The matrix
by John S. Quarterman · first published 1989
15mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2012–2025first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
An introduction and reference to worldwide data-communications networks.
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For those interested in early online systems, I strongly recommend John S. Quarterman's The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide: https://archive.org/details/matrixcomputerne0000quar/mode/2u... I lifted a copy off a friend who was thinning his book herd a decade or so back.…
on “2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone to read” ↗For a vastly better take on the origin story of the Internet, based on the work of someone who was there at the time, documenting it at the time, I'd recommend without reservation John Quarterman's The Matrix. First published in 1990, just as the WWW was emerging (and failing to make the book), it was revised in 1997 (the link I'm giving here). The earlier book does discuss extensive sets of networks of…
on “The Internet origin story you know is wrong” ↗…systems" as they were often called at the time) were like, as well as a bunch of technical background on the actual data networks and protocols of the time, I'd highly recommend John S. Quarterman's The Matrix, first published in 1989. That is, it predates the World Wide Web, and was only about six years after "The Internet" largely (weasel-word conspicuously noted) replaced "ARPANET" as the designation for…
on “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)” ↗…whether that's done well or poorly. There are a number of earlier networking ideas which might resurface or be adapted for new use, and a survey of history might be useful here. (John S. Quarterman's The Matrix, 1990, is a fascinating time-capsule exploration of these just at the cusp of the modern Internet -- the World Wide Web does not even make mention, though "The Web, a national Canadian nonprofit conferencing…
on “I Miss Microsoft Encarta” ↗…http://www.worldcat.org/title/internetworking-computer-syste... Prentice Hall seems right for the publisher, though I'm not positive on the title. Date seems a year or three early. Possibly John Quartman's The Matrix, 1990, which sounds closer to the right date: https://www.amazon.com/Matrix-Computer-Networks-Conferencing...
on “One Step Closer to a Closed Internet” ↗You might want to think about what it was that, in a highly-competitive landscape of networking options, lead to TCP/IP and BGP succeeding where other options didn't. I've just unearthed my copy of The Matrix, John S. Quarterman's exploration of "computer networks and conferencing systems worldwide". It was published in 1990, just on the cusp of the breakout of the Internet (there's a late 1990s revised edition…
on “Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm” ↗…active I'm not sure (I suspect probably also ~20%, which means it all washes out). At the time of the September that Never Ended, Usenet was ~1m total users (based on data from John Quarterman's The Matrix (1990) citing DEC researcher Brian Reid, which I've referenced in earlier HN comments). I believe AOL at the time was at least of an equivalent magnitude, if not several times this.
on “Exploring Mastodon” ↗…attempts at manipulation. But as a whole, and compared to other platforms, the bottom's not fallen out, and the site's not become a complete cesspit. Usenet was small. I've a copy of John Quarterman's The Matrix, an overview of online conversation forums and networks published in 1990 (it covers Usenet, it does not include WWW or Gopher). That includes DEC's estimates of Usenet activity. The total population…
on “Disqus, a dark commenting system” ↗I love John Perry Barlow's use of language. As you guessed, he was referring to Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu hypertext project. "The Matrix" was a term used by researcher John Quarterman (and the title of Quarterman's seminal book) to designate the totality of all the world's computer networks, which in 1991 were not all linked together (FidoNet,…
on “The WorldWideWeb application is now available as an alpha release (1991)” ↗I've yet to get to that, though a copy of John S. Quarterman's The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, a happenstance acquisition from a friend clearing out their very comprehensive book collection, has proved quite illuminating. Published in 1990,…
on “RFCs: A 50th anniversary dive (2018)” ↗…Summary Reports", as of April, 1988, there were 381 newsgroups, 57,979 messages, an estimated 141,000 readers, of a total user population on connected hosts of 880,000. Cited in John S. Quarterman, The Matrix, 1990.
on “Google Groups has banned comp.lang.tcl” ↗I was aware of Eric's Usenet activity / participation reports, which are included in John S. Quarterman's The Matrix, a very early 1990s survey of "computer networks and conferencing systems" (it predates the WWW). I think I was vaguely aware of his work on Scribe though that had slunk off into dark recesses of my…
on “Adobe's co-founder John Warnock dies at 82” ↗…institutions, tech companies, government agencies, or select military units. Total Usenet participation in April 1988 were 140,000 readers, by Eric Reid's DEC surveys, as cited in John S. Quarterman's The Matrix (1990): <https://archive.org/details/matrixcomputerne0000quar/page/24...> Spinning up an NNTP group for internal company communications, for a family group, or for a (sufficently tech-savvy) organisation…
on “Google Groups ending support for Usenet” ↗…where some uniformity of tools, platforms, and cultures (tin, Unix, and largely uni-based participants) tended to cohere. I've cited on HN Brian Reid's Usenet activity surveys (from John Quarterman's The Matrix,[1] an early exploration of what we'd now consider social networks) several times on HN[2]. As of 1988, there were 381 newsgrous, 1,933 articles/day, 4.4 MiB/day of traffic, 7,800 hosts, and 141,000…
on “The best way to have complex discussions?” ↗…http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm Documented as well by Howard Rhiengold in 1993: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/18/Th... An account is also included in John Quarterman's proto-history of the Net, The Matrix (1990): The most striking use of the Matrix [Quarterman's term for online communications networks, Ed.] occurred to late to be described elswhere in this book. When the Chinese govenrment cleared Tianamen…
on “Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’” ↗