Electronic Comunication for Anarchy

Date: 12 sep 1994

After five english ECO's, here is the one and only ECA: Electronic Comunication for Anarchy. It's purpose is to give an impression about what happened around electronic mail, internet and conferences during the Alternative Forum.

INTERNET WORKSHOPS

In the main hall, there was a 'live internet connection' available to the participants every day from 9 am till 5 pm. Some people used it to make a connection with thhe computer in their own country. This could easily be done because the internet connection was fro free. For instance, people that are used to send and receive email messages via the pegasus computer in australia, could make a connection and acces their own mailboxes. People who use GreenNet in the UK could do the same.

GreenNet had an account opened for the Alternative Forum, called 'guest19', so that the participants of the FA could experience what kind of information can be found on APC conferences.

Workshops on the Internet have been given on thursday and friday afternoon. They where visited by one group of five, one group of seven, a group of three and a Dutch radio reporter.

The workshop demonstrated how you can use internet (=direct link with all other computers in the world that use this system) to:

Connect to other computers
We connected to 'gn.apc.org' (GreenNet), as described above, and to 'rs.internic.net' (a public address directory) and we tried to connect to 'worldbank.org', but that was, of course, impossible. The worldbank has blocked their information for users of the internet...
Acces information via GOPHER
Gopher is a system that displays a list of topics on the screen. If you choose one of them, you either get the information that it describes, or you are automatically connected with another computer that displays a new list of more detailed topics. In the workshop, we made a connection with the World Bank Public Information Center, where they had summaries of all their GEF projects and EIA-reports and Economic Sector Reports. If one of these summaries looked interesting to you, you can order the entire report by mail (stupidly enough not through the internet !!!).
Find Adresses of people all over the world.
If you make a connection with 'rs.internic.net' then there are a number of commands that enable you to find out about users from some other systems. Not all users, because every system decides for itself if it wants to publish their users addresses in this 'public directory'. GreenNet users can not be found in this way.

The command 'WAIS worldbank' gave us a list of system operators of the worldbank computers. In the list, we found two personal addresses, (larry@worldbank.org and kbarrett@worldbank.org). We did also got their telephone numbers and office addresses. But, as expected, when we wanted to use FINGER to find out when they had last used their computers, it was impossible to get this information.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to show other intersting features of the Internet, such as:

Internet Relay Chat
The IRC is an ongoing live 'chatbox' between internet users all over the world. If you type a line in your computer, all other users can see waht you write, and you can see what all other users are 'typing'. In that way, you can talk with other people that can be miles away about culture, religion, the environment... but most people on the IRC still talk about games, dating and sex. (The IRC is heavily dominated by USA-teenagers who have free acces to internet through their university...)
World Wide Web
The WWW is basically a gopher system, but it has a very nice graphic interface (=what you see on the screen) and you can handle it with a mouse instead of typing in (mysterious) commands (like wais, finger, ftp...). WWW is also able to show pictures, short movies and to produce sound. If you have enough money, you can have your own WWW server (=provider) and put all material about the Foro on it: speeches, announcements, reports, press releases (just like in APC conferences), but also pictures, short video clippings, radio interviews... A press agency (like Reuters) could then browse through all that information and 'download' parts of the radio interview and the video !

WINDMAIL

WINDMAIL is the name of a package that enables you to write and read your email messages without being connected to the host computer. (=central email computer like GreenNet, Antenna or Nodo50). In this way you save a lot of money (because you use the telephone less) and you have more overview of the messages that you are sending and receiving. WINDMAIL has been put together by Michael Pollman (Antenna Netherlans).

APC-CONFERENCES

APC maintains a worldwide system of 'public conferences' on the Internet. A conference is a place where people and organisations can put text files about a certain subject. Other people then can read the text and, if they want 'download' it to their own computer. Many press releases can be found in conferences, as well as documentation and announcements of actions. There are about 1000 conferences on APC networks. One of them is 'act.wb94' which contains information about the Alternative Forum. You can find the speeches that have been held in the plenaries, reports about the worldbank, action reports and all the ECO's that have been published. Most information in 'act.wb94' is in English and in Spanish. Other conferences that you might be interested in are: 'toxic.hazard' (about toxic waste trade), 'motherearth' (about the Walk Across Europe for a Nuclear Free World 1995), 'rainfor.worldbank', 'coc.brettonwds', 'mlateral.news' and 'worldbank.bust'.

TRAININGS AND NETWORKING

About 50 people from different countries have been trained in using electronic mail during the Foro Alternativo. Amongst them where people from India, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain and Australia. More experienced users got a small training in Waffle or in WINDMAIL, so they could start sending and receiving messages from their home organisations.

People from GreenNet (UK), Euskalnet and Altercom (Basque Country), Nodo50 (Madrid) and Antenna (NL), have met eachother, worked together, and exchanged experiences, and this will have a great impact on the future of Spanish E-mail connections.

SPECIAL CONNECTIONS

A Czech group has been making connection directly with their office, and in that way they retrieved urgent information 9 hours earlier then with the regular system we have been using. The price of this connection was about the same as a one page fax, but contained the information of about 5 pages.

At one time, we have asked a friend in the Netherlands to phone us (so it wouldn't cost FA94 anything) and to send us a program that we needed urgently. The connection lasted 5 minutes and the program worked perfectly.

NUMBERS

Since the conference has started, until now (saturday 1 october 22.00 hour) 198 messages have been put in the conference act.wb94 on apc and being read by thousands of people on the network.

40 people had an account on 'WINDMAIL' (connection with NODO50) and where able to send and receive messages directly (with a 3-9 hour delay) to and from their home organisations and friends.

In the first week, about 400 email messages have been exchanged between participants and their home offices !

THANKS

Thanks to Russell from GreenNet, Mario and Zuzen from Euskalnet, Alberto from NODO50, and Ace from Antenna, who made it possible after many hours of hard work to have an electronic connection with the outside world. Thanks to Miles and Paco, who cared for uploading all the texts from the FORO in spanish and english to the APC confernce 'act.wb94'. Thanks to all others who where involved in the organisation of the Foro Alternativo and made it possible to have computers, a room, telephones, faxes and copies.

By Ace Suares