The Online World by Odd De Presno

=========================== This chapter is about the structure and contents of the online world. You will read about Bulletin Board systems, discussion lists, conferencing systems, online data bases, packet data services, and network services like FidoNet, i-Com, Infonet, and the Internet. From papyrus to bits and bytes ------------------------------ Around 1500 B.C., the world's first library was established in Tell el Amaran, Egypt. Eight hundred years later, the first public library opened in Athens, Greece. It took another two thousand years for the computer to be invented. The first known mention of a possible future online information service was printed in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1945. Nine years later, the Naval Ordinance Test Station opened their online search service in California (U.S.A.) The first full-text database came six years later. MEDLARS was a bibliographic database containing references to medical literature. From now on, things started to roll at a faster pace: * In 1972, DIALOG (U.S.A.) opened their Educational Resources Information Center and National Technical Information Service databases for online searching. (Appendix 1 contains infor- mation about the major online services referred to in this book.) * In 1974, Dow Jones News/Retrieval (U.S.A.) launched a financial information service for stock brokers. * In 1978, the first bulletin board was put into operation in Chicago (U.S.A.). * CompuServe (U.S.A.) launched a service for home users in 1979. The online world was born in the United States. Little happened in the rest of the world until the late 1980s. American companies and users still dominate, but they are no longer alone. Today, we can access over 5,000 public databases. They are available from more than 500,000 online systems ("host computers") all over the world. With so many online services, it is difficult to find our way through the maze of offerings. This book therefore starts with a map of the online world. The structure and contents of the online world ---------------------------------------------- The online world can be described as a cake with multiple layers, where the information sources are the bottom layer. You - the user - are the marzipan figure on the top. The online world contains the following tiers: (1) Database producers and information providers (2) Online service companies (3) Gateways and networks (4) The services (5) The user interface (6) The data transport services (7) The User.