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Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post e-mail-like messages (called "articles" or "posts") to one or more of a number of categories, called newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums which are widely used today.
One notable difference from a BBS is that there is no central server, nor central system owner. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers which store and forward messages to one another. These servers are loosely connected in a variable mesh. Individual users usually read from and post messages to a local server operated by their ISP, university, employer, or some other local organization. Then, the servers exchange the messages between one another. Usenet has been described as a system of online collaboration and interaction similar to today's Web 2.0. It has also been argued that its decentralized structure makes it more democratic than Web 2.0. |
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