| 1. | (jargon, networking) | network, the - (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) | network, the - 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). |