catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  The Network
       
          network, the
       
       

  the network n. 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
     time-sharing 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, {Internet
     address}, 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 "Schro"dinger'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.