.

The fact remains, however, that unless you are in very specific 
industries that are information or paper intensive (say publishing, 
computing, information retrieval, and so on), or unless you need access 
to government information like weather maps, that your use of the 
Internet will consist of downloading programs or getting the latest 
technical information.

All of this overlooks the most important aspect of the Internet for 
businesses.  The Internet is evolving very rapidly.  It is likely to be 
an important medium for transacting business, for customer service and 
for advertising in the very near future no matter what industry you are 
in.  For some industries, like publishing, high-technology industries, 
and the media, it will be critical.  Businesses who have a pool of 
employees that are adept at using the Internet will have a competitive 
advantage over firms that don't.  Thus you should encourage your 
employees to get personal Internet connections and learn about the 
Internet after hours.  



<Chapter 12>  Special for Students and their Parents

Since the Internet grew up in an academic environment, university 
students will likely have a level of access that would be the envy of 
any business.  All the services and research tools--not just E-mail, 
FTP, and telnet, but gopher, WWW, WAIS, and the rest are likely to be 
available to students from any terminal on the local "cluster" or by 
dial-up from their dorm rooms.

Students will be especially keen on:

  o  checking the university library catalogue to see if a book is in 
before walking to the library.

  o  finding out about campus events (even at other universities!) 
through gopher or school bulletin boards

  o  posting buy and sell notices for computer equipment, cars, housing, 
and so on.

  o  contacting potential tutors either at their own university or for 
help by E-mail.  (A netwide "university" of tutors, called Usenet 
University, is prepared to answer questions in various subjects by E-
mail already exists in the Usenet newsgroups.  See the alt.uu.* 
hierarchy).

  o  using online catalogues of other university libraries to find books 
for interlibrary loan or to compile bibliographies

  o  downloading free software and information

  o  finding scholarship information

Parents can communicate with their children at college by E-mail--and 
probably get a faster response than waiting for the occasional letter 
from home.  Worried parents will have to refrain, however, from using 
the "finger" command to find out when their children last logged in or 
read their mail!



<Chapter 13>  Special for Writers, Journalists, Publishers, and Printers

There is probably no industry for which information is so critical as 
for the media and publishing industries.  Journalists who explore the 
networks will find that they use the tools described in the first part 
over and over to track down information, conduct prompt "interviews" by 
mail, and so on.  Publishers will be interested in the electronic 
transmission of manuscripts (though writers soliciting publication will 
still want to send hardcopy--the equivalent in the electronic age of 
sending a self-addressed stamped envelope).  Publishers will also be 
interested in sharing or developing free image processing software with 
other publishers, and transmitting graphics.

As the net develops, libraries research will more and more often involve 
internetworking.  Searching for books is already easy by dial-up or over 
the Internet.  In addition, the amount of information that is never 
circlulated on paper will increase.  This is already the case in the 
scientific and technical community where printing is a luxury rather 
than a necessity.  Given that a single 8 mm videotape can hold 500,000 
pages of text, it is possible to hoard (and search) vast amounts of 
information that you can never possibly print out.  Imagine what such 
technology will do in the hands of Government or any other bureaucracy.  
Finally, it is not hard to image the day when an editor will receive as 
many press releases by E-mail as through the postal service.

Internetworking technology allows virtually any business or individual 
to set up and run their own "wire service", providing information about 
their business or special interest to a select group of subscribers.  
This capability is completely analogous to Desk Top Publishing, which 
put low-end printing in the hands of any business or individual.

Journalists and other writers will not want to overlook the 
kaleidascopic mixture of technical discussion, product announcements, 
gossip, and general ranting on Usenet.  Usenet already has more channels 
than a typcial satellite and is growing by ten channels a day or so.  It 
is hard to find, but tucked in among the chit-chat and programs is the 
only up to the minute information on the Internetworked World.  
Certainly all writers of scientific or technical columns will want to 
tap this source of information.



<Chapter 14>  Special for Elementary and High School Teachers

There are many special Internet services for Elementary and Secondary 
School teachers provided by the Government, mostly through the education 
offices of research laboratories.  The best all around refernce for 
teachers is the _NCSA Guide to the Internet_, put out by the Education 
Office of the National Center for Supercompter Administration.  A paper 
version is available from:

The network version is located at ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.  Unfortunately, it 
is available only in Microsoft Word format (requires binary transfer).  
If you are unable to use this format directly or convert to a format you 
can use, you will have to order the paper version.

The NCSA Guide covers all you need to know to connect to the Internet--
both technical details and etiquette--as well as suggested projects to 
introduce children to the net.  You will find out how to get information 
about the space program or how to access such programs as the Newton 
Bulletin Board Service for Science and Math. teachers at Argonne 
National Laboratory.

In addition, Usenet has a k12.* hierarchy which provides a gateway to 
the K12 network.  Besides K12, there are several other regional networks 
specifically for teachers and students.  

One of the more exciting prospects for teachers is that of sharing 
worksheets, handouts, and other materials with other teachers.  Although 
this type of sharing is routine on bulletin boards and regional networks 
that cater to teachers, anonymous FTP sites hold out the possibility of 
a worldwide collection of such materials.  Send contributed materials 
(in electronic format) to 

     ftp.cs.city.ac.uk:/freelore/incoming 

by following the instructions in Chapter xx for sending a file by 
anonymous FTP, or mail a floppy disk (and a return mailer with prepaid 
postage, if you want it back!) to 

     The FreeLore Project
     P.O. Box 6022
     St. Charles, IL  60174.  

Make sure your materials have a copyright notice like this course, 
allowing anyone to copy and distribute them for free (for educational 
purposes).



<Chapter 15>  Special for Librarians

For many years, of course, libraries have been among the heaviest users
of information services--for cataloguing or to fill patron requests.  
Several companies now specialize in providing Internet access to 
libraries, e.g. ACCESS or DRAnet.  Libraries will increasingly use these 
services because the promise the following benefits:

  o  Inexpensive access to hundreds of online library catalogues, 
worldwide.

  o  Uniform, and often cheaper, access to information services using 
telnet rather than a host of special software packages.

  o  Access to netwide searching tools like WAIS, WWW, and GOPHER.

  o  Discussion by E-mail with other librarians, conference reports and 
announcements, and so on.

It is true, as one librarian said to me, that you can tell that 
librarians didn't set up the Internet.  The archives grew piecemeal and 
their contents are far from uniform in quality.  In addition, the whole 
Internet is so vast it probably can't be catalogued.  Nevertheless, 
rough and ready tools and customs have grown up to provide some sort of 
access to the information that is "out there".  There is a great deal of 
work to be done by librarians that will doubtless keep them employed 
into the next millenium.

The main boon to librarians is the hierarchical organization of the net 
into nodes, directories, and subdirectories.  These provide an implicit 
and universal call number to *everything in the electronic world*.  The 
day is not far away when a cross-reference like

     See ota.ox.ac.uk:/pub/HistoricalDocs/Political/US/constitution

will be as common as a bibliographic citation or See reference in a card 
catalogue.

The Internet also carries a number of hidden expenses and dangers to 
libraries:

  o  It will somewhat increase the expense of computer equipment, 
technical personnel, software, etc. needed by libraries

  o  Additional phone lines may become necessary, especially if some 
sort of public access to the Internet is contemplated

  o  Staff training needs will be greater

  o  The local computer system will need virus protection software and 
regular backups (a good idea anyway but seldom practiced by librarians, 
in my experience.  Persons who are trained in book conservation should 
know better!).

  o  Some material on the Internet will arouse complaints from the 
public because it represents the views of unpopular minorities (e.g 
liberals, homosexuals, feminists, and intellectuals).  There is also a 
great deal of pornographic material (text and graphics) available by E-
mail or through the Usenet newsgroups.  Issues of censorship, public 
funding, and access for minors have yet to be played out in the domain 
of electronic communications.

In addition to the standard package of services from your provider, 
librarians should not neglect Usenet Newgroups, even if this means 
getting a special account with a different service (and accessing it by 
dial-up or telnet through your primary service).  Learning to use the 
Usenet Newgroups and their invaluable FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) 
is the *single most important skill for professional development of your 
staff.*  This means that you may want to encourage after-hours "playing" 
with your computer system.  Think of the Usenet Newsgroups as the 
Reference Section of the Internet.



<Chapter 16>  Special for Scholars

It used to be that only scientists and technologists used the academic 
networks.  But no longer.  Today there are many humanists and social 
scientists happily gabbing away with their friends (oops . . . I mean 
colleagues) at other universities, collaborating by E-mail, subscribing 
to and writing for E-journals, and so on.  This is, of course, in 
addition to the academic computing environment described in the Chapter 
for students.

Your main entree to this world is some sort of E-mail access and finding 
a mailing list or newsgroup for your field.  From there you will pick up 
tips on interesting materials or groups to join--in short you can start 
networking.  The two main sources for such mailing lists are LISTSERVERS 
(traditional on BITNET) and increasingly Usenet Newsgroups.  Actually 
the newsgroups are not as useful as the lists at the moment *for the 
humanities*.  This is because the academic hierarchy is not as 
subdivided as the computer science hierarchy.  Thus, there is a whole 
hierarchy for computer science, but all of linguistics fits into 
sci.lang!  These discussion groups either tend to have just a few 
participants or to be so all-encompassing that they are useless.  This 
does not mean you should ignore Usenet--the computer and networking 
information is invaluable--just that you will not find it *directly* 
relevant to your field.

Listservers are another matter.  They allow distribution of articles by 
anyone to the whole list (unless the list is moderated, i.e. refereed by 
the list's owner), and they allow archiving of articles at a place 
anyone on the list can access.  In short, they form a sort of Electronic 
Journal with a *very* big reader mail column.  To find a list in your 
field, send the message "INDEX GLOBAL" to any listserver.  These usually 
have an address like "listserv@hoople.usnd.edu".  Then send a message 
like "SUBSCRIBE PDQFAN" to the listserver to join the list PDQFAN.  
After that you will send messages for publication to 
"pdqfan@hoople.usnd.edu" and (human) service requests to "pdqfan-
request@hoople.usnd.edu".  

The best way to use a listserver is to avail yourself of the "SET PDQFAN 
DIGEST" or "SET <whateverlist> DIGEST" command so that you get the 
(daily?) mailing as a newspaper and not as a series of fifty or so mail 
messages interspersed throughout the day.  The digest includes *your 
own* correspondence so that you have a record of this.  This is not what 
happens without the DIGEST option.  For full instructions send the 
message "HELP" to "listserv@whereever.edu".

Ultimately the Humanities will have the same infrastructure of services 
that already is forming in the Sciences:

  o  easy access to preprints and collections of journal articles

  o  archives of data sets, special purpose free software, and text 
databases.

  o  collections of E-text source materials, if relevant.  These may 
include "tagged" text for special statistical studies.

  o  a set of free programming tools for routine scholarly tasks like 
typesetting papers, creating bibliographic databases, and so on--in the 
format specific to your field.

Scholars in the humanities should check the list of E-text archives 
(over 300 of them) at Georgetown University (send E-mail message "" to 
"" to get started).  These archives may well have materials in your 
field that they will make available for scholarly purposes at a nominal 
cost.  In addition, check the Oxford Text Archives at black.ox.ac.uk. 
(Login as "anonymous" for information--as of this writing the archives 
are not searchable online by telnet, but an index is available).



<Chapter 17>  Special for Churches, Synagogues, and Mosques

It is suprising that religious organizations have been so slow to 
recognize the importance of a new communications medium like the 
Internet.  Many religious organizations use computers for producing 
newsletters or accounting and other office tasks; but very few use them 
effectively for telecommunication and internetworking.

The Internet is not like Television or Radio--it is not a broadcast 
medium.  In many ways the Internet is a more appropriate communications 
medium for religions organizations than "the media".  It is less 
expensive, not centrally controlled, and reaches persons who want to 
receive the information on a case-by-case basis.  

There is nothing to prevent a religious organization from setting up a 
fileserver on one of the commercial nets (admittedly expensive, but you 
only need one worldwide).  From there any member of your organization 
can upload and download information.  Thus you can keep a library of 
regional or local newsletters, special software, a directory of local 
groups, listings of job openings, and so on.  Many organizations already 
have this sort of thing on Bulletin Boards, but FTP archives and E-mail 
provide a less expensive method of disseminating information that can 
reach anywhere in the world, not just a local region or single area 
code.

But the promise of internetworking goes beyond the "office environment" 
of your organization--which I am sure is already well developed--to 
touch your educational and evangelical mission.  You can make 
information about your organization and its beliefs instantly available 
to 25 million people if they want it.  

In addition, there is a great need for "charity work" in preparing E-
texts.  Most E-texts are copyrighted or locked up in proprietary 
databases.  This means that they cannot be freely shared.  Free E-texts, 
especially those written in plain "vanilla" ASCII, are in great demand 
among blind people--who can use special software to convert the text to 
sound--and by persons in remote areas or the third world.

Distribution of free E-text is not limited to the Internet by any means.  
Free E-text will find its way onto thousands of bulletin boards and will 
be passed to non-networked machines by floppy disks.  Once printed out 
it can be disseminated by photocopying or any inexpensive printing 
method that uses "camera-ready" copy.  The Internet is thus the backbone 
of a worldwide distribution network that can reach anyplace 
sophisticated enough to have some sort of printing (or delivery) 
technology.

There are basically two ways to create free E-text:  you can type or 
scan in something in the public domain (75 years old or older) or you 
can create new text that has a copyright notice like this one allowing 
anyone to copy and distribute the text.  It is not enough merely to sell 
the information at a nominal cost.  Unless you allow others the right to 
further distribute information it is not really "free", even if you 
sometimes give it away at no cost on a floppy disk.  

In fact, the only *free* religious literature (and typing even this in 
was quite an accomplishment) consists of:  The _King James Bible_ 
(without Apocrypha), the _Quran_, the _Nicene Creed_, The _Book of 
Mormon_ and related texts, the Bible in Hebrew, and the _Kama Sutra_.  
Certainly the various denominations should consider releasing their 
basic liturgical texts and a selection of their religious literature in 
free E-text form.  Modern versions of the Bible are a problem because of 
copyright restrictions.  It would certainly be a boon for some 
organization to make a modern version "free" in the sense that anyone 
could copy and distribute it.
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