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Welcome to the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet.
The genesis of the Big Dummy's Guide was a few informal conversations, which included Mitch Kapor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Steve Cisler of Apple Computer, Inc. in June of 1991. With the support of Apple Computer, EFF hired a writer (Adam Gaffin) and actually took on the project in September of 1991.
The idea was to write a guide to the Internet for folks who had little or no experience with network communications. We intended to post this Guide to "the Net" in ASCII and HyperCard formats and to give it away on disk, as well as have a print edition available for a nominal charge. With the consolidation of our offices to Washington, DC, we were able to put the Guide on a fast track. You're looking at the realization of our dreams -- version one of the Guide. At the time I'm writing this, we're still fishing around for a book publisher, so the hard-copy version has not yet been printed. We're hoping to update this Guide on a regular basis, so please feel free to send us your comments and corrections.
EFF would like to thank the folks at Apple, especially Steve Cisler of the Apple Library, for their support of our efforts to bring this Guide to you. We hope it helps you open up a whole new world, where new friends and experiences are sure to be yours.
Enjoy!
Shari Steele<ssteele@eff.org> Director of Legal Services and Community Outreach Electronic Frontier Foundation July 15, 1993
August 27, 1993G'day, folks!
I came across this guide while reading "EFFector Online Volume 5 No. 15, 8/20/1993" (A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ISSN 1062-9424), that is available via comp.org.eff.news and immediately decided to get my hands on it. After browsing through the raw ASCII text file, I thought that such a useful thing, should have a more beautiful "face" (and fewer "bugs").
As Shari points out, the EFF is still "fishing for a publisher." In other words, it's far from being clear when this guide will be available as hard copy, unless you want to print out the "buggy" ASCII file. Thus, I started over to make the bulk a Texinfo document, loosely modelled after Brendan Kehoe's Zen and the Art of the Internet, originally written for Widener University's, Computer Science Department, and later published as:
Kehoe, B.P. (1992) Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet. 2nd Edition (July). Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 112 pages. The 1st Edition, (February, 2nd) is still available via anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.widener.edu and many other Internet archives.
It was the first comprehensive book on the Internet available.
(Despite the "traditional" postings in
news.announce.newusers originated by ex-Net.god
Gene Spafford
Situation has changed dramatically, since. More and more books get into the stores, and hopefully facilitate the life of "newbies" on the Net. Just to mention two IMHO excellent examples:
Krol, E. (1992) The Whole Internet: Catalog & User's Guide. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA. 376 pages.LaQuey, T. and Ryer, J.C. (1992) The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, MA. 208 pages.
But, "the Net" in its present form would have never been evolved without the hundreds of un-paid voluntary efforts (de facto Internet still is run on a voluntary basis), so here are my two cents: The output of several night-shift editing sessions.
"The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet is now available at your local laser printer..."
See ya on the Net!
p.s.: Although this guide is almost complete, and I really, really, honestly, don't have the time to go over it once again, feel free to report "bugs", or any inconsistencies you find. Drop me "more quotes," further additions, requests for moral support, or "whatever-you-want"... Just an e-mail away.
p.p.s.: I'd like to say a BIG "thank you" to Shari Steele, for
her immediate excitement on this project. Adam Gaffin, who generously
accepted my changes to his initial ASCII version.
Howard Rheingold, who let me include his article, now serving as
superb afterword of long-year first hand experience in cyberspace
(and yes, I mentioned your new book, Howard ;-)).
And, Last not least, thanks to Bruce Sterling, who also "gave away"
an article for free.
Again, Bernd Raichle
Additional thanks to Brendan Kehoe
September 22, 1993G'day, folks! II
Some more nights have passed, and "GNU Info" format is fully supported,
now. You can use either Emacs in INFO mode, or just GNU's info
browser (also available as xinfo for the X window system):
type `info -f bdgtti-1.02.info' and read "Dummy's" online in
hypertextual fashion.
But since edition 1.01, "Dummy's" not only features an "Info" version.
It also comes with HTML support, i.e. the HyperText Markup Language format,
that is used by the World-Wide Web project
(see section Gophers, WAISs and the World-Wide Web for some more ideas on this).
The bdgtti-1.02*.html files can thus be browsed using the
WWW tools: from within xmosaic,
e.g. load `bdgtti-1.02_toc.html', and there you go!
Finally, some more folks have helped along the way.
Many, thanks to Lionel Cons
perl to run this program.)
Ingo Dreßler
"The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet is now available in a variety of easily convertible formats, and at your local laser printer..."
Enjoy the trip!
Jörg Heitkötter<joke@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> Systems Analysis Research Group, LSXI Department of Computer Science University of Dortmund, Germany 27 September 1993
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." --- Walt Disney "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." --- Sir Isaac Newton "A work of art is never finished, only abandoned." --- Anonymous
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