1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic,
and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET,
NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and {Usenet} `networks', plus
the corporate in-house networks and commercial timesharing services
(such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site is
generally considered on the network if it can be reached through some
combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path)
addresses. See {Internet}, {bang path}, {network address}.
2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and
subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, "the network"
is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before
the second wave of wide-area computer networking began around 1980).
3. A fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and
anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's
novel Schrödinger's Cat, to which many hackers have subsequently
decided they belong (this is an example of {ha ha only serious}).
In sense 1, the network is often abbreviated to the net. "Are you on
the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to
face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bang path}{cyberspace}{forum}{hacker}{Internet}{Matrix}{network address}]