Philos-Surfing The Internet

Introduction

Most people will by now have read an article somewhere about the Internet or the Information Superhighway, and probably have got the hint that it is a Good Thing. But what has it got to do with philosophy? This article will briefly describe what can be done with the Internet and how this benefits philosophers and people interested in philosophy. At the end will be given information about philosophy on the Internet and details for further reading.

Put crudely, the Internet is a lot of computers all over the world linked together. Individuals can join the Internet by communicating over the telephone with one of these computers from PCs at home. There are two basic ways of using the Internet: as a mailing service and a library service. After a brief explanation of these services, their use for philosophers will more fully be explained.

Internet Mail and Mailing Lists

The Internet may be used as a mailing service by sending messages between computers. The PC software for a mailing service is free: for Windows it is "Pegasus" and for the Macintosh it is "Eudora". At the simplest level mail is just typing a message into your PC, entering the electronic "address" of the computer you wish to send the message to, and pressing the button to send it. A few minutes later a copy of the message arrives at the other PC for the other person to read.

In addition to this simple way of mailing from one computer to another it is possible to send mail to many computers - using what are called lists. Sending a message to a list automatically copies the message to everyone subscribed to the list, and once subscribed to a list individuals receive all mail sent to the list. They can themselves send mail to the list, which is then copied to everyone on the list. On the Internet there are thousands of "lists": Marxism lists, science fiction lists, humour lists, Michael Ball lists and, yes, philosophy lists - lists on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, academic philosophy etc etc. If you want to join in a debate on Nietzsche, subscribe to the Nietzsche list and you will automatically get a copy of everything sent to the Nietzsche list. You may want to just read what other people write and not join in yourself - that’s fine! Or you may want to mail someone who sent a message to the list - you can mail them directly using their electronic mailing address, or you may want to send a message to the list yourself and have the message copied to everyone on the list. You can join as many or as few lists as you like, and they’re mostly free.

One final point about lists. Some lists are moderated and other lists are open. Open lists automatically mail everyone on the list the moment a message is sent to the list. This means literally anything could be copied to everyone on the list. A moderated list does not automatically mail every message, but passes it first to the list moderator to be checked. After the moderator has read the message, they will then decide if it is suitable to be copied to the list subscribers - if it is unsuitable it will not be sent. Even through open lists do not have moderators, there will always be someone ‘in charge’ of the list - the administrator. If necessary you can always mail the list administrator if you have any questions about the list.

Internet "Library" Services

The second use of the Internet is as a library. It is possible to look into computers on the Internet and see what they contain. They might hold other computer programs (such as the free Internet mailing software described above), the archives of list discussions (all messages sent to a list are archived so people can look back over what has been discussed), or the more traditional contents of libraries: documents, articles, papers or books, but stored on a computer.

The Internet "library" has some important differences to traditional libraries. Firstly no one actually "joins" the library, anyone who can access the Internet can access the documents and books. Secondly no one ever ‘removes’ a book or document from the library - they are always copied. But there is one more difference between a traditional library and the Internet library, and this one causes headaches.

Unlike a library where all books are neatly categorised and sorted alphabetically, the Internet is just a vast mass of computers connected to other computers. There is no "central" list or index of where things are. Consequently a lot of effort has gone into helping people wander about (or "surf") the net to enable them to discover what is available. One way to do this is to first find one location for philosophy (for example from the information at the end of this article) and use this as your starting point. The location you have will then contain information about other locations, which in turn will tell you about more locations for and so on. A more sophisticated method is to use Gophers. These are simple guides to point people from one location to other useful locations, like signposts. More sophisticated still is the "Web" (or WWW - "World Wide Web") which allows the net to be surfed just by a few clicks of a mouse.

There are lots of philosophy books on the Internet and it is possible to copy any items from the computer where they reside down onto your own PC for free. More details are provided at the end of this article.

Internet Discussion Groups

Discussion groups fall between the two categories described above. They aren’t exactly mail and aren’t exactly library services. They are like mail in that people send messages to groups, but instead of the message being sent out to individuals it remains on the computer and members of the discussion group go to the message to read it.

List Information

The copying of a message to everyone on a list is performed by a list server. Many lists can be controlled by one list server, and it is possible to send a special message to the list server to find out all the lists it controls. Here are some addresses of list servers:

majordomo@world.std.com

listserv@ubvm.bitnet

listserv@suvm.bitnet

listserv@sivm.bitnet

listserv@liverpool.ac.uk

listserv@yorkvm1.bitnet

To obtain a listserver’s list of lists, send a message to the listserver (i.e. to one of the addresses above) with no title/subject and a single word lists in the message. The server will send you back a message containing a list of all the lists it supports, sometimes with a short description against a list. The majordomo server is particularly good, containing over 300 separate lists, including philosophy lists (see below). If you want more information about a list, send the listserver another special message (again with no title/subject): info ’listname’ where ‘listname’ is the name of the list you want more information about. For example if I wanted more information about the heidegger (capitals often aren’t used for list names) list, I would send the message info heidegger. The listserver would then send me a message containing a brief description of the list and information on how to subscribe to it.

There follows details of a few of the philosophy lists available.

philos-l

This is a UK philosophy list for philosophers (waged or unwaged). Stephen Clarke (srlclarke@liverpool.ac.uk) the administrator describes the list as "the style is anarchy tempered by despotism (mine)".

To subscribe to the list send a special message to the address listserv@liverpool.ac.uk. Omit the subject and send a one line message

subscribe philos-l Jan Bloggs

(replace Jan Bloggs with your own name).

philosop

This is a UK academic philosophy list. Nollaig MacKenzie (GL250011@Orion.YorkU.CA) the administrator said of the list:

(a) we’d like philosop to be a tool for exchanging as much useful information relevant to academic philosophy (broadly conceived), with as little load on subscribers mailboxes as is practical.

(b) we use the filelist a lot. At any time there will be several hundred files stored. An ideal way of announcing a conference is: send a brief message to all subscribers saying that a file - as big as you like - is on the filelist.

To subscribe to the list send your request to listserv@yorkvm1.bitnet. Omit the subject and send a one line message

subscribe philosop

sophia

This is an ancient philosophy list also run by Stephen Clarke. Subscription details are the same as for philos-l, except the one line message should read

subscribe sophia Jan Bloggs

(replace Jan Bloggs with your own name).

alexandria

This is a US ancient philosophy list. Send your message to majordomo@world.std.com. The one line message is just

subscribe alexandria

Other philosophy lists on majordomo are:

feyerabend

habermas

heidegger

to subscribe to any of these lists, just send the command

subscribe listname

ontology

The listserver to send the subscription command to is majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu. The one line message is

subscribe ontology your electronic address

derrida

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listserv@cfrvm.earn. The one line message is

subscribe derrida

hegel

This is a moderated list. To subscribe mail the moderator stepelev@vuvaxcom.bitnet and ask to be added to the list of subscribers.

kant

This is a moderated list. To subscribe mail the moderator fwilson@coral.bucknell.edu) and ask to be added to the list of subscribers.

kierkegaard

The listserver to send the subscription command to is kierkegaard-request@stolaf.edu. The one line message is

subscribe

krishamurti

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listening-l-request@cs.tu-berlin.de. The one line message is

subscribe

russell

This is a moderated list for discussions on the work of Bertrand Russell. To subscribe mail the moderator Kenneth Blackwell (blackwk@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca) and ask to be added to the list of subscribers.

secular humanist

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listserv-l-request@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. The one line message is

subscribe

liberty and feminism

The listserver to send the subscription command to is libfem-request@math.uio.no. The one line message is

subscribe

skeptic

This is a moderated list for those interested in critical examination of claims of the paranormal. To subscribe mail the moderator Normal R. Gall at gall@yunexus.bitnet and ask to be added to the list of subscribers.

omega-point theory

Frank J. Tipler’s book The Physics of Immortality has received a lot of publicity for claiming that "the central claims of Biblical theology are true, and are in fact straightforward deductions on the laws of physics as we now understand them".

The listserver to send the subscription command to is majordomo@world.std.com. The one line message is

subscribe omega-point-theory

communitarians

The listserver to send the subscription command to is majordomo@civic.net. The one line message is

subscribe communitarians

extropians

Extropians are simultaneously interested in anarchocapitalist politics and technically speculative science such as cryonics. "If you support natural death or state sponsored anything, you will find few converts on XTROPY-L".

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listserv@ubvm.bitnet. The one line message is

subscribe xtropy-l

new ways of thinking

Weird - you have been warned!

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listserv@ubvm.bitnet. The one line message is

subscribe fnord-l Jan Bloggs

(replace Jan Bloggs with your own name).

puzzles

Logic puzzles and paradoxes.

The listserver to send the subscription command to is listserv@ubvm.bitnet. The one line message is

subscribe puzzle-l Jan Bloggs

(replace Jan Bloggs with your own name).

Discussion Groups

Here are some addresses for philosophy discussion groups:

Gophers

University of Michigan Library Gopher

URL: gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu:70/11/humanities/philrelig

Path: /humanities resources/philosophy and religion

North Carolina State University Library Gopher

URL: gopher://dewy.lib.ncsu.edu:70/11/library/disciplines/religion

Path: /library without walls/study carrels/religion and philosophy

Art and Humanities Gopher University of San Francisco

URL: gopher://scilibx.ucsc.edu:70/11/The Researcher/Arts and Humanities

Path: /the researcher/arts and humanities

For Further Information

There are numerous books and articles on the Internet - how to access it and how to use it. On philosophy and the Internet, Sean Sayers has written an article on Philosophy and the Information Superhighway in Radical Philosophy 67 (Summer 1994) p.63).

Peter Morville and Stephen Clarke keep a "list of lists" for philosophy (when I printed it, it ran to 28 pages!) which is available from the philosophy Gopher at Liverpool University:

Gopher to: gopher.liv.ac.uk

(URL: gopher://gopher.liv.ac.uk:70/1)

Be warned that this information can get out of date quite quickly. When writing this article I obtained to latest list of lists from the majordomo list server, and noticed that since January (i.e. in under 4 months) the following lists had gone: blanchot, christinfideles, cybermind, deleuze-guattari, fiction-of-philosophy, foucault, frankfurt school, irigaray, marxism, nietzsche, philomorphs and reality.

A list of philosophical texts available as electronic texts is available from

Gopher: gate.oxy.edu or telnet atl.calstate.edu, and login: APA

URL: gopher://gate.oxy.edu:70/1