Network, the
1. <jargon, networking> (Or "the net") The union of all the major noncommercial, academic and hacker-oriented networks, such as
Internet, the old
ARPANET,
NSFnet,
BITNET, and the virtual
UUCP and
Usenet "networks", plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
time-sharing services (such as CompuServe) that gateway to them.
A site was generally considered "on the network" if it could be reached by
electronic mail through some combination of Internet-style (@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. Since the explosion of the Internet in the mid 1990s, the term is now synonymous with the Internet.
See
network address.
2. <body> 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).
[
Jargon File]
