INFORMATION LEAFLET NO. 8

New methods of communication are developing every day. You can see e-mail and the internet as too difficult, too technical... But you can see the new media as a new opportunity to work together as well. The point we want to make is not that it is wonderful and great and that it will cure all our communication problems. It will not. But it may be quite useful.

The internet, as most computer devices, was first developed for the army. In the United States the technology was used to keep communication open between the different army bases and research centers. After the army, the universities got a hold of it. That is when free-spirited people discovered that the internet is a way to escape authorities, to escape the boundaries of distance. When you communicate via the computer it can be unclear where information is coming from, who is sending it and who controls it. The internet is free. Not only as in'liberated' but also like in 'without cost'. What you pay is for the phone and for the provider... Nobody rules internet, so nobody can take any money for it. The spirit of internet is also that it is build by its users. This means that everyone tries not only to GET something from the internet, but also tries to give something back, information, software, etc. Now so many people use internet, that the atmosphere is changing again. E.g.: commercial companies are discovering the possibilities of internet. What it will be in the future can not be predicted...

WHAT IS E-MAIL?
E-mail stands for electronic mail, mail that is not send through the regular post-office but via telephone wires. The technical details of e-mail are more or less like those of a fax-machine. A message is translated into tone and sent to another unit that translates the tones back to a message. The difference between faxing and e-mail is that you don't have to call directly. There is no need for a fax machine on the other end of the line.
When you want to use e-mail, you need a computer and a modem. On the computer you have to install certain software to handle the electronic messages. If you want to use the Internet in another way, you need software for that also. You need to get in touch with a provider, a company that provides Internet access to its customers.
When you send an e-mail message, it is sent directly from your computer via a modem to a provider. The provider has a big computer that is linked to the Internet 24 hours a day. This computer will then send the message to another big computer . This computer receives the message and puts it in a special place, the 'mailbox', that is reserved for the person you have sent a message to. This person can get his/her mail whenever he/she wants.

INTERNET AND OTHER NETS
The Internet is not an individual network, but an agreement of network operators to connect themselves. So it consists of big computers that run their own network, but are also linked to telephone lines 24 hours a day. All these different networks are full of information. Imagine for example what you could do with all the entries of libraries around the world... Almost all libraries are connected to the Internet, and so are most big newspapers and tv-stations in Western Europe and the United States. Of course you will not be able to access every single piece of information directly, but at least you will know where to search for it.
Internet with a capital 'I' is not the only network. There are other networks that are again a combination of networks. One of those other inter networks is Fidonet. This is based primarily in Eastern Europe. Luckily all these nets are connected in one way or another, so it is possible to send mail via Internet to a Fidonet user and vice versa. When you send e-mail you use one of these inter networks. E-mail uses the big computers in the network to transfer your messages. When we speak of Internet, we usually mean all the networks. Internet is the biggest one, which is why we use its name as a generic term.


WHY E-MAIL, WHY INTERNET?
Internet and e-mail are not just scary and strange. They can be very useful and actually improve our communication.
The most important reason why it is useful to use electronic mail is because it is cheap. The reason is that you only use a limited amount of time on the phone line and this time is spent on a local, not international tariffs. Just as an example: writing a letter within Europe costs 1.00 DM but it will take up to a week to arrive at its destination. To phone and tell the other person an equivalent of two pages text takes some ten minutes, this will cost you approximately 10 DM. Using e-mail you pay maybe 0,50 DM and it arrives in seconds.
Another valid reason to use e-mail and the Internet is to avoid using a lot of paper. You don't have to print envelopes, lick stamps etc. You don't need to spend a lot of time and money to mail something to every person separately, in one stroke of your keyboard you can send something to everybody that you wanted to reach ... and has a computer and Internet access.
Internet can be used for more than just mail. There are possibilities to send files, programmes, images, and even voice. These are all done with different software programmes and systems. One of the possibilities of the Internet is the World Wide Web or WWW.
In general you can find all the software you need on Internet itself. Your provider should also be able to provide you with the most basic software. When you use Macintosh, you need also a control panel called MacTCP or TCP/IP. The most commonly used programme for WWW is 'Netscape Navigator', both for Macintosh and Windows machines. For e-mail, which is simpler, the most used computer programmes are Pegasus Mail for Windows and Eudora for Macintosh. There is also software that helps you download files from a source on the Internet, they are called 'FTP-programmes'. The most widely used are Fetch for Macintosh and WS_FTP for Windows. What these programmes can help you do is explained later in this leaflet.


WWW
The World Wide Web, also called WWW or the Web is the most visible and visual part of Internet. It can be accessed easily, with software that you can find on the Web itself. The Web is mostly used for information gathering. On WWW you can find places or 'sites' where people show information. In reality these are placed in a server-computer that is with a provider and is linked on to Internet 24 hours a day. These sites provide you with all different kinds of information.
The most important difference with normal printed information is that you do not read from the first to the last page. On the first page you will find references to information that is more specific and you can access that information by activating that word in the text, if it is marked by a different colour and/or underlined. It means that information on a UNITED page situated on a computer in Amsterdam could be connected to information of the Institute of Race Relations in Great Britain and you would only have to click with your mouse on the marked word on the UNITED page to make your computer get the information in Great Britain. While you're doing this, of course you still only pay local phone rates.
The Web contains a lot of graphics that require a powerful computer. But the Netscape software that is most widely used to access WWW has an option to skip pictures and only display text. Still, you need a pretty powerful computer, one that can use Windows or a Macintosh to run Netscape. You can recognise a WWW address by the letters http, that stands for 'hyper text transfer protocol' , and is followed by a colon ':' and two slashes '//' and the letters www. The way these addresses are written has to do with an agreement that has been made a long time ago. There are no real reasons why it is like that. One example of a WWW address: http://www.lycos.com. This is the site where you can find a 'search engine' that can help you in searching for information on the Web. There exist other engines as well. You can find them on the back of this leaflet.


CONFERENCES/NEWSGROUPS
After e-mail and WWW, conferences/news groups are probably the most used application of electronic communication. The functioning of a conference or news group is roughly the same as a normal bulletin board that you can find in supermarkets and schools everywhere. Messages can be put on the board, other people can read them and someone can keep the messages up to date.
There are conferences/news groups on almost all subjects that you can think of from a group discussing only issues related to John Lennon to groups on global warming and sexism. You can just look at the 'postings' in a news group but you can also subscribe to one. When you subscribe to a news group/conference you ask them to send you all the new postings at your request. Your computer tells you how much new postings there are and you can then ask it to retrieve them. It is also possible to publish in (several) news groups. Mostly there is a special e-mail address where you can send your articles, etc. In some newsgroups there is moderator who sees to it that only relevant messages are posted, in most there is none. The ones that have a moderator are usually called differently - like LISTSERV or Majordomo - and you usually get all the information via e-mail.
For NGO's it might be interesting to actually have a news group for themselves. In such a conference it is possible to exchange specific information. Keep in mind that a conference is public unless you have a very special agreement with your provider. Normally, anyone can read what is posted in a news group.

BULLETIN BOARDS ( OR BBSs)
Bulletin Boards are now somewhat outdated. They were used before the Internet was what it is now. A Bulletin Board is a computer connected to a phone line where you can read and post information. The computer is not connected to a network, so you have to call directly to the computer. This means that you pay more telephone costs. Bulletin Boards are still used a lot by the extreme right as they are easier to secure and protect, as they can ask for multiple pass words etcetera.

E-MAIL ADRESSES
E-mail is sent to a mailbox that has an Internet address. There are different ways of addressing, but the most common is Internet domain name addressing. In such an address there is a clear order. It looks like this:

united@antenna.nl (non existend e-mail address)

user identification AT main domain COUNTRY CODE
united @ antenna nl

The user identification is the identification of the individual user of that mailbox. UNITED uses simply 'united' as its user identification, but it can be almost anything. The '@', sometimes called 'monkey tail' is actually short for 'at' and tells you that the user is to be found at a specific place or 'main domain'. The main domain consists of at least two parts. One part is the name of the provider , also called the domain name. For UNITED this is 'antenna' as Antenna is our provider. The last part of the address is formed by the country-code in Europe and by the kind of provider in the United States. UNITED has a provider in the Netherlands, so the address ends with 'nl'. The last part of the address in the United States is formed by e.g. com (for company/commercial), org (for organisations, esp. non-governmental), edu (for educational, esp. universities) etc.
For Fidonet users it works a little differently. They use numbers instead of letters for the user identification. The address can be transcribed for Internet users, but this is quite complicated. The smartest thing to do is to ask Fidonet users to give you the address you can use from the Internet.


ON-LINE AND OFF-LINE
When you work with a computer and a modem, there are two ways of working: on-line and off-line. In brief this means that your computer is either connected via a phone line during the whole time that you work (on-line) or you only connect for a short time to retrieve or send information (off-line).
In general it is much better to work off-line as this does not cost you as much money. You prepare messages and such on your own computer with your own software and only connect to the provider to transfer these messages. The same goes when you receive messages or information via Internet. Your computer puts the information in its memory and shuts the phone line off till you need it again. Then you can look at the information without being connected through a phone line.
Sometimes off-line work is not possible due to the provider or to the fact that you don't have the required software. On-line working means that the burden of having the right software and a powerful computer is on the provider. You only need a very simple computer and a modem. But, as already mentioned, it can be expensive in phone costs as you need to stay connected for a longer time. Most of the time this also means that the phone line has to be of a reasonably good quality...

PROVIDERS
A provider is the company that owns the central computer that you use to connect to the wide world of Internet. Their computer is very powerful and is always connected to the Internet. Providers come in different shapes and forms. Some have an idealistical origin, some are very commercial. The prices that you pay for their services vary considerably. Before choosing a provider it is vital to check out prices of different providers as well as the background and ask around about the kind of service they offer.
A provider is very powerful. The people working there handle (and can see) all the mail that goes out and comes in and handle (or don't handle!) all the problems that might arise. The power of providers is now getting weaker as there are more providers, but in general, you are totally dependent on them for your mail, your connection to Internet and WWW, etc.
So before deciding, check out: prices, services (help available), background (who owns it?), kind of connections (Fidonet, Internet, just e-mail mailbox). Check what kind of software you can use and if they can provide you with a starter pack.
In general a provider helps you in every step of the way of getting started with electronic communication. If they don't, get another provider.

ELECTRONIC MAILING-LISTS
You can use e-mail to send messages not just to one person but to a whole list of persons, as you would when you use a normal mailing list. The good thing about using an e-mail mailing list is that you don't have to copy the message, you don't have to put the addresses on the envelopes, you let your computer and the computer of your provider do the job. You have to ask your provider about the precise ways of doing this, as there are many different ways of making a mailing list.


SECURITY
Security on the Internet is poor. Most information is public. It is also quite easy to intercept information. Even e-mail is easy to infiltrate. This can be done especially where the e-mail is transferred - at your provider or at the recipients' provider. It is possible, for example, to change someones message on a conference without letting other people know you did it. Can you imagine what would happen if you would just delete the word 'not' a few times from a message?
The only way of making your e-mail safe is to encrypt it. There are several computer programmes that do this. The best until now is PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy. Note that it is called 'pretty good' not 'perfect'. Even with PGP you cannot be absolutely sure. PGP is easy to use and you can get it with most of the providers in Europe or with computer freak friends.
In general: information that needs to be a secret is not safe on paper and it is not safe on the Internet. If you have security problems with your normal mail or if your phones are tapped, you probably will have similar problems with your e-mail. If you don't, you probably won't have such problems with e-mail either.


E-MAIL MESSAGES
E-mail messages can look impressive and technical. The reason for that is simple; the addressing. On top of your message you find a lot of gibberish that tells you who sent the message, through which providers it went and who received the message also. If you understand that, an e-mail message becomes pretty obvious.
An e-mail message consists of an address, a body text and sometimes a signature and an attachment. This is an example of the way a message might look:

X-POP3-Rcpt: united@antenna.nl
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 17:08:24
From: yap@utcluj.ro
Mime-Version: 1.0
To UNITED <united@antenna.nl>
Cc: aslir@pcnet.pcnet.ro
Bcc: nbk@dds.nl
Subject: PHARE-project

(Text)

Don't worry about the first line. It tells you what kind of programme has been used by the provider in sending the message. It is only interesting if there are problems. Then your provider might want to know.
On the date-line you can find the date and time the message was sent.
'From' tells you the e-mail address of the sender.
The line that says Mime 1.0 in this example tells you which method was used to make beeps out of your text. Again this is not particularly interesting unless something goes wrong. Most computers can handle all kinds of methods nowadays.
The addressee or recipient can be found behind the word 'to'.
'Cc' means 'copies to'. You don't have to send one message again and again, you can send a copy to anyone you like.
'Bcc' means almost the same as 'cc' but it does not show up at the other end. This is a smart option when you also send your mailings to private e-mail addresses. Otherwise these addresses are shown to all recipients of the mailing.
In the subject line you need to put the subject of the letter. You should fill it in, as people who get lots of letters need to know very quickly which letter has which subject.

Be careful when sending out your info via e-mail: it has to be in a very easy format, only letters, no pictures and no lay-out! This means it is not as attractive as on paper. You have to think whether it has to be attractive or whether it has to be fast and cheap. In e-mail you cannot use national accents. No ü, ç or é, nor î or ã. Also: be sure that the information is public! Any confidential information should be kept off the Internet.


FAQs: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The Internet was started as a way to exchange information. This is still its most important reason for being. This means that almost all questions you have can be answered on the net. But more importantly; most questions have already been answered. When you go on the net, you will find that most newsgroups and conferences as well as a lot of Websites, especially those where you can find software, have a list of Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ. If you read those first you won't have to ask a question for the hundredth time to the same person.


NETIQUETTE
It has been a long time since the net was only used by people who knew exactly what they were doing. New users come on the net every day. This is sometimes very annoying to the older users. That is why we put in a few points as to how to behave on the net:

Do:
read the FAQs, put a subject in the subject line, sign your messages.
Do not:
send mail to people who didn't ask for it, don't change other peoples messages, don't use only capital letters in your message (this is considered as yelling on the Internet), don't quote an entire text in a reply of one sentence.
Keeping up: free ware and share ware

Technologies and computer programmes are changing fast. The face of the Web is changing all the time. The latest developments are using different frames within one page, different information sources next to each other. There will be more sound, more moving pictures etc. on the Web soon. You will need new software to access those pages to their full potential. That is the bad news.
The good news is that most software connected with Internet is available via Internet. It is possible to download programmes from specific sites on the Internet for free or almost for free. Free ware is absolutely free, it can be copied, used and copied again without paying. Share ware is free, but if you like it you are asked to send a small amount to the programmer, usually $ 10-15. You don't HAVE to do that, but it is a good way of keeping smart programmers happy and productive.
You can download those programmes with different kinds of programmes. Try them out as there is quite a difference in the time they take to do the job. The most widely used are Fetch for Macintosh and WS_FTP for Windows. Most of these computer programmes work with FTP or File Transfer Protocol. While you are transferring these programmes off a website, you need to keep the phone line open and free. Which also means also that bad phone lines may interfere with the transmission.
All the programmes mentioned under 'Why e-mail, why Internet' are on the net and can be downloaded with FTP software. Most of those programmes have been compressed, or been made small, so they have to be decompressed or 'unwrapped' before you can use them. This means that you need a small programme, like 'Stuff It' for Macintosh or 'PKZip' for Windows to unpack them after downloading them. You can find most software via a World Wide Website with the address 'http://www.shareware.com'. This site contains addresses of most other sites available for downloading shareware and freeware.


ELECTRONIC ACTION
E-mail and the Internet can help us in our activities in several ways. One way that has been suggested, but that we do not support is 'bombarding' an e-mail address with an enormous amount of megabytes. While bombarding a fax machine or a real mailbox with letters can be a good action, this doesn't work very well with e-mail. If you don't do it carefully, the receiver can bomb you back. Of course it is different if messages of support or protest are coming in from all different sources. Then it might show the force of the movement.
The biggest advantage of using e-mail, newsgroups and the World Wide Web is that it can provide you with information that you can never get via the papers or via television. It is also a way of publishing stuff that you could never get into papers or on the television. When making use of the Internet and electronic mail in an effective way, you can bypass all the conventional media. You can publish and receive the latest information on actions that are going on. There is almost no delay in time. That is what happened at the Beijing Women's Convention. There the latest news was put on Internet by participants of the NGO shadow conference and as such it did not have to pass the Chinese censorship.
You can publish information on a web-page/home page/web site. On such a site you can publish all kinds of info. When you do that; make sure that it includes an e-mail address and/or an (application) form for more information. Find out exactly what the provider charges you for. There are providers that charge for the information that is downloaded from the page, some charge for the amount of megabytes on your page, etc.

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UNITED for Intercultural Action
European network against nationalism, racism, fascism
and in support of migrants and refugees
Postbus 413, NL-1000 AK Amsterdam, Netherlands
phone +31-20-6834778, fax +31-20-6834582
info@unitedagainstracism.org, http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/