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 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
Schrdinger'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.